Standard languages and diglossia

A. When a standard language is “frozen” in place while the spoken language develops naturally, often the result is diglossia between the standard and the colloquial variety.

B. This was the case with Arabic. For example, the regional Arabic dialects are the result of natural changes Arabic went through over time in each place, while the standard reflects the archaic language of the Koran.

1. Notice that the contrast between standard kathirah and Egyptian kətir shows the erosion of sounds at the ends of words, just as we pronounce name as “NEIGHM” rather than “NAH-muh,” the earlier form of the word that the spelling preserves.

2. Modern Standard Arabic has three case endings: “house” is baytu, “of the house” is bayti, and when “house” is used as an object, it is bayta. But in Egyptian, these endings have disappeared, because sound erosion wore off final vowels, as it does so often in language change.

C. Notice also that the words for “are” in the levels of Javanese show the same kind of development:

“Are you going to eat rice and cassava now?”

The word for now, samenika in the high variety, becomes saniki and saiki.

D. Standard French versus colloquial French.

1. Although Standard French has a double-negative marking, as in Je ne marche pas, “I do not walk,” in spoken French, the ne is almost always dropped: Je marche pas has been good spoken French since the Middle Ages. Small words, such as ne, that are not accented tend to erode and even disappear in languages, just as sounds at the ends of words do. Spoken French has developed “naturally,” while written French preserves a past stage.

2. French has a pronoun on used generically, equivalent to the se in Aquí se habla español, or one in English. But over the centuries, although nous has been the standard form for “we,” on has been used in its place in casual speech. We are taught to say nous parlons for “we speak,” but French people at all levels of society actually say on parle.

That is the only thing that we do not do.

STANDARD FRENCH:

C’est la seule chose que nous ne faisons pas.

SPOKEN FRENCH:

C’est la seule chose qu’on __ fait pas.

3. This means that to learn to speak French, we must learn a different dialect than the one taught in school—there are two Frenches, the standard that reflects what French was like centuries ago and the spoken version that has evolved since then.