Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak another language more often in the home. The data is used to measure the use of a given language in the lifetime of a person, or most often across generations within a linguistic community.
The process whereby a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language is called assimilation. When a linguistic community ceases to use their original language, language death is said to occur.
Examples
Alsace
In Alsace, France, a longtime German-speaking region, German and Alsatian, the native Germanic dialect, all but disappeared as useful languages after a period of being banned and persecuted by the French government after the First World War and the Second World War. They were superseded by French.
Belarus
Despite the withdrawal of Belarus from the USSR proclaimed in 1991, use of the Belarusian language is declining. According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, while Belarusian is used by only 11.9% of Belarusians. 29.4% of Belarusians can write, speak and read Belarusian, while only 52.5% can read and speak it. According to the research, one out of ten Belarusians does not understand Belarusian.
Brussels
In the last two centuries, Brussels transformed from an exclusively Dutch-speaking city to a bilingual city with French as the majority language and lingua franca. The language shift began in the 18th century and accelerated as Belgium became independent and Brussels expanded out past its original city boundaries. From 1880 on, more and more Dutch-speaking people became bilingual, resulting in a rise of monolingual French-speakers after 1910.
Halfway through the 20th century, the number of monolingual French-speakers carried the day over the (mostly) bilingual Flemish inhabitants. Only since the 1960s, after the fixation of the Belgian language border and the socio-economic development of Flanders was in full effect, could Dutch stem the tide of increasing French use.
Carinthia
Until mid 19th century, southern Carinthia in Austria had an overwhelming Slovene-speaking majority: in the 1820s, around 97% of the inhabitants south of the line Villach-Klagenfurt-Diex spoke Slovene as their native language. In the course of the 19th century, this number dropped significantly. By 1920, already a third of the population of the area had shifted to German as their main language of communication. After the Carinthian Plebiscite in 1920s, and especially after World War II, most of the population shifted from Slovene to German. In the same region, today only some 13% of the people still speaks Slovene, while more than 85% of the population speaks German. The figures for the whole region are equally telling: in 1818, around 35% of the population of Carinthia spoke Slovene; by 1910, this number dropped to 15,6% and by 2001 to 2,3%. This changes were almost entirely the result of a language shift in the population, with emigration and genocide (by the Nazis during World War Two) playing only a minor role.
China
The most recent language shift in China is the disappearance of the Manchu language. When China was under Manchurian rule (Qing dynasty), Manchu and Chinese had co-official status. However, the Chinese language was culturally so strong that Manchurian rulers began to prefer Chinese to Manchu. It is believed that the Qianlong Emperor and his successors, though ethnically Manchurian, were more proficient in Chinese than in Manchu. In several years following the fall of the Manchurian rule and the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, Manchurian people completely dropped their own language. Today there are fewer than 100 native speakers of Manchu. A number of loanwords from Manchu survive in the Northeastern varieties of Chinese, though.
Finland
Finland still has coastal Swedish-speaking enclaves, unlike Estonia where the last coast-Swedes were decimated or escaped to Sweden in 1944. As Finland was under Swedish rule from the medieval ages until 1809, the language of education was Swedish, with Finnish being allowed as a medium of education at the university only in the 19th century, and the first thesis in Finnish being published in 1858. Several of the coastal cities were multilingual; Viipuri had newspapers in Swedish, Finnish, Russian and German. However the industrialization in the prewar and especially the postwar era and the “escape from the countryside” of the 1960s changed the demography of the major cities and led to the Finnish language dominating. While Helsinki was a predominantly Swedish-speaking city in 1910, the Swedish speaking minority is now 6% of the population.
French Flanders
French Flanders, which gradually became part of France between 1659 and 1678, was historically part of the Dutch sprachraum, the native dialect being West Flemish. The linguistic situation did not change dramatically until the French Revolution in 1789, and Dutch continued to fulfill the main functions of a cultural language throughout the 18th century. During the 19th century, especially in the second half of it, Dutch was banned from all levels of education and lost most of its functions as a cultural language. The larger cities had become predominantly French-speaking by the end of the 19th century. However, in the countryside, many elementary schools continued to teach in Dutch until World War I, and the Roman Catholic Church continued to preach and teach the catechism in Flemish in many parishes. Nonetheless, since French enjoyed a much higher status than Dutch, from about the interbellum onward, everybody became bilingual, the generation born after World War II being raised exclusively in French. In the countryside, the passing on of Flemish stopped during the 1930s or 1940s. Consequently, the vast majority of those still having an active command of Flemish are older than 60. Therefore, complete extinction of French Flemish can be expected in the coming decades.
Hungary
Cumans seeking refuge from the Turko-Mongols settled in Hungary and were later Magyarized. The Jassic people of Hungary originally spoke the Jassic dialect of Ossetic, but have completely adopted the Hungarian language, forgetting their previous Ossetian language. Also, language shift may have happened during Hungarian pre-history, as the prehistoric culture of Magyars shows very little similarity to the other Uralic peoples.
North America
Calvin Veltman (“Language Shift in the United States,” 1983) has written extensively on the language shift process of a dozen minority language groups in the United States. Based on a 1976 study prepared by the Bureau of the Census, data show that rates of language shift and assimilation have been rising for the past fifty years in the United States. Immigrants with Spanish mother tongue are switching to English within two generations, and in the absence of continuing immigration, the language would not survive more than two generations. Quebecois French, widely spoken by French-Canadian immigrants in New England in the early 20th century, has more or less disappeared from the U.S., replaced by English; a similar process has occurred in Louisiana, a former French colony. Data published in McKay and Wong’s “New Immigrants in the United States” confirm this picture with data from the 1990 Census.
This process has also been observed in Canada outside of Quebec, where the rates of shift for French language minorities presage their disappearance. Meanwhile, in Quebec itself, the decline of French has been reversed, and given high rates of emigration and substantial intermarriage with French Canadians, the English language now has faced decline.
Malta
Before the 1930s, Italian was the only official language of Malta, even though it was spoken by only the upper classes, with Maltese being spoken by the lower class. However, English was then added to the mix, and was made a co-official language alongside Maltese, with Italian being dropped as official. The English language has since grown in the country and now threatens the status of Maltese. Interestingly, the number of speakers of Italian there has increased from when the language was official. A trend among the younger generations is to mix English and Italian vocabulary patterns, in making new Maltese words. For example, the Maltese word for library was originally “bibljoteka”, but this has since been displaced by “librerija”, formed from the English “library”, and an Italian pattern ending. In addition to mixing English with Italian, Maltenglish is a commonly occurring amalgam of English and Maltese. This involves using English words in Maltese sentences, or adding English vocabulary into Maltese. Trends show that English is not only becoming the language of choice for more and more people, but is actually transforming the Maltese language itself.
Philippines
In the Philippines, Spanish-speaking families have gradually switched over to English since the end of World War II until the former eventually ceased to be a practical everyday language in the country.
Another example would be the gradual death of the Kinaray-a language of Panay as many native speakers especially in the province of Iloilo are switching to Hiligaynon or mixing the two languages together. Kinaray-a was once spoken in the towns outside the vicinity of IloÃlo City, while Hiligaynon was limited to only the eastern coasts and the city proper. However, due to media and other factors such as urbanization, many younger speakers have switched from Kinaray-a to Hiligaynon, especially in the towns of Cabatuan, Santa Barbara, Calinog, Miagao, Passi City, Guimbal, Tigbauan, Tubungan, etc. Many towns, especially Janiuay, Lambunao, and San Joaquin still have a sizeable Kinaray-a speaking population with the standard accent being similar to that spoken in the predominantly Karay-a province of Antique. Even in the province of Antique, “Hiligaynization” is an issue to be confronted as the province, especially the capital town of San José de Buenavista, undergoes urbanisation. Many investors from IloÃlo City bring with them Hiligaynon-speaking workers who are reluctant to learn the local language.
One of the problems of Kinaray-a is its written form, as its unique “schwa sound” is difficult to represent in orthography. As time goes by, Kinaray-a has disappeared in many areas it was once spoken especially in the island of Mindoro and only remnants of the past remain in such towns as Pinamalayan, Bansud, Gloria, Bongabong, Roxas, Mansalay, and Bulalacao in Oriental Mindoro and Sablayan, Calintaan, San Jose, and Magsaysay in Occidental Mindoro, as Tagalog has become the standard and dominantly recognised official language of these areas.
Singapore
After Singapore’s independence in 1965, there was a general language shift in the country’s inter-racial lingua franca from Malay to English, as English was chosen as the first language for the country. Among the Chinese community in Singapore, there was a language shift from the various forms of Chinese to Mandarin Chinese. For instance, Mandarin Chinese has replaced Singaporean Hokkien as the lingua franca of Chinese community in Singapore today. There has been a general language attrition in the use of Chinese other than Mandarin, esp. amongst young Singaporean populace.
Spain
The progressive dominion exerted by the Kingdom of Castile over the Iberian peninsula inasmuch as it gained political power throughout centuries, contributed to the expansion of its language at the expenses of the rest. That has affected in different degrees the territories where other languages are spoken, such as Catalonia, Asturias, Galicia or the Basque Country. However it was not till the twentieth century when the displacement took place strongly, especially after the Spanish Civil War. The consequences vary; an advanced language shift affects some regions, for example Asturias, whose native linguistic varieties are now close to extinction, whereas in other areas, such as Catalonia or the Basque Country, the strong link between identity and local language has contributed to its preservation.
Vietnam
Since the Fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, French has declined heavily in Vietnam from being a government language and primary language of education in South Vietnam to being a minority language limited to the elite classes and elderly population. Today, French is only fluently spoken by about slightly over 5% of the Vietnamese population. The language shift from French to Vietnamese occurred earlier in the north due to Viet Minh and later communist policies enforcing Vietnamese as the sole language for political and educational purposes. However, since the late 1990s, there has been a minor revival of French in Vietnam.
Social consequences
Language shift can be detrimental to at least parts of the community associated with the language which is being lost. Sociolinguists such as Joshua Fishman, Lilly Wong Fillmore and Jon Reyhner report that language shift (when it involves loss of the first language) can lead to cultural disintegration and a variety of social problems including increased alcoholism, dysfunctional families and increased incidence of premature death. Others claim that language shift allows greater communication and integration of isolated groups previously unable to communicate. This could have a positive effect in the long term.
For example, Ohiri-Aniche (1997) observes a tendency among many Nigerians to bring up their children as monolingual speakers of English and reports that this can lead to their children holding their heritage language in disdain, and feeling ashamed of the language of their parents and grandparents. As a result of this, some Nigerians are said to feel neither fully European nor fully Nigerian.
Reversing
Joshua Fishman has proposed a method of reversing language shift which involves assessing the degree to which a particular language is disrupted in order to determine the most effective way of assisting and revitalising the language.