Koine language
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, a koiné language (common language in Greek
) is a standard language
or dialect
that has arisen as a result of contact between two mutually intelligible varieties (dialects) of the same language. Since the speakers have understood one another from before the advent of the koiné, the koineization process is not as rapid as pidgin
ization and creolization
. Normal influence between neighbouring dialects is not regarded as koineization. A koiné variety emerges as a new spoken variety in addition to the originating dialects; it does not change any existing dialect. This separates koineization from normal evolution of dialects.
and ultimately became the lingua franca
of the Hellenistic world.
An immigrant koiné is a new dialect that forms in a community settled by immigrants speaking two or more mutually intelligible dialects of the same language. Kerswill examines two examples of immigrant koiné in detail. The first involves the development of Hindi-based koinés. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century speakers of a variety of Hindi
dialects were conscripted to serve as indentured laborers
throughout the colonial world. Speakers of these dialects came together in varying proportions under different conditions and developed distinctive Hindi koinés. These Hindi/Bhojpuri dialects are found in Fiji
, Guyana
, Mauritius
, South Africa
, Suriname
, and Trinidad & Tobago.
Kerswill also examines the Norwegian dialects that emerged in two towns which were located around smelters built at the head of the Sørfjord
branch of the Hardangerfjord
in the mid-twentieth century. The towns, Odda
and Tyssedal
, both drew migrants from different parts of Norway. The workers in Odda came predominantly (86%) from western Norway. In Tyssedal only about one-third came from western Norway; a third came from eastern Norway; and the rest from other parts of the country. The dialects that evolved in these two towns were thus very different from each other.
sees three processes in operation during what Mesthrie calls the accommodation period: mixing, leveling
and simplification. The processes of leveling and simplification are both dependent on a wide range of factors, including the differential prestige related of the contributing dialects, socio-political contexts in which the new dialect develops, and individual networks of adults involved in the accommodation process. Additionally, both Trudgill and Mesthrie also comment on the process of reallocation, in which features that have been retained from contributing dialects take on new meanings or functions within the new dialect.
Trudgill posits a multi-generational model of the development of a koiné. During the first (i.e., immigrant) generation, the speakers of the contributing dialects mix, and there is some leveling. The first native-born generation of speakers continues the leveling process. However, in the instances Trudgill was able to document (e.g., first generation speakers of New Zealand English and of the Tyssedal and Odda dialects of Norwegian), the speech of this generation still reflected considerable variability in use of marked forms, both between speakers and in the repertoire of individual speakers. It is the third generation that focuses the variations and stabilizes the dialect. Trudgill admits that there are cases where the focusing can take place in the first generation of native-born speakers and also instances where it might be in the fourth or even later generations. The dialect in its emerging state, a state marked by heterogeneity of forms, Trudgill calls interdialect, often called an interlanguage
in other dialect studies.
Below is a partial list of koiné languages.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, a koiné language (common language in Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
) is a standard language
Standard language
A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
or dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
that has arisen as a result of contact between two mutually intelligible varieties (dialects) of the same language. Since the speakers have understood one another from before the advent of the koiné, the koineization process is not as rapid as pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
ization and creolization
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
. Normal influence between neighbouring dialects is not regarded as koineization. A koiné variety emerges as a new spoken variety in addition to the originating dialects; it does not change any existing dialect. This separates koineization from normal evolution of dialects.
Types
The linguist Paul Kerswill identifies two types of koinés: regional and immigrant. A regional koiné is formed when a strong regional dialect comes into contact with dialects of speakers who move into the region. Often the use of the koiné spreads beyond the region where it was formed. The original koiné was of the regional variety. It was based on the Attic Greek dialect that underwent a koineization process when it came into contact with other Greek dialects spoken in the Athenian seaport PiraeusPiraeus
Piraeus is a city in the region of Attica, Greece. Piraeus is located within the Athens Urban Area, 12 km southwest from its city center , and lies along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf....
and ultimately became the lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
of the Hellenistic world.
An immigrant koiné is a new dialect that forms in a community settled by immigrants speaking two or more mutually intelligible dialects of the same language. Kerswill examines two examples of immigrant koiné in detail. The first involves the development of Hindi-based koinés. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century speakers of a variety of Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
dialects were conscripted to serve as indentured laborers
Indentured servant
Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture. Usually the father made the arrangements and signed...
throughout the colonial world. Speakers of these dialects came together in varying proportions under different conditions and developed distinctive Hindi koinés. These Hindi/Bhojpuri dialects are found in Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
, Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
, Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
, and Trinidad & Tobago.
Kerswill also examines the Norwegian dialects that emerged in two towns which were located around smelters built at the head of the Sørfjord
Sørfjorden, Hardanger
Sørfjorden is a 38 kilometre long fjord arm of the Hardangerfjord in Hordaland county, Norway. The longest arm of the Hardangerfjord, Sørfjorden stretches from north of Kinsarvik to the industrial town of Odda. The glacier of Folgefonna is located to its west, while the mountain plateau of...
branch of the Hardangerfjord
Hardangerfjord
With a length of , the Hardangerfjord in the county of Hordaland in Norway is the third largest fjord in the world and the second largest in Norway. The surrounding district is called Hardanger....
in the mid-twentieth century. The towns, Odda
Odda
is a municipality and town in the county of Hordaland, Norway. Odda was separated from Ullensvang on 1 July 1913 and on 1 January 1964 Røldal was merged with Odda. The town of Odda is the centre of the landscape of Hardanger, located at the end of the Hardangerfjord.In 1927, Erling Johnson,...
and Tyssedal
Tyssedal
Tyssedal is a village in Odda municipality in Norway with about 700 inhabitants and is situated 6 km north of Odda center. Tyssedal is located in a charming environment between fjords and mountains, in the fjord arm Sørfjorden and at the edge of the Hardangervidda mountain plateau.Tyssedal is...
, both drew migrants from different parts of Norway. The workers in Odda came predominantly (86%) from western Norway. In Tyssedal only about one-third came from western Norway; a third came from eastern Norway; and the rest from other parts of the country. The dialects that evolved in these two towns were thus very different from each other.
Koineization
Mesthrie recognizes two basic steps in this process: accommodation and focusing. Peter TrudgillPeter Trudgill
Professor Peter Trudgill FBA is a sociolinguist, academic and author.He was born in 1943 in Norwich, England, where he attended the City of Norwich School from 1955....
sees three processes in operation during what Mesthrie calls the accommodation period: mixing, leveling
Dialect levelling
Dialect levelling is the means by which dialect differences decrease. For example, in rural areas of Britain, although English is widely spoken, the pronunciation and grammar have historically varied. During the 20th century people have been moving into towns and cities, standardizing the English...
and simplification. The processes of leveling and simplification are both dependent on a wide range of factors, including the differential prestige related of the contributing dialects, socio-political contexts in which the new dialect develops, and individual networks of adults involved in the accommodation process. Additionally, both Trudgill and Mesthrie also comment on the process of reallocation, in which features that have been retained from contributing dialects take on new meanings or functions within the new dialect.
Trudgill posits a multi-generational model of the development of a koiné. During the first (i.e., immigrant) generation, the speakers of the contributing dialects mix, and there is some leveling. The first native-born generation of speakers continues the leveling process. However, in the instances Trudgill was able to document (e.g., first generation speakers of New Zealand English and of the Tyssedal and Odda dialects of Norwegian), the speech of this generation still reflected considerable variability in use of marked forms, both between speakers and in the repertoire of individual speakers. It is the third generation that focuses the variations and stabilizes the dialect. Trudgill admits that there are cases where the focusing can take place in the first generation of native-born speakers and also instances where it might be in the fourth or even later generations. The dialect in its emerging state, a state marked by heterogeneity of forms, Trudgill calls interdialect, often called an interlanguage
Interlanguage
An interlanguage is an emerging linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a second language who has not become fully proficient yet but is approximating the target language: preserving some features of their first language , or overgeneralizing target language rules in speaking or...
in other dialect studies.
Below is a partial list of koiné languages.
- Koiné GreekKoine GreekKoine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
, the language that has given name to the general phenomenon. - Iraqi Koiné, a variety of Assyrian Neo-AramaicAssyrian Neo-AramaicAssyrian Neo-Aramaic is a Neo-Aramaic dialect, spoken by an estimated 220,000 people , formerly in the area between Lake Urmia, north-western Iran, and Siirt, south-eastern Turkey, but now more widely throughout the...
based on the various mountain dialects under the influence of the semi-standard Urmežnaya variety. - Dano-NorwegianDano-NorwegianDano-Norwegian is a linguistic term for a koiné that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union between the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway . It is from this koiné that Riksmål and Bokmål developed...
, the basis of Norway's most widely-used written standardOrthographyThe orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
BokmålBokmålBokmål is one of two official Norwegian written standard languages, the other being Nynorsk. Bokmål is used by 85–90% of the population in Norway, and is the standard most commonly taught to foreign students of the Norwegian language....
. - Svårsk, the Koiné of mutually intelligible Scandinavian languages (or actually Norse dialects) Swedish and Norwegian, used by Norwegians living in Sweden or Swedes living in Norway for easier communications with the locals, but also, after years of living in the other country, with their respective country(wo)men, usually with the result of provoking some amusement.
- N'KoN'KoN'Ko is both a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa, and the name of the literary language itself written in the script. The term N'Ko means 'I say' in all Manding languages....
, which is both a script and an emerging literary version of Manding languagesManding languagesThe Manding languages are a fairly mutually intelligible group of dialects or languages in West Africa, belonging to the Mande languages. Their best-known members are Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali; Mandinka, the main language of Gambia; Maninka or Malinké, a major language of...
. - Standard FriulianFriulian languageFriulan , is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulan has around 800,000 speakers, the vast majority of whom also speak Italian...
(furlan standard), based on Central variants with some differences, used in official acts - Fiji HindiFiji HindiFiji Hindi, also known as Fijian Hindi or Fijian Hindustani, is the language spoken by most Fijian citizens of Indian descent. It is derived mainly from the Awadhi and Bhojpuri varieties of Hindi. It has also borrowed a large number of words from Fijian and English. The relation between Fiji Hindi...
- Bhojpuri
- Scottish EnglishScottish EnglishScottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....
- South African EnglishSouth African EnglishThe term South African English is applied to the first-language dialects of English spoken by South Africans, with the L1 English variety spoken by Zimbabweans, Zambians and Namibians, being recognised as offshoots.There is some social and regional variation within South African English...
- New Zealand EnglishNew Zealand EnglishNew Zealand English is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand.The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and...
- Australian EnglishAustralian EnglishAustralian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
- Quebec FrenchQuebec FrenchQuebec French , or Québécois French, is the predominant variety of the French language in Canada, in its formal and informal registers. Quebec French is used in everyday communication, as well as in education, the media, and government....
- ShanghaineseShanghaineseShanghainese , or the Shanghai language , is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai and the surrounding region. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Shanghainese, like other Wu dialects, is largely not mutually intelligible with other Chinese varieties...
, a dialect of Wu Chinese. It is essentially based on the Suzhou dialectSuzhou dialectSuzhou dialect is a dialect of Wu, one of the subdivisions of Chinese spoken language. It is spoken in the city of Suzhou, in Jiangsu province of China, and is the traditional prestige dialect of Wu....
, while influenced by Mandarin Chinese, EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and other Wu Chinese dialects, especially the Ningbo dialectNingbo dialectNingbo dialect is a dialect of Wu, one of the subdivisions of Chinese spoken language. It is spoken in the city of Ningbo and Zhoushan and surrounding areas in Zhejiang province.-Area:...
. It has been understood as a lingua franca throughout the late 19th century and into the early 20th century JiangnanJiangnanJiangnan or Jiang Nan is a geographic area in China referring to lands immediately to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, including the southern part of the Yangtze Delta...
, replacing the Suzhou dialectSuzhou dialectSuzhou dialect is a dialect of Wu, one of the subdivisions of Chinese spoken language. It is spoken in the city of Suzhou, in Jiangsu province of China, and is the traditional prestige dialect of Wu....
as the lingua franca. It was then replaced by Mandarin. Other Wu Chinese dialects, particularly the other Taihu Wu dialectsTaihu Wu dialectsTaihu Wu dialects , or Northern Wu dialects , are a group of Wu dialects spoken over much of southern part of Jiangsu province, including Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, the southern part of Nantong, Jingjiang and Danyang; the municipality of Shanghai; and the northern part of Zhejiang province, including...
, are now being further koineized into a common Wu Chinese language, at the expense of dialectal diversity, as their newer pronunciations and phonology resembles that of Shanghainese with each generation. - Maghrebi Arabic (DarijaDarijaDarija is the group of Arabic dialects spoken by Maghrebi Arabic speakers. It is only used for oral communication, with Modern Standard Arabic used for written communication...
)