Dialect Continuum

A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the continuum are no longer mutually intelligible. (It is analogous to a ring species in evolutionary biology.) The lines we can draw between areas that differ with respect to any feature of language are called isoglosses. According to the Ausbausprache – Abstandsprache – Dachsprache paradigm, these dialects can be considered Abstandsprachen (i.e., as stand-alone languages). However, they can be seen as dialects of a single language, provided that a common standard language, through which communication is possible, exists.

There are occasions when various nations of the same linguistic origins occupy the same territory and thus speak the same dialect, but have split standard languages located at different parts of the continuum, sometimes causing doubt as to precisely which language the dialect in question is a member of. Examples include regions such as Kashmir in which local Muslims declare their language Urdu; Sikhs, Punjabi; and Hindus, Hindi. Similar complications arise across much of the former Yugoslavia whereby Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs may speak the same dialect within the same region, yet Croats declare their language Croatian, Bosniaks Bosnian, Montenegrins Montenegrin, and Serbs Serbian.

In sociolinguistics, a language continuum is said to exist when two or more different languages or dialects merge one into the other(s) without a definable boundary. This happens, for example, across large parts of India. Historically, it also happened in various parts of Europe, for example in a line stretching from Portuguese to Walloon (in Belgium); from Portuguese to the southern Italian dialects; and between German and Dutch. Within the last 100 years or so, however, the increasing dominance of nation-states and their standard languages has been steadily eliminating the non-standard dialects of which these language continua were formed, making the boundaries ever more abrupt and well-defined.