Language Contact - Dialectal and Sub-cultural Change

Dialectal and Sub-cultural Change

Some forms of language contact affect only a particular segment of a speech community. Consequently, change may be manifested only in particular dialects, jargons, or registers. The South African dialect of English has been significantly affected by Afrikaans, in terms of lexis and pronunciation, but English as a whole has remained almost totally unaffected by Afrikaans. In some cases, a language develops an acrolect which contains elements of a more prestigious language. For example, in England during a large part of the Medieval period, upper-class speech was dramatically influenced by French, to the point that it often resembled a French dialect. A similar situation existed in Tsarist Russia, where the native Russian language was widely disparaged as barbaric and uncultured.