The variety of English spoken by about half a million people in the Canadian province of Quebec is a minority language in intensive contact with French, the local majority language. This unusual contact situation has produced a unique variety of English which displays many instances of French influence that distinguish it from other types of…

There is no question that English, and especially American English, enjoys high prestige among German speakers. This popularity resulted in a growing importation of English loans into German. The influence is decidedly asymmetrical. In this article, the author discusses the English language's influence on German, covering: (1) a brief history of…

Describes a study showing how a linguistic pattern of alternation affecting an entire speech community is realized in individual idiolects; an example representative of colloquial Helsinki speech is used. Results support observations already presented by Labov, according to which linguistic change is linguistically structured to a very high…

Presents a historical analysis of the Chinese in Cuba and examines the influence of the Chinese language on Spanish. Examples are given of Chinese words used in Cuba today and it is concluded that they have made a considerable contribution to Cuban Spanish. (NCR)

A study examines the language contact phenomenon of Irish in which a native morpheme combines with a borrowed morpheme that has become, over time, fully assimilated. One variety of this blending in Gaeltacht Irish is the substitution of "-eir" for the English-bound "-er/-ar/-or," which is then combined with nativized borrowed…

One cause for illiteracy that is often overlooked is the difficulty of learning the English orthographic system, which is less consistent than that of many other languages. Several historical and linguistic factors have contributed to this inconsistency, including: the "freezing" of the rapidly changing spelling system in the early years of…

An introduction to Pennsylvania German reviews the history of the Pennsylvania Germans' migration to the United States, examines the Pennsylvania German dialect both historically and descriptively, discusses the literature written in the dialect, and looks at its present status and possible future. Because the dialect is an extreme example of…

German borrowing of English words after 1945 is analyzed, focusing on sociolinguistic and linguistic factors, changes English words have undergone in adoption into German, the main areas of borrowing, and the channels through which borrowing has occurred. It is proposed that the most common motives for borrowing are the importation of an object or…

Acknowledging that to study the development of a language is to study the history and culture of people and that English has been influenced by many geographic, political, economic, social, and linguistic forces, this booklet provides a ready reference for elementary and middle school/junior high school teachers confronted with students' questions…

The linguistic situation of Yoruba is described briefly and the origins of Arabic influence on the language are examined. It is noted that Arabic influences Yoruba mainly through Hausa, and four basic conditions results from adaptation of Arabic phonemes in Yoruba: (1) the consonant, which does not exist in Yoruba, is dropped without replacement;…

A context-based framework for teaching the history of Portuguese is presented. It incorporates passages from a medieval Galician-Portuguese work to illustrate diachronic linguistic processes in the evolution of the language. Advantages of the approach, prerequisites, text, and syllabus are described, and a sample analysis is provided. (53…

Many personal names in Temne (a Mel language spoken in Sierra Leone) are borrowed from other languages, containing foreign sounds and sequences which are unpronounceable for Temne speakers when they appear in other words. These exceptions are treated as instances of phonological stereotyping (cases remaining resistant to assimilation processes).…

Language attrition research usually attempts to elicit all types of usage from speakers of all fluency levels in a dying language in order to abstract changing linguistic patterns from situational variation. Informants adept at hiding their vernacular and improvising in an obsolescing variety are reluctant to admit to such scrutiny. In a…

The monograph on the North Alaskan dialect of Inupiaq, an Eskimo language, makes a phonological comparison of the two sub-dialects, Barrow and Kobuk. An introductory section outlines basic word structure and standard orthography, and gives an overview of the dialects' phonology. Subsequent sections give an extensive phonological analysis of these…

Lexical derivation in the Navajo verb system is described, with examples. Derivation involves four broad processes: (1) straightforward use of verbal roots and adverbial-derivational prefixes, with their base meanings; (2) extension of base root meaning, often by metaphor, to permit application to disparate concepts; (3) figurative use of…