User:Jssevcov

What is Diglossia?
A societal form of bilingualism, in which the various languages involved are employed at different levels of formality. This includes both various language varieties but also multiple languages used within a society. (Garcia, 2009)

Diglossia in Japanese
Diglossia within the Japanese language is represented not only with the language's verb forms, sentence structures and entire words that are used for formalities when speaking to someone above you in society and the change many differences when speaking to someone "lower", but also with the growing use of other languages (such as english) within the more common speaking practices and slang, while it is avoided when speaking within a official or legal capacity.

Though Japanese, like many other languages, has slang and sentences can be shortened, the diglossic nature of the language shows when looking at the usage of honorifics system.In Japanese, depending on the way a verb is conjugated and the formalities used, you can quickly determine the status of the speaker in relation to the status of the listener. The language uses 3 different "levels" of speach and writing; speaking to someone above you in status, speaking to someone of equal status, but within a professional or impersonal manner, and a common speech, used when speaking to friends, family, and close acquaintances. Beyond that, Japanese often "borrow" words from other languages in common speech where as in the "higher" forms, it would be more appropriate to use the actual Japanese word.

To see a simple example of what is changed within each context, one only needs to look at verb usage: -In a "middle" level of speech (commonly used when talking to strangers, meeting someone for the first time or talking professionally) a Desu / Masu (～です・～ま)form, such as Moraimasu (貰います) is used. -In a "low" level of speech (spoken among friends, family, and for personal journals) the same verb can be expressed as Morau (貰う) -In a "high" level of speech (spoken to a person of higher status, such as a teacher, boss, etc) the verb can change forms to itadakimasu (いただきます).

The above example only covers one form in each of the speech levels. Some forms are usable in multiple levels, such as desu, which can be used for any of the 3 levels depending on the manner it is used. Furthermore, each level has more forms the verb can take, adding honerifics such as 'o' or 'go' (お~・ご~) at the beginning of the word and endings like deshouka (~でしょうか) could raise a words formality greatly, meanwhile conjugating a verb with a da (~だ) ending would make it more plain and blunt.

Diglossia in Arabic speaking countries
In most Arabic speaking countries, diglossia occurs between Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Colloquial Arabic. Although these languages are either typologically related or derived from each other, they are separate languages which are not inter-intelligible for the most part. Modern Standard Arabic is the language of government and media, as well as the only written language. There are almost no texts written in Colloquial Arabic. Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an and religion, MSA being derived from it, but lacking certain grammatical features such as case, and verbal modality. Colloquial Arabic is the first language of every Arabic speaker, and may or may not be directly related to Classical Arabic. As MSA is the only standard written language, most children in schools find learning to read it extremely difficult. It was shown in Haeri, 2003, that the only positive experience children have with the standard language (including Classical Arabic) is in religious contexts (the other contexts included school, etc.), for example, when learning the daily prayers, hearing the muezzin doing the call to prayer, etc. In writing, the issue is further complicated by the problem of newly introduced vocabulary. The government controls the standard language strictly, preventing loanwords from appearing too often. So, while in colloquial Arabic, the word for telephone is 'tilifun' (تايفون), in MSA, the word must be 'haatif' (حاتف) (device which calls).

The sad fact is that, where the government declares MSA as the 'only' language spoken in the country, the majority of the population must go to school and work in a foreign language - in their own country! This is partly the case in Algeria (Haeri, 2003), where French is also the official language. A combined approach to their diglossia could be the solution. Similar to the situation in Cyprus, where both Standard Greek and Cypriot Greek dialect are used and appreciated in different contexts (Hadjioannou, 2009), if Arabic speaking countries were to allow dialect into the classroom, it may have a positive effect on the population's proficiency in MSA. MSA would still be necessary as a written language, in order for the various Arabic speaking countries to have communication, but at the local level, dialect use should be fostered.