Summary of Journal linguistic 1

   

Journal linguistic 1

 

Reference: Vandekerckhove, Reinhild. Britain, David. Dialects in western Europe: a balanced picture of language death, innovation and change. The International Journal of the Sociology of Language addresses. 196/197 (2009), pp. 1–6

This study was talking about dialect in wester europe. It deals with a lanced picture of language death, innovation and change. This study presented in this issue do not cover every country of western Europe, but we hope that both the geographical spread of the selected countries and regions and the diversity they represent with respect to their linguistic, political, and socioeconomic past and present shed light on the similarities and di¤erences in the sociolinguistic evolution of dialect use across this part of the continent. everywhere, and some urban dialects appear to play a prominent role in this leveling. For the younger generations, the dominant variety for informal colloquial speech is no longer the local dialect but it is not Standard Dutch either. The new and dominant code is a regiolectal or so-called intermediate variety — tussentaal. Every region has its own supralocal re-giolectal variety, but the variety of the central Brabant–Antwerp region clearly appears to be dominant. In southern, Romance Belgium, or Wallonia, four regional varieties can be discerned: Walloon, Picard, Lorrain, and Champenois. The first two varieties, and especially Walloon, dominate the regional linguistic scene since the other two have nearly disappeared. Wallonia from the mid-twentieth century onward, not only in public but also in private domains. It is estimated that only 10% of the younger generation still uses one of the regional languages and even then actual performance may be highly variable. But just when even the dominant Walloon variety may reach the point of no return, dialects appear to be undergoing re-evaluation. Across a wide range of cultural activities (such as pop songs, theatre performances, cartoon strips), Walloon dialects have been developing a strong following, and thoughts have now turned toward the possibility of standardizing a written form of the language. So varieties of Walloon have recently gained ground in domains from which they had long been excluded, but, nevertheless, they seem to be losing their main function as a medium of colloquial informal communication in local settings.