LING 320 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: English Language In Europe, Quebec French, Mutual Intelligibility
9 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
As language becomes associated with social status, the variety of the language becomes associated to the elite (higher status in the social group) This variety is known as the standard variety, the variety that is above all other varieties. The idea of standard varieties being superior is extremely resistant to change. Most obvious kind of difference is lexical difference. E. g. , different terms used in british english vs. american english. Completely mutually intelligible, but are two more-or-less equally prestigious varieties of english in the world. Before the rise of the united states, british english was the standard. Quebec french has not challenged european french in the same way that american. Maybe because there is a smaller amount of quebec french speakers than there are american english speakers. Latin america has a much larger population than spain. There is as much dialect variety in spain as there is in latin america.
