Understanding Linguistic Varieties: Types and Influences
Linguistic Varieties: An Overview
Linguistic varieties: Human beings possess the unique ability for language. This ability manifests in a variety of languages. However, linguistic varieties extend beyond different languages; they also exist within a single language. Linguistic varieties are different ways of speaking within the same language. These variations arise due to several factors:
Geographical Variations
These variations are based on the area of origin, resulting in different dialects.
Social Variations
These variations depend on social status or characteristics such as age and gender. A language variety shared by a group is called a social level of language.
Situational Variations
These variations differentiate registers.
Temporal Variations
These variations are a consequence of the passage of time.
The standard variety holds a broader perspective and social prestige, as it is used in writing and formal settings.
Social Change and Language Levels
Distinct levels exist:
- High: Spoken by individuals with high social standing, employing cultivated language.
- Low: Spoken by people with lower educational backgrounds, often using vulgarisms.
- Average: A level between the high and low levels.
Jargon is used by social groups to differentiate themselves. They generally use standard structures but also a specific lexicon. These groups can be professionals, students, etc.
Situational Change Factors
Situational change depends on factors within the linguistic context, including the channel (oral or written), speaker, theme, message type, and communicative situation.
Linguistic Registers
Linguistic registers consist of more formal and more colloquial forms. Colloquial forms include colloquial vocabulary, wordiness, lack of consistency, repetition, and unfinished sentences. Formal languages or special techniques use specific vocabulary.
Language Families and Origins
Languages with a common origin belong to the same linguistic family. The language of origin is called the parent language. All languages of the Iberian Peninsula are Romance languages, except for Basque. Galician is closer to Portuguese because, for centuries, they constituted a single language. Latin belongs to the Indo-European family, which includes the vast majority of languages spoken in Europe. Indo-European languages are also spoken on other continents due to colonization. Colonization causes a language to become dominant, leading to the disappearance of many others. Languages often incorporate words from other languages; these are called loanwords.
Incorporating Loanwords
The origin of these words depends on the language in which the new reality was discovered or the ordinary language of the scope in which it arises. Incorporation can be accomplished in three ways:
- Accepting the word from the donor language without changing it (e.g., “dictadura”).
- Translating the meaning of the donor language into the receptor language (calque).
- Phonetic, graphic, and morphological adaptation of the embedded word.
There is also providing necessary (which occupy a space that is not yet covered by any term) and unnecessary borrowing (where imposing a proper term of another language although there is already a word in the language to name a particular realidade.Alguns Galician terms are overwritten others in fact calls castelan.Este Castillianisms.