Mixed language

A mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism. Although the concept is frequently encountered in historical linguistics from the early twentieth century, attested cases of language mixture, as opposed to code switching, substrata, or simple borrowing, are quite rare. A genuine mixed language may mark the appearance of a new ethnic or cultural group, such as the Métis. The fusion of more than two languages is not attested.

Definitions

A mixed language differs from a pidgin in that the speakers developing the language are fluent, even native, speakers of both languages, whereas a pidgin develops when groups of people with little knowledge of each other's languages come into contact and have need of a basic communication system, as for trade, but do not have enough contact to learn each other's language.

In a mixed language both source languages are clearly identifiable. This differs from a creole language, which generally has one identifiable parent in addition to diverse input which can not be traced to any particular language. While creoles tend to have drastically simplified morphologies, mixed languages often retain the inflectional complexities of both parent languages.

Code-switching

Finally, a mixed language differs from code-switching, such as Spanglish, in that speakers do not need to know the source languages. The fusion of the source languages is fixed in the grammar and vocabulary, not left to the speaker. However, it is believed that mixed languages evolve from persistent code-switching, with younger generations picking up the code-switching, but not necessarily the source languages that generated it.

Most portmanteau language names, such as Franglais and Anglo-Romani, are not mixed languages, or even code-switching, but registers of a language (here French and English) characterized by large numbers of loanwords from a second language (here English and Romani). English developed from such a situation, Anglo-Saxon with a large number of French borrowings, but is not considered a mixed language.

Mixed languages

Genuine mixed languages include:

• Maltese is considered by many linguists to be a mixture of Romance and Semitic syntax, grammar, and vocabulary, with influences from Sicanian, Sicilian Arabic, Italian, Sicilian Italian, French, and English.
• Michif, a mixture of French and Cree, where the nouns and adjectives tend to be French (including agreement), and the polysynthetic verbs are entirely Cree. There are two simultaneous gender systems, French masculine/feminine as well as Cree animate/inanimate, and the Cree obviative (fourth person).
• Mednyj Aleut, a mixture of Russian and Aleut, which retains Aleut verbs but has replaced most of the inflectional endings with their Russian equivalents.
• Cappadocian Greek, comprising mostly Greek root words, but with many Turkish grammatical endings and Turkish vowel harmony, and no gender.
• Mbugu or Ma’a, an inherited Cushitic vocabulary with a borrowed Bantu morphology.
• Media Lengua, an inherited Quechua grammar and phonology with a borrowed Spanish lexicon.

The histories of these languages differ. Michif and Mednyj Aleut appear to have risen through the mixture and intermarriage of two bilingual peoples, French with Cree and Russian with Aleut. Cappadocian Greek and Media Lengua, on the other hand, appear to have arisen as minority languages (Greek and Quechua) shifted under the influence of the surrounding majority language (Turkish and Spanish). While the Greek and Quechua were bilingual in Turkish and Spanish, the reverse was not true. The history of Mbugu is not known.

Possible examples include:

• Chiac, a mixture of Acadian French language and English language
• Wutunhua (a mixture of Chinese and Tibetan).
• Yeniche (a mixture of German, various local German and French dialects, some Yiddish, and a few Romani words.)
• Jopará, mixture of Guaraní and Spanish, Spanish verbs are changed to match Guaraní phonology and conjugated following Guaraní patterns.
• Portuñol (Portuguese/Spanish).
  • Riverense portuñol (Portuguese/Spanish).
• Surzhyk (a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian).
• Trasianka (a mixture of Belarussian and Russian).
• Arwi (a mixture of Arabic and Tamil).

See also

• Chiac language
• Code-switching
• Interlinguistics
• Language merger
• Language contact
• Language transfer
• Lingua franca

References

• Bakker, Peter (1997). A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Metis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509712-2.
• Bakker, P., and M. Mous, eds. (1994). Mixed languages: 15 case studies in language intertwining. Amsterdam: IFOTT. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Matras, Yaron and Peter Bakker, eds. (2003). The Mixed Language Debate: Theoretical and Empirical Advances. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-017776-5. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Mous, Maarten. 2003. The making of a mixed language: The case of Ma'a/Mbugu. Creole language library (No. 26). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.
• Sebba, Mark (1997). Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles. MacMillan. ISBN 0-333-63024-6.
• Thomason, Sarah and Terrence Kaufman (1988). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07893-4.