What’s language switching?

Language shift is the change that occurs within a language over time. These changes can be gradual, they can be caused by the dominance of one dialect over the others, by official control or by the invasion of another language group. While some languages ​​have changed little over time, many others, such as English, are unrecognizable from previous versions.

Cultural domination as a cause of linguistic change can be seen in Europe through the effects of Latin and Greek on modern European languages. To the east, China’s dominance can be clearly seen in all surrounding languages. This is not only the case with imposing Chinese characters, but whole words. Cultural dominance can occur due to power, religion or popular culture.

For example, the Japanese word for mountain is “yama”, but the language uses the Chinese word “San”, taken from the Mandarin word “shan”, to name a mountain such as “Fuji-san”. Another example in Japanese is how the emperor is known as “Tenno,” a Chinese word meaning “Son of Heaven.” The original Japanese word for emperor is “Sumeramikoto”.

One source of linguistic change, as seen by the effect of Turkish on Hungarian, is the borrowing of words from other languages ​​to describe new things. This is a passive form of cultural linguistic change. It is a common misconception that most Turkish loanwords into Hungarian were adopted during the Ottoman occupation in the Late Middle Ages. In fact, most of them were adopted as the Magyars were migrating west through Siberia and came into contact with the Turkic peoples then living in Central Asia.

All-out invasion has had a marked influence on languages ​​such as English. While English took very little from the native languages ​​of the Romano-British after their move to Britain, it was permanently changed by the Norman invasion of 1066. This caused a double break in the language. First, the political and cultural elite was wiped out, removing official top-down linguistic rules such as gender. Second, time has seen an influx of foreign words that have replaced or coexisted with native words.

The modern phenomenon of popular culture, which has developed steadily over the past hundred years or so, but owes its origins to ancient Greece, has also changed language. It has caused a continuous infiltration of the language of a dominant culture into foreign languages. As the age of modern technology and mass communication has been dominated by the English-speaking powers, namely Great Britain and then the United States, the linguistic shift has seen a growing influence of English in other languages.
An example of this includes the increasing use of ‘s’ at the end of words to pluralize nouns, as seen in Swedish. It also includes the use of words such as “hello”, “passport” and “condom” in most of the world’s languages. These linguistic shifts are fueled by the export of music, television, literature and film.

Politics and cultural sensitivity can also cause the prevention of language change or a concerted attempt to prevent it from occurring. Some countries, such as France, have created councils or organizations in charge of controlling the language. In this, they try to eliminate banned words, reduce the influence of foreign languages, and approve or reject words that can be used in official publications. In France and Wales, this has led to an active attempt to reduce words of English origin culled from British and American popular culture.
Languages ​​also change through natural evolution. Words and forms evolve as different ideas or regional dialects gain prominence. For example, in English, the dominant plural was first the London plural, then the Southern plural before it settled on the Northern “s” plural. This is why some words like children contain a different plural form. Other changes occur because a new or invented word, like dog, becomes popular and replaces an older word like “hound.” What is slang one day often becomes official in the near future.

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