# Spoken v. written language



## Jacobtm

Hey,

I was wondering if there have been studies comparing the differences between the spoken and written forms of different languages and attempting to find causation.

For instance, it seems at least plausible that a society where education is uncommon would see a bigger divergence between the written language, as maintained by the educated few, and the spoken language of the masses. Hence Isaac Newton wrote in Latin while those in Rome had long ago abandoned it.

But that's just an amateur thought. Is there any work out there on this subject? If my guess is right, then did the Soviet Union have a low degree of divergence from the written and spoken language, since education was very widespread and standardized?


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## Maroseika

I don't think education in the SU was spread wider than in any other country of "Western world", but anyway there was and remains difference between spoken and written forms of the language (at least Russian language - I don't know much  about the dozens or hundreds of other languages of the former SU). Anyway, as far as I could notice, difference between them in SU was quite misarable and included a few verbs and nouns and several cases of spoken declention of numeral and grammatical sequences.
In some cases these trends of the spoken languages have been already recongnized as standard and are not errors anymore.
Of course here we are talking about non-standard spoken language, because even standard spoken language always differs from the written one.


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## Frank06

Hi,

I assume that by "written language" you mean the standard language, often, if not always, codified in grammar books, dictionaries, spelling guides etc.?

In general I think that written, standard language cannot keep up with spoken language: it's too conservative by its very own nature. Furhtermore, I don't think a lot of people (or language academies, if any) are willing to change the standard every 15 years or so .



Jacobtm said:


> For instance, it seems at least plausible that a society where education is uncommon would see a bigger divergence between the written language as maintained by the educated few, and the spoken language of the masses.


 
I doubt it very very strongly that one can make this kind of generalisations. Just a few examples which seem to indicate the opposite: 

- Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, has quite a good education system. We all learn (how to write) Standard Dutch in school. By writing I don't only mean spelling. Nevertheless, I think I can safely say that the majority of the Flemish speak a variety of Dutch which cannot be called Standard Dutch. In the region where I live (the city of Antwerp) the local variants differ hugely from the standard version. For students of Dutch, it's often as if they hear a different language.

- More or less the same in Tehran (and the big Iranian cities): I think that almost everybody there learns the (written) standard variety, but the spoken language differs quite a lot. Quite frustrating when one wants to learn Persian (especially when the handbooks deal with standard, written Persian).

- In the Netherlands, it's basically well educated women who speak the so-called (non-standard) "Poldernederlands".



> Hence Isaac Newton wrote in Latin while those in Rome had long ago abandoned it.


I think the fact that Newton wrote in Latin has little to do with the divergence written/spoken language.



> Is there any work out there on this subject? If my guess is right, then did the Soviet Union have a low degree of divergence from the written and spoken language, since education was very widespread and standardized?


I don't know Russian, neither the situation in Russia. 

I think that my 3 specific counterexamples indicate that it is very difficult to make generalisations.

Great question, by the way! 

Take good care.

Frank


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## Outsider

Jacobtm said:


> For instance, it seems at least plausible that a society where education is uncommon would see a bigger divergence between the written language, as maintained by the educated few, and the spoken language of the masses.


I would question that assumption. In abstract, it might seem logical, but in practice less educated societies are typically also:

- more static, socially
- formed by smaller populations
- less influenced by foreign cultures and languages
- linguistically less innovative

The educated elites of such societies also tend to be smaller, and gravitate to a limited number of urban or cultural centres, making those elites fairly homogeneous, linguistically.

These sorts of characteristics would tend to produce greater linguistic homogeneity, or at least they would counteract to some extent the centrifugal effect of the lack of education.


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## Maroseika

Outsider said:


> ...less educated societies are typically also:
> 
> - linguistically less innovative


Isn't it quite vice verca? Innovatiing tendencies in the high-educated societies are restrained  with the legalized standard language. Otherwise, why even "small" languages, having no writing language at all, may have so many dialects or patois even in the neighboring settlements?


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## Outsider

Maroseika said:


> Isn't it quite vice verca? Innovatiing tendencies in the high-educated societies are restrained  with the legalized standard language.


My idea is that in more educated societies there is more progress, and therefore a greater need to name new concepts and realities. Technical terms grow and multiply. 

I acknowledge that this may depend on the degree of education that we're talking about, and I'm not sure that there is even a quantitative difference either way between the degree of linguistic homogeneity in more educated and less educated societies. I just think it's risky to assume there is one. That's why I've attempted to show that a difference in the opposite direction to what Jacobtm originally suggested is also defensible, in principle.


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## Frank06

Hi,



Maroseika said:


> Isn't it quite vice verca? Innovatiing tendencies in the high-educated societies are restrained with the legalized standard language.


Or the highly edcuated are self-conscious enough to consciously diverge from the standard variant...

Anyway, when looking at language and language usage in a broader, historical context, a standard(ized) language (with a long life span) is quite an anomaly.



> Otherwise, why even "small" languages, having no writing language at all, may have so many dialects or patois even in the neighboring settlements?


The same happens/can happen in densely populated areas where the inhabitants are fairly highly educated.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Istriano

In some languages like Swiss German and Brazilian Portuguese the spoken and written languages are pretty distant. In Brazil our official written grammar is based on the language used by Portuguese writers of the 19th century and has not changed much. But the spoken language has changed a lot. Sometimes I wonder if it would be more democratic if we had two official norms: the current one used in writing (based on 19th century Continental Portuguese grammar), and the Brazilian modern norm (used in speech), just like in the case of Norway which has a Danish-influenced norm and a more Norway-based norm (nynorsk). Many literary works have been written in Brazilian basilect and mesolect (Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade) yet in school we are taught we use the language incorrectly (corrected forms are those from Portugal, our normative grammars say). Swiss people don't like using Hochdeutsch in speech because they don't indentify themselves with that. We in Brazil don't like using the written/bookish language in speech because we don't identify ourselves with it. A student of mine recently asked me why is that our [Brazilian] soap operas are so full of grammar mistakes while the Mexican ones are grammatically impeccable? I told her: it's a complicated thing, it has to due with identity and it is not only a grammar ''problem'' (correct or incorrect thing). Sadly many Portuguese people consider our Brazilian usage wrong and blame our poor education system for it while most Germans would not say that of Schwyzerdütsch (Swiss education system is great, yet even in parliament they prefer Schwyzerdütsch).
I read an article about the most hated subject in schools around the world, and in almost every country mathematics was the least liked subject, but it Brazil it was different: Portuguese language was the least liked.
I think 1st language classes should focus on creativity and production and not on memorizing old grammar rules no one uses anymore. If you want to learn about _thee _or _thou_, ok, you can, but only at the university, in your philology class.


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## Angelo di fuoco

It's quite interesting what you are writing about Portuguese/Brazilian and Deutsch/Schwyzerdütsch.
Possibly the German attitude towards Schwyzerdütsch is due to the fact that the German are on the whole more tolerant in these matters, but also to the fact that they are not very often exposed to it.

As for Portuguese/Brazilian, for one who is able to speak, write and understand most of the other "big" Romance languages (the trias French-Italian-Spanish) and a tolerable passive knowledge of European Portuguese there are some points in the the Brazilian Portuguese that are, at the least, bewildering.
One of the most important points: the pronoun position e. g., proclitic not to the finite verb, but to the participle, has, as for all I know, no correspondence in any Romance language. The position of  the object pronoun in relation to the infinitive and the gerund is, at this point, not very clear to me even in the more conservative European Portuguese (so for the last I cannot even say if there is a difference between the usage in European and Brazilian Portuguese).
I can see a reason for the unusual object pronouns position before the _infinitif_ and _gérondif_ in French - which is perhaps the most innovative Romance language - in that language's general tendency to put the stress of the _mot phonétique_ on the last syllable - with the well-known exception of the e muet (or _instable_ or _caduc_). In Portuguese, however, I cannot see any reason for that.
The incongruencies (as seen by the normative grammar) between the conjugated verb forms and the pronouns, which, in Brazil, differ from region to region (oscillation between second and third person singular), are as confusing as the ones in Argentinian Spanish (voseo, oscillation between second person singular and plural) and probably even more.

By the way, in spite of the ever-growing differencies between the written and spoken forms of Latin, up to the time when there was a factical diglossy and Latin ceased to be the language of the people and was understood only by educated people, during a long time it was a language of prestige. Even as a "dead" language, Latin produced documents, scientific literature and even art prose and lyrics, before gradually being given up in favour of the "vulgar" language (it ceased to be official language of Hungary as late as the 19th century).
Although my knowledge of Latin is very limited, I personally think that Latin is a first-class language.
And, sorry for reminding, the "thee" and "thou" of the Brazilian Portuguese are very well alive in the European Portuguese. Because of this, I see sticking to those "old-fashioned" grammar rules as a way to preserve the mutual intelligibility between European and Brazilian Portuguese as long possible.


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## Rallino

In Turkey, people believe in the cliché: _In Turkish you read everything you see_. which is not true anymore. At least not with the verbs.

We write: _yapacağım_ and never read it as it is. If a Turk would read it like that, I would laugh. We read it as_ yapıcaam._ And by saying _we_, I mean everyone, on TV, in diction classes etc.

Frankly, I'm expecting some changes in Turkish spelling in an arc of 20 years. Time will show


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## Angelo di fuoco

With virtually no knowledge of the Turkish language, I believe that in _burada_ and _nerede_ the middle vowel is omitted...


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## Rallino

Angelo di fuoco said:


> With virtually no knowledge of the Turkish language, I believe that in _burada_ and _nerede_ the middle vowel is omitted...



Good point!    Though there are times when people pronunce it; it doesn't sound as bad as in my example. Still most of the times it's clearly NOT pronunced


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## Jacobtm

Angelo di fuoco said:


> The incongruencies (as seen by the normative grammar) between the conjugated verb forms and the pronouns, which, in Brazil, differ from region to region (oscillation between second and third person singular),



This seems like a completely unsurprising consequence of allowing "you" to be represented in the second and third person. If "tú" and "você" both mean "you", then what's the point of conjugating someone you're talking to 2 different ways? The pronouns aren't used the same way in Brazil as they are in Portugal, but to whom "tú" or "te" refers is still unambiguous, it's "you", even though "you" is conjugated as the third person. 

Personally I'm surprised that more romance-language-speaking populations don't do what Brazil does and just pretty much get rid of the second person all together. Spanish works fine without Vosotros, and could do just the same without tú/vos.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Etymologically, você means "Your Grace" (Vossa Mercê) and not "you" in the sence of "thou", and in the Portuguese of Portugal you still can feel it by how it's used. 
Spanish works fine without "vosotros", but it works still better with it.
If you get rid of the second person, then you'll have to rely more on personal pronouns or names (which, as I read some time ago even somewhere on this forum, is exactly what is happening in Brazil, and you indirectly confirm it), but with the second person, the verbal endings in most of the Romance languages (with the notorious exception of French, which has retained the entire paradigma of 6 forms for each tense/mood in writing, but which you don't always hear in speech) are just enough to make the address unambiiguous, which allows to use the personal pronouns in Castilian Spanish and Italian only when you need to stress them - by the way, this is how it worked in Latin and that's how I prefer it.


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## Jacobtm

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Etymologically, você means "Your Grace" (Vossa Mercê) and not "you" in the sence of "thou", and in the Portuguese of Portugal you still can feel it by how it's used.


But where it comes from doesn't matter to people in everyday speech, who use it as plain old "you".


Angelo di fuoco said:


> Spanish works fine without "vosotros", but it works still better with it.


I've never had a problem not using vosotros. I think not worrying about an extra conjugation makes the language more manageable and therefore "better". But we're just talking about personal preference here.


Angelo di fuoco said:


> If you get rid of the second person, then you'll have to rely more on personal pronouns or names but with the second person, the verbal endings in most of the Romance languages are just enough to make the address unambiiguous, which allows to use the personal pronouns in Castilian Spanish and Italian only when you need to stress them - by the way, this is how it worked in Latin and that's how I prefer it.



In fact, in Mexico where the second person singular is alive and well, people still use the personal pronouns all the time even though the conjugation alone is sufficient. You COULD just leave it out, but at least in Mexican Spanish the common way to do it is to include tú very frequently.


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## Frank06

*Hi, *

*The discussions about the second and third person singular in Portuguese (and other Romance languages) are very interesting. **But please let us not loose ourselves into details, at least not in this general thread about written language versus spoken language.*


*It's obvious that members present examples here, but please skip an in-depth discussion of every single example. **New threads can be started at any moment and if necessary, we can cross-link new threads to this one. *
*On the other hand, the topics "tu/você", "vosostros", etc. have already often been discussed in the Portuguese and Spanish forums.*


*Groetjes,*



*Frank*
*Moderator*


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## Istriano

Jacobtm said:


> This seems like a completely unsurprising consequence of allowing "you" to be represented in the second and third person. If "tú" and "você" both mean "you", then what's the point of conjugating someone you're talking to 2 different ways? The pronouns aren't used the same way in Brazil as they are in Portugal, but to whom "tú" or "te" refers is still unambiguous, it's "you", even though "you" is conjugated as the third person.
> 
> Personally I'm surprised that more romance-language-speaking populations don't do what Brazil does and just pretty much get rid of the second person all together. Spanish works fine without Vosotros, and could do just the same without tú/vos.


*
CostaRican Spanish* uses:
_Usted _for you (both formal and informal)
and _Ustedes _for plural of you (both formal and informal).

[Tú and Vosotros are never used, and Vos is regional].


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## J.F. de TROYES

Frank06 said:


> In general I think that written, standard language cannot keep up with spoken language: it's too conservative by its very own nature. Furhtermore, I don't think a lot of people (or language academies, if any) are willing to change the standard every 15 years or so .
> Frank


 
I agree. Any linguistic community faces two conflicting requirements : the necessity of having at its disposal a common, hence codified language and the necessity of taking into account the existence of various and continuously changing spoken languages. If it sticks for long to the same standard, it leads to a situation of diglossia. This happened in Greece during th 19th century until the _Katharevousa _( pure Greek ) was ( uneasily ) replaced by the _Dhimotiki _( popular Greek ) , close to the standard spoken language, as standard Greek. On the contrary the only standard Arabic is taught in Arab countries and used in writing , but nobody speaks it except in education , media and official speeches. So only educated people can understand it ant use it under certain circumstances. Of course there are political,cultural and practical reasons why people never adopt the standard language whilst governments use it.



Frank06 said:


> I think that my 3 specific counterexamples indicate that it is very difficult to make generalisations.
> 
> Great question, by the way!
> Frank


 
Education undoubtedly helps to spread the codified language. But its impact on the spoken language depends on various extra-factors as a voluntary policy or the social, economic, religious, cultural prestige of the standard as opposed to other variants. French overcame the "patois" because the standard , originating from the Parisian spoken language(s), was felt as a factor of national unity. The centralist ideology of the French revolution resulted in a linguistic policy aiming at annihilating the "patois" , then full of life, especially in rural areas , but they also disappeared because a lot of people were considering the standard language a key factor for the national unity.
You give counter-examples showing that the spoken language of a community based on a city ( or a region ? ) or a social group holds on against standard Dutch. It would be interesting to wonder the reasons why. Anyhow I suppose educated people, i.e. most of them can use standard Dutch in formal spoken communication.
The difference between more and less educated people is that the first who are proficient in the written language are conscious of the various registers of their language and use the appropriate one to the situation of communication.


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## HUMBERT0

Outsider said:


> I would question that assumption. In abstract, it might seem logical, but in practice less educated societies are typically also:
> 
> - more static, socially
> - formed by smaller populations
> - less influenced by foreign cultures and languages
> - linguistically less innovative
> 
> The educated elites of such societies also tend to be smaller, and gravitate to a limited number of urban or cultural centres, making those elites fairly homogeneous, linguistically.
> 
> These sorts of characteristics would tend to produce greater linguistic homogeneity, or at least they would counteract to some extent the centrifugal effect of the lack of education.


I’ve notice that less educated peoples (in the country side or rural areas) tend to be more conservative and even retain more archaic forms of speech (which in their heyday many of them were the correct form).  Not so much with less educated peoples from the city (slums, barrios, getos,etc.), which develop a new, deformed, non-conservative, non-standard speech.


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