While immigrants often struggle with the language of their adopted country, most children of immigrants learn the language with greater ease, tending to be proficient in both the language of their parents and the local language. But this seems to occur with an interesting twist, with second generation immigrants developing a dialect of their own. Although mainly a spoken dialect, this still holds implications for legal immigration translation and interpreting.
Immigration and Language – How One Changes The Other
The history of immigration and language change, and their mutual effects on one another, runs deep. While there are many points of discussion here, ask yourself this question – what happens when immigrants and their children learn the language of their newly adopted homeland? While adults who immigrate may never learn the local language well, their children, who are born and raised in the new country, most probably will. Of course limited education and other socioeconomic factors can influence how well the second generation immigrants will learn the local language.
The spoken language of immigrants’ children depends to a large extent on where they live and their proximity to other immigrants who originated from the same part of the world. Other factors that determine how the new generation will use language have to do with how the children perceive their position in society and whether or not they are urbanites. Linguists have determined that the effects of immigration and language can be prevelent with immigrants’ children brought up in an urban environment. This particular generation tends to speak a dialect form of the local language. Interestingly, this form of the spoken local language follows its own grammatical rules that make the language easier for the new generation to learn as a second language. This is often referred to as vernacular speech but is actually a dialect.
Immigration and Language | What is Kiezdeutsch?
One example of this is observed among city children of Arab, Somali or Turkish decent in Germany. These children tend to use a different form of spoken German than the official language. For instance, take the word order in the following Standard German phrase “Morgen gehe ich ins Kino” meaning “Tomorrow I’m going to the movies.” In German this phrase directly translates as “Tomorrow go I in the cinema.” But Inner-city immigrants’ children will more commonly say “Morgen ich geh Kino” which translates as “Tomorrow I go cinema”. This is something that has become a new dialect of sorts and is known as Kiezdeutsch. While it may not make grammatical sense to the native German speaker, this simplified version of the standardized language is used among children from several immigrant groups, who’s parents native languages include Turkish, Arabic or Somali. Dialects like Kiezdeutsch are not unique to Germany. Similar dialects have emerged in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands among children of immigrants growing up in urban centers in these countries.
Immigration and Language | Multiethnolects Emerge
Linguists call these new versions of old languages in Europe “multiethnolects,” (meaning that they are not ethnically marked), but the phenomenon is also found outside of Europe. The development of multiethnolects is most prevalent in cities around the world with large immigrant populations. In Senegal, for instance, the Wolof language is somewhat complex in that it uses eight genders for nouns. But non-native Wolof-speakers, especially children of immigrants that live in the cities such as Dakar, have developed a new simplified language which uses only one gender marker. Another example of this is Indonesian, the lingua franca of Indonesia. Indonesian is a language used by speakers of hundreds of other languages as a second language. As a result, the children of these non-native speakers have developed numerous dialects throughout Indonesian-speaking regions. Thus, although the phenomenon is prevalent in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, France and the UK, it is also observed in other parts of the world.
Immigration and Language | Language Evolution & Legal Translation
It is important to note that linguistically multiethnolects are not the same as creole languages which take vocabulary from a colonial language and grammar from their native language. Rather this type of language variation is a result of a streamlining of the language in such a way that the new version is more “user friendly”. Linguists predict that these streamlined varieties will eventually take over more traditionally spoken languages since, to some extent, they allow new generations of language learners to learn with greater ease. Of course all languages change over time so this is not completely unexpected. The biggest issue may be resistance from native speakers who consider these changes to be an incorrect use of the language. Despite this, the trend seen with immigration and language around the world is expected to continue, with the more streamlined versions likely taking over while the number of languages spoken globally will decrease.
These changes will ultimately effect translation and interpreting, as professional translators and interpreters must be aware of any variations in language use, and incorporate them depending on their target audience. In immigration law translation settings, this is important for legal interpreters to be aware of – although for the most part second generation immigrants use the dialect when speaking with each other, with time this may change. Legal interpreters facilitating discussions may need to incorporate the dialect spoken by consequent generations of immigrants in order to communicate effectively. This will avoid potentially causing a misinterpretation – something that often times comes with consequences in the world of immigration law.
So long as people are free to move about the world, the relationship between immigration and language forms and use will continue to be prevalent. Although this has implications for immigration lawyers, and everyday people alike, it is this flexibility to change in particular that makes languages so fascinating.
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