Question 1

What is diglossia?

Accepted Answer

A situation in which a community uses **two distinct varieties of the same language for different purposes**, with a clear division between a formal "high" variety and an everyday "low" one — and crucially, **neither is anyone's casual choice**.

**The defining features**, as set out by Charles Ferguson:

**Functional separation.** The high variety is used for writing, education, religion, broadcasting, formal speech and literature. The low variety is used for conversation, family life and informal settings. **Using the wrong one is socially marked** — the high variety in casual conversation sounds absurd; the low variety in a formal context is inappropriate.

**The high variety is not spoken natively by anyone.** It is acquired through **formal education**, not at home. Everyone learns the low variety first, as their mother tongue.

**Prestige** attaches strongly to the high variety, which is frequently regarded as more correct, more beautiful and more logical — including by speakers whose own everyday speech is the low variety.

**A body of literature** exists in the high variety, frequently including a religious text that anchors its status.

**Standardisation** is far stronger for the high variety, with grammars and dictionaries.

**The classic examples:** the Arabic-speaking world, where **Modern Standard Arabic** functions as the high variety across many countries while distinct regional dialects are spoken at home; Greek before reform, with Katharevousa and Demotic; and Swiss German, where Standard German is written and Swiss German varieties are spoken.

**Why it is more than bilingualism.** In bilingualism the varieties are separate languages and speakers may use either freely. In diglossia the two varieties are **related**, the division of function is rigid, and the speaker has no real choice about which to use in a given setting.

**Extended diglossia** describes the same pattern with unrelated languages — a colonial language for administration alongside local languages at home, a situation that persists widely.

**Why it matters practically:** children are educated in a variety they do not speak at home, which has measurable effects on literacy attainment and is a recognised educational challenge.

Question 2

What does 'voice' mean in writing?

Accepted Answer

The consistent, recognisable quality of a writer's prose — the sum of choices that make one writer's paragraph identifiably theirs. It is frequently discussed mystically and is in fact composed of

Question 3

What is the difference between a first, second and heritage language?

Accepted Answer

How and when a language was acquired, and in what environment — distinctions that matter because they predict very different patterns of ability. First language (L1, native language, mother tongue).

Question 4

What is a creole, and how does one form?

Accepted Answer

A creole is a fully developed natural language that emerged from a pidgin — and the distinction between the two is one of the clearest and most interesting in linguistics. A pidgin arises when groups

Question 5

Why do accents carry prestige, and what is accent bias?

Accepted Answer

Because judgements about accents are judgements about the people who use them, transferred onto the sound — there is nothing in the phonetics of one accent that makes it more correct, clearer or more

Question 6

Why do words change meaning over time?

Accepted Answer

Because meaning is negotiated in use rather than fixed by definition, and the changes follow recognisable patterns — which is why the process looks like decay from inside and like ordinary language

Question 7

What is a tonal language?

Accepted Answer

One in which pitch changes the meaning of a word, not just its emphasis or emotion — the same syllable said with a rising or falling pitch is a different word entirely. How common it is. Far more

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