Many scholars have studied different cases of diglossia, from centuries ago until the contemporaneity. We have focused on three of the most significant cases, listed and studied by Ferguson.
Arabic Diglossia
Arabic Diglossia
Concerning the Arabic diglossia situation, Ferguson contrasted the uses of Classical Arabic and Colloquial Arabic, noting the Classical as the “high” variety and the Colloquial as the “low” variety.
Classical Arabic is the language of the Koran, the holy book of Islam, and has served as the chief vehicle and instrument of this religion.
The relationship between Arabic and Islam is reflected in the attitudes and beliefs of Muslims in lands as remote as Soviet Russia, Communist China, Burma, Afghanistan, and West Africa, and as well as among the Arabs in particular. The intimate relationship between the language and the religion, and the place of Arabic in Islam, has been described by a great number of scholars. Classical Arabic (or Fusha Arabic) has been the instrument by which the Arab Islamic culture has been spread, recorded and preserved. Fusha Arabic is the variety that is taught in schools, used in sermons, meetings, conferences, documents, paperwork in government agencies, and all other formal purposes throughout the Arab World. It is the written variety of Arabic.The term Colloquial Arabic describes the native varieties of the Arab masses – from the illiterate to the affluent. It is the language of communication at home, in the market, daily life matters, and all informal situations throughout the Arab World. The majority of Arabs perceive Colloquial Arabic to be not only inferior to Fusha Arabic, but also as a distortion of this highly praised variety. It has been described in the literature as 'associated with ignorance and vulgarity' (Abdel- Malek 1972:132), as 'the tongue of drunkards and servants…archaic, confused, having no rules of grammar...a mixture…a distortion of Fusha Arabic' (Mubarak 1970: 41-44). However, In spite of the negative attitudes towards Colloquial Arabic, its use is being incorporated in new functions for the Arab World, for example, spoken arts, movies and songs.
Modern Greek Diglossia
The two varieties that compose the diglossic situation in Greece are known as demotic and katharevousa.
Demotic, “the people’s language”, is the ordinary spoken language that developed naturally from the koine (“common language”), which was formed during the Hellenistic and Roman times. The term “demotic” is often used to refer to that particular version of the language that developed as the everyday spoken language for the large urban centers, and was cultivated by literary writers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
However, most writers developed a tradition of writing in a language that represented a compromise between the spoken language of the time and the Greek of the Classical period. This written language came to be known as katharevousa (“purifying language", since it represented an attempt to purge the modern language of words which it had taken from foreign languages and to reinstate much of the lexical and grammatical wealth of the ancient language which had been lost or altered during the previous two millennia). The basis of the katharevousa movement in the nineteenth century was a feeling among Greek intellectuals, educated in western Europe, that the Ancient Greek language was an instrument of such supreme perfection that any deviation from it was a cause for regret and shame.
Whether they strongly argued in favor of a complete return to Ancient Greek or for some compromise between the ancient and modern languages, many of them believed that through an imitation of the language of the ancients, the universally admired culture of the Classical Hellas would spontaneously flower again. In the end, the majority of Modern Greeks seemed to be resistant to learning katharevousa, or even failed to learn their Ancient language.
Haitian Creole and French
Creole and Caribbean colonization
Caribbean Creoles emerged mainly in the context of European colonization around the seventeenth century when millions of Africans were captured and transported to the Americas to work as slaves on Caribbean plantations. France, Spain, Britain, Portugal and the Netherlands are the most important European nations that were involved in the colonial expansion and in the slave trade. The languages of these nations became ideologically dominant on the Caribbean islands (English in Jamaica, French in Haiti, Martinique or Guadeloupe…) but the overwhelming majority of these populations continue to speak a Creole variety based lexically on the language of the former colony.
The creole languages are identified by their lexicon, i.e. vocabulary, words, which is heavily of European origin: Haitian Creole (HC) is based lexically on French, but the syntax, the system of rules of Creole languages is much different from the lexifier languages, i.e. the language that furnished to the Creole the majority of its words.
Haiti
Haitian Creole is a member of the group of French-based creoles because an important part of its lexicon derives or comes directly from French and it is the native language of all Haitians born and raised in Haiti. Haitian Creole is along with French the official language of the Republic of Haiti (since 1987).
Historically, it is difficult to say precisely when HC appeared. What is known is that in 1697, the French language, whose presence on the island has been established since 1629, officially occupied the western part - known as St.Domingue - of the island of Hispaniola that used to be a Spanish possession. From that date, the conditions were well in place for the emergence of a French-based Creole: the French took charge of the operations of the slave trade and the needs to communicate between slaves and masters gave rise to a new language. According to some historians, there was, around 1728, a population of approximately 50.000 slaves and a little less of French colonists, but between 1740 and 1791 the number of Africans who were working as slaves on the plantations of St. Domingue was estimated at nearly half-million. Those who were born in Africa were known as “bosal” (brute, not refined, unsophisticated), and those who were born in St. Domingue were called “kreyòl” (creoles). Haitian Creole emerged in the context of St. Domingue’s plantation societies, when the enslaved Africans, mostly speakers of Niger-Congo languages, were exposed to the non-standard and non-homogeneous French varieties spoken by the colonists and attempted to acquire these varieties. Today, HC is, like any other language, a rule-governed full linguistic system used daily by seven and a half million people in Haiti and more than a million in the diaspora. It is not French, although lexically it is strongly related to French. Structurally, HC is an autonomous system that has a life of its own and does not rely on the French language for its normal processes of creation.
Basically, HC (L) is used in informal occasions and non-written records, while French (H) occupies the other records.
Discussion
It is observed nowadays that this division is not so restrict. This concept of diglossia in Haiti is being revised because approximately 90% of the population are monolingual Creole speakers while only a fringe minority of the population being actually diglossic (or possibly even bilingual). Although the general tendency is to turn to French in formal situations and to Creole (which appears in different varieties according to the social class of the speaker) in more informal situations, there are many usages that cannot be ignored which conjure up a more complex representation showing clearly that diglossia is not typical for everyone, both because there are speakers who are actually monolingual, although their numbers are decreasing in Martinique and Guadeloupe, and because there are people who are likely to use either Creole or French in the same situation and who are therefore moving towards true bilingualism.
Demotic, “the people’s language”, is the ordinary spoken language that developed naturally from the koine (“common language”), which was formed during the Hellenistic and Roman times. The term “demotic” is often used to refer to that particular version of the language that developed as the everyday spoken language for the large urban centers, and was cultivated by literary writers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
However, most writers developed a tradition of writing in a language that represented a compromise between the spoken language of the time and the Greek of the Classical period. This written language came to be known as katharevousa (“purifying language", since it represented an attempt to purge the modern language of words which it had taken from foreign languages and to reinstate much of the lexical and grammatical wealth of the ancient language which had been lost or altered during the previous two millennia). The basis of the katharevousa movement in the nineteenth century was a feeling among Greek intellectuals, educated in western Europe, that the Ancient Greek language was an instrument of such supreme perfection that any deviation from it was a cause for regret and shame.
Whether they strongly argued in favor of a complete return to Ancient Greek or for some compromise between the ancient and modern languages, many of them believed that through an imitation of the language of the ancients, the universally admired culture of the Classical Hellas would spontaneously flower again. In the end, the majority of Modern Greeks seemed to be resistant to learning katharevousa, or even failed to learn their Ancient language.
Haitian Creole and French
Creole and Caribbean colonization
Caribbean Creoles emerged mainly in the context of European colonization around the seventeenth century when millions of Africans were captured and transported to the Americas to work as slaves on Caribbean plantations. France, Spain, Britain, Portugal and the Netherlands are the most important European nations that were involved in the colonial expansion and in the slave trade. The languages of these nations became ideologically dominant on the Caribbean islands (English in Jamaica, French in Haiti, Martinique or Guadeloupe…) but the overwhelming majority of these populations continue to speak a Creole variety based lexically on the language of the former colony.The creole languages are identified by their lexicon, i.e. vocabulary, words, which is heavily of European origin: Haitian Creole (HC) is based lexically on French, but the syntax, the system of rules of Creole languages is much different from the lexifier languages, i.e. the language that furnished to the Creole the majority of its words.
Haiti
Haitian Creole is a member of the group of French-based creoles because an important part of its lexicon derives or comes directly from French and it is the native language of all Haitians born and raised in Haiti. Haitian Creole is along with French the official language of the Republic of Haiti (since 1987).
Historically, it is difficult to say precisely when HC appeared. What is known is that in 1697, the French language, whose presence on the island has been established since 1629, officially occupied the western part - known as St.Domingue - of the island of Hispaniola that used to be a Spanish possession. From that date, the conditions were well in place for the emergence of a French-based Creole: the French took charge of the operations of the slave trade and the needs to communicate between slaves and masters gave rise to a new language. According to some historians, there was, around 1728, a population of approximately 50.000 slaves and a little less of French colonists, but between 1740 and 1791 the number of Africans who were working as slaves on the plantations of St. Domingue was estimated at nearly half-million. Those who were born in Africa were known as “bosal” (brute, not refined, unsophisticated), and those who were born in St. Domingue were called “kreyòl” (creoles). Haitian Creole emerged in the context of St. Domingue’s plantation societies, when the enslaved Africans, mostly speakers of Niger-Congo languages, were exposed to the non-standard and non-homogeneous French varieties spoken by the colonists and attempted to acquire these varieties. Today, HC is, like any other language, a rule-governed full linguistic system used daily by seven and a half million people in Haiti and more than a million in the diaspora. It is not French, although lexically it is strongly related to French. Structurally, HC is an autonomous system that has a life of its own and does not rely on the French language for its normal processes of creation.
Basically, HC (L) is used in informal occasions and non-written records, while French (H) occupies the other records.
Discussion
It is observed nowadays that this division is not so restrict. This concept of diglossia in Haiti is being revised because approximately 90% of the population are monolingual Creole speakers while only a fringe minority of the population being actually diglossic (or possibly even bilingual). Although the general tendency is to turn to French in formal situations and to Creole (which appears in different varieties according to the social class of the speaker) in more informal situations, there are many usages that cannot be ignored which conjure up a more complex representation showing clearly that diglossia is not typical for everyone, both because there are speakers who are actually monolingual, although their numbers are decreasing in Martinique and Guadeloupe, and because there are people who are likely to use either Creole or French in the same situation and who are therefore moving towards true bilingualism.