INFLUENCE OF MIGRATION ON WESTERN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
Throughout history, migration into Western Europe has changed the region more than just demographically. As discussed in this paper, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany’s historical interactions with large groups of immigrants have changed the landscape of their languages, even if the linguistic adaptation is only slight. Immigrant-language has fused into the main, everyday conversation in Spain, Italy and France. In fact, Spanish would not sound remotely the same as it does today without the influx of Arab-speaking conquerors of the eighth century, Italian might have less regional variation without the Norman conquests of Sicily and their power in the region as well, French slang would restrict itself to just a finite vocabulary, and although German is yet to fully incorporate foreign words into the language, without submitting to the Turkish influence, Germans might never fully accept the largest minority group in their country.
In Spain, the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Arab-Muslims in the 700s CE and the Arab-Muslim presence in the territory over thousands of years significantly impacted the Standard Modern Spanish spoken and heard today. Without the influence of these people, Spanish would sound like Celtic and Latin and may have never evolved into the second most-spoken language in the world.[1] The Arabic influence is impossible to separate from the Modern Spanish language as everyday words such as the pronoun usted (you) and the preposition hasta (until) only exist because of Arabic. The adaptation of the Arabic a- or al- into a wide array of Spanish nouns alone demonstrates the significant impact of the Arabic language in the region.
​
The Arabic influence on Italy is more pronounced in regional dialects than in the Standard Modern Italian. Still, the presence of Arabic rule pervades Italian dialects in part of the country. Sicilian, Calabrian, and Apulian all demonstrate a rich Arabic history both in their politics and their language. Common words such as cotone, zucchero, and magazzino and in Standard Modern Italian only exist because of the persistent Arabic existence of the eighth through eleventh centuries in Italy. Almost all aspects of daily life such as buying goods at markets would be entirely different as they are now without this influence. Besides the obvious introduction of goods from the Arab world, Sicily’s linguistic landscape would differ greatly without the assimilation of Arabic in their local language. Despite the difficulties in comprehension between dialects in Italian regions, the rich cultural and linguistic history retained through the incorporation of the Arabic language would be much less inclusive and characteristic of the people within each small town. History is important to Italians, and the more their home’s history shows in their lives, the more connected they are to their cultural identity. Just as Spanish cannot be separated from the Arabic influence, in Southern Italy, Arabic sustains the history of their dialect regions.
In both France and Germany, the explosion of immigrants in the past decade has already shown to have a major impact on their culture and language. France’s recent incorporation of foreign loanwords in Verlan imitates the progressively multiethnic landscape of their country. Verlan’s ubiquity in French popular culture shows that the generation which speaks this type of slang is willing to accept the changes occurring in their country. The European Center on Racism and Xenophobia found that “48% of Europeans agreed that immigrants had enriched the cultural life of European Union countries.”[2] France is taking this another step forward by allowing their language to be inclusive of the growing diversity in their country, especially when considering the use of the Arabic word for “country”, balad, in Verlan (bled).
​
On the other hand, Germany struggles with accepting the demographic changes of their country. Although Germany is now home to the second-largest number of immigrants since the Refugee crisis began in 2015, the German language has not yet seen many adaptations. This could be primarily due to the xenophobic attitudes of the German population caused by decades of being unequipped to handle the influx of migrants. Many Germans seem to support the notion of remaining closed off to new cultures for fear of losing their own cultural identity, and this is confirmed in both their language and the upsurge of support for anti-immigrant platforms and populist political parties. However, small changes in the slang of cities where large portions of immigrants live portray a different picture of gradual acceptance and tolerance. Musicians like EBOW and Muhabbet may continue to change the German language in the future, but it is ultimately up to the German natives to accept their diverse counterparts.
By the end of this paper, the experiences of four Western European countries that have historically had distinct contact with immigrants will be discussed to explore the adaptations and changes on language. By analyzing the histories of Spanish and Italian and contrasting them to the linguistic influence of the present-day migration phenomena occurring in France and Germany, this paper aims to explore the hypothesis of whether, just as Spanish and Italian adapted to absorb the language of long-term immigrants from the Arab world hundreds of years ago, French and German could eventually fully incorporate foreign loanwords into their respective languages.
This is a summary. To read the full paper, click here.
[1] Lane, J. (2016, November). The 10 Most Spoken Languages in the World. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world
[2] Voice of America. (2009, October 30). Arab, Muslim Refugees in France Influence Arts and Culture. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from http://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-a-2003-06-17-33-arab/393628.html