18 Jamaican Creole Proverbs from the Perspective of Contact Linguistics on two or more languages to communicate with each other” (Crystal [1997] 2003: 164). Many loanwords enter a language via code switching. In countries like Jamaica, where there are officially two languages (standard British English and Jamaican Creole) and apart from these a whole spectrum of different lects, Jamaican language users switch across the continuum. Some politicians in Jamaica in their official public speeches switch from the standard English that is demanded of them in such situations to the mesolectal or even basilectal forms. Crystal ([1997] 2003: 57) presents an example of a leaflet issued by Hongkong Bank for Filipino workers in Hong Kong. The leaflet was partially written in English and partially in Tagalog (the Philippine language). The extract from the leaflet was as follows: Mag-deposito ng pera mula sa ibang HonkkongBank account, at any Hongkongbank ATM, using your Cash Card. Mag-transfer ng regular amount bawa’t buwan (by Standing Instruction) galang sa inyong Current o Savings Account, whether the account is with Hongkong Bank or not. (Crystal [1997] 2003: 57) The language in which the text was written is Taglish (a compound of Tagalog and English). There are also other examples of mixed varieties where English constitutes one of the two ‘ingredients,’ e.g. Franglais, Tex-Mex (a Spanish hybrid in South Texas), Chinglish, Japlish, Singlish, Spanglish, Denglish and Angleutsch (for further discussion, see Crystal [1997] 2003). C o d e A l t e r n a t i o n – in this type of contact-induced change “[…] bilinguals use their two languages in different sets of environment. A typical case is the use of one language at work and the other language at home” (Bisang 2006: 90). In bilingual speech communities, speakers are regularly engaged in code switching. The two phenomena seem similar, however, the probable difference, as there is too little evidence, between code switching and code alternation is that “[…] borrowing through code alternation focuses on structural rather than lexical interference, whereas lexical borrowing is the most prominent direct result of code-switching” (Thomason 2003: 697, cf. Huttar 2008: 444). Thomason provides an example of a native speaker of Italian who spent 12 years in the United States speaking English only with Americans and Italian only with Italians. The use of the two languages in the different sets of environments constituted the discussed code alternation. After returning to Italy she was told she was “speaking Italian decently for an American” (1997: 196) Her phonology was influenced by English in terms of intonation patterns, alveolar stops, and so on. Moreover, noticeable changes
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