ABSTRACT
To what extent can we ever speak, within a European context, of communities or languages which have developed in isolation, without contact with other peoples, cultures and languages? One would have to look to the outer fringes of the continent. Iceland and perhaps Portugal are probably the only European states which are genuinely monoethnic – but their inhabitants are not necessarily monolingual. The usual state of affairs elsewhere in Europe, and in most of the rest of the world, is that over the years and the centuries, communities establish links with one another, whether friendly, commercial or belligerent. The experience gained from such associations can be either positive or negative for those concerned. One constant factor in such contacts, however, is that they always influence in some way the speech behaviour of the people involved – and therefore, eventually, their languages. Sometimes the result is bilingualism, sometimes the languages are affected by borrowing or change. With the passage of time, one community may undergo gradual language shift, replacing bilingualism with monolingualism, as is the case, for instance, in Brittany, where Breton is giving way to French. Or a sudden change in the conditions of life in a community may cause it to adopt a hitherto unused language on a widespread basis, as became common during colonial times in many parts of Africa and Asia.
