Definitions
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- adjective linguistics of or relating to
diglossia
Etymologies
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Examples
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Arabic is characterized by a so-called "diglossic" situation, in which the formal, uniform written language (Modern Standard Arabic) differs considerably from the various spoken dialects.
The Cranky Professor 2008
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My view is that English will become increasingly diglossic, as time goes by - that is, where two variants of the same language are used within a society as we see in Arabic, for example, with Classical and Colloquial variants co-existing.
On languages uniting people DC 2006
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Many speakers are happily diglossic - they speak standard to their college or work friends but instantly switch to their local variety when they pick up the phone to speak to their parents.
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It's going to be less useful in multi-lingual, very diglossic or post-colonial societies where the power of the colonial language has hindered the development of local languages it should be noted that all three of these apply to most of India.
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Especially for languages that don't have a writing system (or a very recent one), are diglossic (different writing systems for different class/political/genre purposes), don't use a roman alphabet, and on.
Ask MetaFilter dave99 2010
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