An interesting article by John McWhorter about “multiethnolects” that are developing in Europe:
If an adult immigrates to Germany, chances are that his or her German will always be imperfect. A language that, like German, forces you to remember that forks are feminine, spoons are masculine, and knives are neuter seems designed to resist anyone speaking it well if they learn it after adolescence. On the other hand, that immigrant’s children, growing up amid native German-speakers, will likely be able to speak perfect German. But they might also speak something else.
Quite commonly, in Germany a young person whose parents are Arabic- or Turkish-speaking immigrants will also speak a kind of German that sounds peculiar coming from someone who grew up speaking the language. In Standard German, “Tomorrow I’m going to the movies” is Morgen gehe ich ins Kino— “tomorrow go I in the movies.”
However, inner-city immigrants’ kids will often say among themselves Morgen ich geh Kino—“tomorrow I go movies”—almost as if they were English-speakers, quietly ironing out that kink in Standard German that forces you to say “tomorrow go I” instead of “tomorrow I go,” and just saying “movies” instead of “to the movies.” The result is something called Kiezdeutsch, which is the same whether the speaker’s parents communicate in Turkish, Arabic, Somali, or another language—the new dialect has gelled into something of its own.
The English equivalent is, I believe, Multicultural London English (MLE), which has been the subject of various articles, such as this one at The Economist:
Linguists are most excited by what MLE is doing to the rhythm of speech. English is usually spoken with a stress-timed rhythm, in which syllables are stressed at regular intervals. Speakers of MLE speak with a syllable-timed rhythm, in which all syllables are accorded roughly the same time and stress, as in French or Japanese. Syllable-timed speech is a characteristic of languages that have come into contact with other languages. Versions of it may have existed in multicultural places such as Hackney for centuries, thinks Mr Kerswill.
How Immigration Changes Language
Published
Kimchi and Justice 