Sprechbund

A Sprechbund (/ˈsprɛkbʊnd/; German: [ˈʃpʁɛçbʊnt], "speech bond") is a "shared [way] of speaking which [goes] beyond language boundaries" (Romaine, 1994:23). Thus people speaking different languages can share certain linguistic characteristics.

This is a particularly useful concept for describing, for example,

languages. Their combined use in different languages allows a kind of universal "language of hip-hop".

The sprechbund is to be contrasted with the sprachbund, which refers to "relatedness at the level of linguistic form" (Romaine 1994:23). A sprachbund (Norwegian språkknippe) is a group of languages that have become structurally similar in some way because of geographical proximity. As the names suggest, sprechbund is about speech, and how language is produced; sprachbund is about the underlying structure of language.

References

• Romaine, Suzanne. 1994. Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.