diglossia

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a sociolinguistic situation in which two varieties of the same language, or two distinct languages, are used by a community in complementary contexts — one variety regarded as high or formal and reserved for writing, education, and official speech, the other considered low or vernacular and used in everyday informal conversation; the term was systematised by Charles Ferguson in 1959, with Arabic providing the classic example in the contrast between Classical Arabic and regional colloquial dialects