[2] Research of multiethnolects has thus far focused primarily on urban areas in northwestern Europe, such as Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Great Britain, but the phenomenon is far more universal than that.
The reasons for the emergence of European multiethnolects at this point in history is presumably linked to specific types of community formation in urban areas which have seen very large-scale immigration from developing countries.
Castells (2000) writes of prosperous metropolises containing communities such as these: ‘It is this distinctive feature of being globally connected and locally disconnected, physically and socially, that makes mega-cities a new urban form’.
[9] In the attempts of young women to celebrate their ethnic and linguistic backgrounds in the face of sexist cultural norms, the sociological elements of multiethnolect formation once again reveal their importance.
Kebabnorsk (from Kebab, a popular Middle Eastern dish) is one of the most famous examples of a multiethnolect, spoken in urban regions of Oslo with a large immigrant population.
The dialect began to develop in the 1970s when immigrants from Turkey, Morocco, and Pakistan started moving to Oslo, followed in the 1980s by refugees from countries including Iran, Chile, Sri Lanka, and Yugoslavia.