the exchange of even basic characteristics of a language such as morphology and grammar. Newar, for example, spoken in Nepal, is a Sino-Tibetan language distantly related to Chinese but has had so many centuries of contact with neighbouring Indo-Iranian languages that it has even developed noun inflection, a trait that is typical of the Indo-European family but rare in Sino-Tibetan. Newar has also absorbed grammatical features like verb tenses. Also, Romanian was influenced by the Slavic languages that were spoken by neighbouring tribes in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire not only in vocabulary but also phonology. English has a few phrases, adapted from French, in which the adjective follows the noun: court-martial, attorney-general, Lake Superior. Direction of influence Linguistic hegemony A language's influence widens as its speakers grow in power. Chinese, Greek, Latin, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Russian, German and English have each seen periods of widespread importance and have had varying degrees of influence on the native languages spoken in the areas over which they have held sway. Especially during and since the 1990s, the internet, along with previous influences such as radio and television, telephone communication and printed materials, has expanded and changed the many ways in which languages can be influenced by each other and by technology. Non-mutual influence Change as a result of contact is often one-sided. Chinese, for instance, has had a profound effect on the development of Japanese, but Chinese remains relatively free of Japanese influence other than some modern terms that were reborrowed after they were coined in Japan and based on Chinese forms and using Chinese characters. In India, Hindi and other native languages have been influenced by English, and loanwords from English are part of everyday vocabulary. Mutual influence In some cases, language contact may lead to mutual exchange, but that may be confined to a particular geographic region. For example, in Switzerland, the local French has been influenced by German and vice versa. In Scotland, Scots has been heavily influenced by English, and many Scots terms have been adopted into the regional English dialect. Outcomes of language contact Language shift The result of the contact of two languages can be the replacement of one by the other. This is most common when one language has a higher social position (prestige). This sometimes leads to language endangerment or extinction. Stratal influence When language shift occurs,