Standard language

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A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse.[1] Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works.[1] Typically, varieties that become standardized are the local dialects spoken in the centers of commerce and government, where a need arises for a variety that will serve more than local needs. A standard language can be either pluricentric[2] (e.g. English, German, Serbo-Croatian, French, and Portuguese) or monocentric (e.g. Icelandic).[3]

A standard written language is sometimes termed by the German word Schriftsprache.

Contents

Characteristics [edit]

The only requirement for a variety to be standard is that it can frequently be used in public places or public discourse.[1] The creation of a prescriptive standard language derives from a desire for national (cultural, political, and social) cohesion with this considered as requiring an agreed-upon, standardized language variety.[citation needed] Standard languages commonly feature:

List of standard languages and regulators [edit]

Further information: List of language regulators
Language Standard register Regulator Non-standard dialects
Arabic Modern Standard Arabic The Quran; several Arabic language academies spoken Arabic
Afrikaans Standard Afrikaans Die Taalkommissie Afrikaans dialects
Basque Standard Basque Euskaltzaindia Basque dialects
Dutch Standard Dutch Nederlandse Taalunie Dutch dialects
Danish Rigsdansk Dansk Sprognævn Danish dialects
Catalan Standard Catalan, Standard Valencian Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua Catalan dialects
Chinese Standard Chinese National Language Regulating Committee (PRC), National Languages Committee (ROC/Taiwan), Promote Mandarin Council (Singapore) Chinese dialects
Farsi (Persian) Pluricentric Standard Persian (Standard Iranian Persian (based on Tehrani dialect), Standard Dari (Afghan Persian), and Standard Tajik) Academy of Persian Language and Literature Persian dialects
French Pluricentric Standard French (African Standard French, Belgian Standard French, Cambodian Standard French, Canadian Standard French, Lao Standard French, French Standard French, Swiss Standard French, and Vietnamese Standard French (most Standard French dialects, except Belgian, Canadian, and Swiss, are all based on French Standard French)) Académie française, Office québécois de la langue française, Council for the Development of French in Louisiana French dialects
German Pluricentric Standard German (Austrian Standard German, German Standard German and Swiss Standard German) Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung German dialects
Italian Standard Italian Accademia della Crusca, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Società Dante Alighieri Italian dialects
Modern Greek Standard Modern Greek official introduction under Constantine Karamanlis in 1976 Modern Greek dialects
Urdu and Hindi Pluricentric Standard Hindustani (Hindi Standard Hindustani and Urdu Standard Hindustani) Central Hindi Directorate, National Language Authority of Pakistan Hindi dialects
Macedonian Standard Macedonian Institute for Macedonian language "Krste Misirkov" Macedonian dialects
Malay Pluricentric Standard Malay (Bahasa Baku, includes Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia) Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Majlis Bahasa Brunei–Indonesia–Malaysia Malay dialects
Norwegian Nynorsk, Bokmål Språkrådet Norwegian dialects
Polish Standard Polish Polish Language Council Polish dialects
Portuguese Pluricentric Standard Portuguese (Brazilian Standard Portuguese and European Standard Portuguese) Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Classe de Letras, Academia Brasileira de Letras Portuguese dialects
Serbo-Croatian Pluricentric Standard Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian Standard Serbo-Croatian, Croatian Standard Serbo-Croatian, Montenegrin Standard Serbo-Croatian, and Serbian Standard Serbo-Croatian) University of Sarajevo, Zagreb, Podgorica, and Belgrade; Matica hrvatska and Matica srpska South Serbian dialects (Torlakian) and West Croatian dialects (Kajkavian and Čakavian)
Spanish Pluricentric Standard Spanish (American Standard Spanish, Canarian Standard Spanish, and European Standard Spanish Real Academia Española, Association of Spanish Language Academies Spanish dialects
Swahili Standard Swahili based on the Kiunguja dialect (Zanzibar) the Inter-Territorial Language Committee Mombasa dialect, others
Swedish Standard Swedish Swedish Language Council, Svenska språkbyrån Swedish dialects

Examples [edit]

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Arabic [edit]

Arabic comprises many varieties (many mutually unintelligible), that are considered a single language, because the standardized Arabic register, Literary Arabic (misleadingly referred to as, Modern Standard Arabic), is generally intelligible to literate speakers who learned Literary Arabic. It is based upon simplified Classical Arabic, the language of the Quran of the 7th century CE.

Chinese [edit]

The Chinese language (漢語) comprises a wide varieties of spoken forms, which are known as fangyan (方言, “regional speech”). The major spoken variants are (i) Mandarin, (ii) Wu, (iii) Yue, and (iv) Min. These spoken variants are not mutually intelligible, so referring to them by the English term “dialect” is inaccurate, since this generally denotes mutual intelligibility. Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, and is the official language of the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and Republic of Singapore. It is called Putonghua (普通话, “common speech”) in the PRC, Guoyu (國語, “national language”) in Taiwan, and Huayu (华语, “Chinese language”) in Singapore.

The Chinese language also enjoys official status in Hong Kong (together with English) and in Macau (together with Portuguese). However, Standard Chinese is not widely spoken in these territories. The majority of the population speaks, and often writes, Cantonese.

English [edit]

In British English the standard, known as Standard English (SE), is historically based on the language of the medieval English court of Chancery.[5] The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the establishment of this standard as the norm of "polite" society, that is to say of the upper classes.[6] The spoken standard has come to be seen as a mark of good education and social prestige.[7] Although often associated with the RP accent, SE can be spoken with any accent.[8]

The dialects of American English vary throughout the US, but the General American accent is the unofficial standard language for being considered accentless; it is based on Midwestern English, distributed within an isogloss area encompassing the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and to some extent Nebraska.[citation needed]

Finnish [edit]

The basic structure and words of standard Finnish (yleiskieli) are mostly based upon the dialects of Western Finland, because Mikael Agricola, who codified the written language in the sixteenth century, was from Turku, the regional centre of the time. Finnish was developed to integrate all of the nation’s dialects, and so yield a logical language for proper written communication. One aim was national unification, in accordance to the nationalistic principle; the second aim was linguistic regularity and consistency, even if contradicting general colloquial usage, e.g. in Standard Finnish, ruoka becomes ruoan, and the pronunciation is ruuan.

French [edit]

Parisian French is the standard in French literature.

German [edit]

Standard German was developed for several centuries, during which time writers tried to write in a way intelligible to the greatest number of readers and speakers, thus, until about 1800, Standard German was mostly a written language. In that time, northern Germany spoke Low German dialects much different from Standard German. Later, the Northern pronunciation of written German became considered as the universal standard; in Hanover, because of that adoption, the local dialect disappeared.

Greek [edit]

The Standard form of Modern Greek is based on the Southern dialects; these dialects are spoken mainly in the Peloponnese, the Ionian Islands, Attica, Crete and the Cyclades.[9] However the Northerners call this dialect, and the Standard form, 'Atheneika' which means 'the Athens dialect'. This form is also official in Cyprus, where people speak a South-Eastern dialect (dialects spoken in the Dodecanese and Cyprus), Cypriot Greek.

Hindi [edit]

Two standardized registers of the Hindustani language have legal status India: Standard Hindi (one of 23 co-official national languages) and Urdu (Pakistan’s official tongue), resultantly, Hindustani often called “Hindi-Urdu”.[10]

Italian [edit]

Standard Italian derives from the city speech of Florence and the regional speech of Tuscany: the Florentine influence upon early Italian literature (e.g. Divine Comedy) established that dialect as base for the standard language of Italy. Standard Italian used in education, business, and government in Eritrea, Libya, and Somalia is based in dialects of Florence and Tuscany.

Language distribution: The standard languages of Norway by municipality.

Norwegian [edit]

In Norwegian there are two parallel standard languages: (i) Bokmål (partly derived from the local pronunciation of Danish, when Denmark ruled Norway), (ii) Nynorsk (comparatively derived from Norwegian dialects).

Portuguese [edit]

Portuguese has two official written standards, (i) Brazilian Portuguese (used chiefly in Brazil) and (ii) European Portuguese (used in Portugal and Angola, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe). The written standards slightly differ in spelling and vocabulary, and are legally regulated. Unlike the written language, however, there is no spoken-Portuguese official standard, but the European Portuguese reference pronunciation is the educated speech of Lisbon.

In Brazil, actors and journalists usually adopt an unofficial, but de facto, spoken standard Portuguese, originally derived from the middle-class dialect of Rio de Janeiro, but that now comprehends educated urban pronunciations from the different speech communities in the southeast. In that standard, <s> represents the phoneme /s/ when it appears at the end of a syllable (whereas in Rio de Janeiro this represents /ʃ/) the rhotic consonant spelled <r> is pronounced [x] in the same situation (whereas in São Paulo this is usually an alveolar flap or trill). European and African dialects have differing realizations of /ʁ/ than Brazilian dialects, with the former using [ʁ] and [r] and the latter using [x], [h], or [χ].[11] Between vowels, <r> represents /ɾ/ for most dialects.

Serbo-Croatian [edit]

Four standard variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian are spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.[12] They all have the same dialect basis (Štokavian).[10][13] These variants do differ slightly, as is the case with other pluricentric languages.[10][14] The differences between the variants do not hinder mutual intelligibility and do not undermine the integrity of the system as a whole.[15][16][17] Compared to the differences between the variants of English, German, French, Spanish, or Portuguese, the distinctions between the variants of Serbo-Croatian are less significant.[18] Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro in their constitution have all named the language differently.[19]

Spanish [edit]

In Spain, Standard Spanish is based upon the speech of educated speakers from Castile and León. In Argentina and Uruguay the Spanish standard is based on the local dialects of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. This is known as Rioplatense Spanish (“River Plate Spanish”), distinguishable, from other standard Spanish dialects, by the greater use of the voseo. Like Rioplatense Spanish, all Standard Spanish dialects in all Latin America, United States, and Canary Islands are related to Andalusian Spanish.

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b c Finegan, Edward (2007). Language: Its Structure and Use (5th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Thomson Wadsworth. p. 14. ISBN 978-1-4130-3055-6. 
  2. ^ Clyne, Michael G, ed. (1992). Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. Contributions to the sociology of language 62. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-012855-1. 
  3. ^ Daneš, František (1988). "Herausbildung und Reform von Standardsprachen" [Development and Reform of Standard Languages]. In Ammon, Ulrich; Dittmar, Norbert; Mattheier, Klaus J. Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society II. Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 3.2. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 1507. ISBN 3-11-011645-6. OCLC 639109991. 
  4. ^ a b c Vahid, Ranjbar (2008). The standard language of Kurdish. Iran: Naqd-hall. 
  5. ^ Smith 1996
  6. ^ Blake 1996
  7. ^ Baugh and Cable, 2002
  8. ^ Smith, 1996
  9. ^ Horrocks, Geoffrey (1997): Greek: A history of the language and its speakers. London: Longman. Ch.17.
  10. ^ a b c Blum, Daniel (2002). Sprache und Politik : Sprachpolitik und Sprachnationalismus in der Republik Indien und dem sozialistischen Jugoslawien (1945-1991) [Language and Policy: Language Policy and Linguistic Nationalism in the Republic of India and the Socialist Yugoslavia (1945-1991)]. Beiträge zur Südasienforschung ; vol. 192 (in German). Würzburg: Ergon. p. 200. ISBN 3-89913-253-X. OCLC 51961066. 
  11. ^ Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt from Google Books)
  12. ^ Kordić, Snježana (2007). "La langue croate, serbe, bosniaque et monténégrine" [Croatian, Serbian, Bosniakian, and Montenegrin]. In Madelain, Anne. Au sud de l'Est. vol. 3 (in French). Paris: Non Lieu. pp. 71–78. ISBN 978-2-35270-036-4. Archived from the original on 4 August 2012. Retrieved 8 August 2012. 
  13. ^ Brozović, Dalibor (1992). "Serbo-Croatian as a pluricentric language". In Clyne, Michael G. Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. Contributions to the sociology of language 62. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 347–380. OCLC 24668375. 
  14. ^ Kordić, Snježana (2009). "Policentrični standardni jezik" [Polycentric Standard Language]. In Badurina, Lada; Pranjković, Ivo; Silić, Josip. Jezični varijeteti i nacionalni identiteti (in Serbo-Croatian). Zagreb: Disput. pp. 83–108. ISBN 978-953-260-054-4. OCLC 437306433. Archived from the original on 4 August 2012. Retrieved 5 August 2012. 
  15. ^ Pohl, Hans-Dieter (1996). "Serbokroatisch - Rückblick und Ausblick" [Serbo-Croatian – Looking backward and forward]. In Ohnheiser, Ingeborg. Wechselbeziehungen zwischen slawischen Sprachen, Literaturen und Kulturen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart : Akten der Tagung aus Anlaß des 25jährigen Bestehens des Instituts für Slawistik an der Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, 25. - 27. Mai 1995. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Slavica aenipontana ; vol. 4 (in German). Innsbruck: Non Lieu. pp. 214, 219. OCLC 243829127. 
  16. ^ Kordić, Snježana (2004). "Pro und kontra: "Serbokroatisch" heute" [Pro and contra: "Serbo-Croatian" nowadays]. In Krause, Marion; Sappok, Christian. Slavistische Linguistik 2002: Referate des XXVIII. Konstanzer Slavistischen Arbeitstreffens, Bochum 10.-12. September 2002. Slavistishe Beiträge ; vol. 434 (in German). Munich: Otto Sagner. pp. 97–148. ISBN 3-87690-885-X4 Check |isbn= value (help). OCLC 56198470. Archived from the original on 4 August 2012. Retrieved 6 August 2012. 
  17. ^ Kafadar, Enisa (2009). "Bosnisch, Kroatisch, Serbisch – Wie spricht man eigentlich in Bosnien-Herzegowina?" [Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian – How do people really speak in Bosnia-Herzegovina?]. In Henn-Memmesheimer, Beate; Franz, Joachim. Die Ordnung des Standard und die Differenzierung der Diskurse; Teil 1 (in German). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. p. 103. OCLC 699514676. Retrieved 9 August 2012. 
  18. ^ Thomas, Paul-Louis (2003). "Le serbo-croate (bosniaque, croate, monténégrin, serbe): de l’étude d’une langue à l’identité des langues" [Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian): from the study of a language to the identity of languages]. Revue des études slaves (in French) 74 (2-3): 314. ISSN 0080-2557. 
  19. ^ Gröschel, Bernhard (2009). Das Serbokroatische zwischen Linguistik und Politik: mit einer Bibliographie zum postjugoslavischen Sprachenstreit [Serbo-Croatian Between Linguistics and Politics: With a Bibliography of the Post-Yugoslav Language Dispute]. Lincom Studies in Slavic Linguistics ; vol 34 (in German). Munich: Lincom Europa. pp. 344–350. ISBN 978-3-929075-79-3. LCCN 2009473660. OCLC 428012015. OL 15295665W. 

Bibliography [edit]

  • Ammon, Ulrich (1995). Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz: das Problem der nationalen Varietäten [German Language in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: The Problem of National Varieties] (in German). Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 575. OCLC 33981055. 
  • Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. 2002. A History of the English Language, fifth ed. (London: Routledge)
  • Blake, N. F. 1996. A History of the English Language (Basingstoke: Palgrave)
  • Joseph, John E. 1987. Eloquence and Power: The Rise of Language Standards and Standard Languages (London: Frances Pinter; New York: Basil Blackwell)
  • Kloss, Heinz (1976). "Abstandsprachen und Ausbausprachen" [Abstand-languages and Ausbau-languages]. In Göschel, Joachim; Nail, Norbert; van der Els, Gaston. Zur Theorie des Dialekts: Aufsätze aus 100 Jahren Forschung. Zeitschrift fur Dialektologie and Linguistik, Beihefte, n.F., Heft 16. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner. pp. 301–322. OCLC 2598722. 
  • Kordić, Snježana (2010). Jezik i nacionalizam [Language and Nationalism]. Rotulus Universitas (in Serbo-Croatian). Zagreb: Durieux. p. 430. ISBN 978-953-188-311-5. LCCN 2011520778. OCLC 729837512. OL 15270636W. Archived from the original on 8 July 2012. Retrieved 5 August 2012. 
  • Smith, Jeremy. 1996. An Historical Study of English: Function, Form and Change (London: Routledge)
  • Stewart, William A (1968). "A Sociolinguistic Typology for Describing National Multilingualism". In Fishman, Joshua A. Readings in the Sociology of Language. The Hague, Paris: Mouton. pp. 529–545. OCLC 306499. 
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