Standard language

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 written language is sometimes termed by the German word Schriftsprache.

Contents

Characteristics

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. Standard languages commonly feature:

List of standard languages and regulators

Language Standard register Regulator Non-standard dialects
Arabic Standard Arabic the Qur'an, several Arabic Academies Arabic dialects
Afrikaans Standard Afrikaans Die Taalkommissie Afrikaans dialects
Dutch Standard Dutch Dutch Language Union Dutch 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
English Standard English none English dialects
French Standard French Académie française, Office québécois de la langue française, Council for the Development of French in Louisiana French dialects
German Standard German, Swiss Standard German, Austrian German Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung German dialects
Modern Greek Standard Modern Greek official introduction under Constantine Karamanlis in 1976 Modern Greek dialects
Hindustani Standard Hindi, Urdu Central Hindi Directorate, National Language Authority of Pakistan Hindi dialects
Macedonian Standard Macedonian Institute for Macedonian language "Krste Misirkov" Macedonian dialects
Malay 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 Norwegian Language Council Norwegian dialects
Portuguese Standard Portuguese Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Classe de Letras, Academia Brasileira de Letras Portuguese dialects
Swedish Standard Swedish Swedish Language Council, Svenska språkbyrån Swedish dialects
Spanish Standard Spanish Real Academia Española, Association of Spanish Language Academies Spanish dialects

Examples

Arabic comprises many varieties (many mutually unintelligible ), that are considered a single language, because the standard Arabic register, Modern Standard Arabic, is generally intelligible to all speakers. It is based upon modified Classical Arabic, the language of the Qur'an, the contemporary refined vernacular of Muhammad’s time, the 7th century CE.

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) Cantonese, and (iv) Min. These spoken variants are not mutually intelligible, thus why the English linguistic usage “dialect” is inaccurate, given it also 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.

In British English, the standard, known as Standard English (SE) is historically based on the language of the medieval English court of Chancery.[2] 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.[3] The spoken standard has come to be seen as a mark of good education and social prestige.[4] Although often associated with the RP accent, SE can be spoken with any accent.[5]

The dialects of American English vary throughout the US, but the General American accent the unofficial standard language for being 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.

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.

Parisian French is the standard in French literature.

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.

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”.

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.

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 has two official written standards, (i) Brazilian Portuguese (used chiefly in Brazil) and (ii) European Portuguese (used in Portugal and Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, 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 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].[6] Between vowels, <r> represents /ɾ/ for most dialects.

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 Spanishes, by the greater use of the voseo.

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.[7] 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.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Finegan, Edward (2007). Language: Its Structure and Use (5th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Thomson Wadsworth. p. 14. ISBN 9781413030556. 
  2. ^ Smith 1996
  3. ^ Blake 1996
  4. ^ Baugh and Cable, 2002
  5. ^ Smith, 1996
  6. ^ Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X (Excerpt from Google Books)
  7. ^ Horrocks, Geoffrey (1997): Greek: A history of the language and its speakers. London: Longman. Ch.17.

Bibliography

  • 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)
  • Smith, Jeremy. 1996. An Historical Study of English: Function, Form and Change (London: Routledge)