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 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.

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.^{[citation needed]} Standard languages commonly feature:

• A recognized dictionary (standardized spelling and vocabulary)
• A recognized grammar
• A standard pronunciation (educated speech)
• A linguistic institution defining usage norms, e.g. Académie française, or Real Academia Española
• Constitutional (legal) status (frequently as an official language)
• Effective public use (court, legislature, schools)
• A literary canon
• Convenience speaking^[4]
• Popularity and acceptance in the community^[4]
• Population^[4]

List of standard languages and regulators

Examples

Arabic

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

The Chinese language (漢語) comprises a wide variety 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

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]}

Filipino

Filipino is the standardised form of the Manila dialect of Tagalog, and is an official language of the Philippines. Most regions of the Philippines have a different Philippine language as their first language, but all Filipinos learn Tagalog in school. Tagalog is thus used as the lingua franca. National television is almost exclusively in Tagalog. National printed media is sometimes in Tagalog but more often in English.

Finnish

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

Parisian French is the standard in French literature.

German

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

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

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]

Irish

An Caighdeán Oifigiúil ("The Official Standard"), often shortened to An Caighdeán, is official standard of the Irish language. It is taught in most schools in Ireland, though with strong influences from local dialects. It was first published by the translators in Dáil Éireann in the 1950s.^[11] As of September 2013,^[12] the first major revision of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil is available, both online^[13] and in print.^[14] Among the changes to be found in the revised version are, for example, various attempts to bring the recommendations of the Caighdeán closer to the spoken dialect of Gaeltacht speakers,^[15] including allowing further use of the nominative case where the genitive would historically have been found.^[16]

Italian

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.

Latin

Classical Latin was the literary standard dialect of Latin, this is spoken by higher socioeconomic classes, as opposed to the Vulgar Latin which is the generic term of the colloquial sociolects of Latin spoken across the Roman Empire by uneducated and less-educated classes. The Latin brought by Roman soldiers to Gaul, Iberia, or Dacia was not identical to the Latin of Cicero, and differed from it in vocabulary, syntax, and grammar.^[17] Some literary works with low-register language from the Classical Latin period give a glimpse into the world of early Vulgar Latin. The works of Plautus and Terence, being comedies with many characters who were slaves, preserve some early basilectal Latin features, as does the recorded speech of the freedmen in the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius Arbiter. At the third Council of Tours in 813, priests were ordered to preach in the vernacular language — either in the rustica lingua romanica (Vulgar Latin), or in the Germanic vernaculars — since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin. Catholic Church continued to use Latin at present, and the name of the form of Latin is named Ecclesiastical Latin which is regarded a modernized standard dialect of Latin based on simplified Classical Latin with some lexical variations, a simplified syntax in some cases, and, commonly, an Italianized pronunciation.

Language distribution: The official form of written Norwegian by municipality in Norway. Red: Bokmål. Blue: New Norwegian. Grey: Neutral (neither form is official, usually because of a fairly even number of users or lack of political decisions over the matter).

Norwegian

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

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].^[18] Between vowels, <r> represents /ɾ/ for most dialects.

Serbo-Croatian

Four standard variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian are spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.^[19] They all have the same dialect basis (Štokavian).^[10][20] These variants do differ slightly, as is the case with other pluricentric languages.^[10][21] The differences between the variants do not hinder mutual intelligibility and do not undermine the integrity of the system as a whole.^[22][23][24] 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.^[25] Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro in their constitution have all named the language differently.^[26]

Somali

In Somalia, Southern Somali (or South-Central Somali) forms the basis for Standard Somali,^[27] particularly the Mudug dialect of the northern Darod clan. Southern Central Somali has frequently been used by famous Somali poets as well as the political elite, and thus has the most prestige among other Somali dialects.^[28]

Spanish

In Spain, Standard Spanish is based partly upon the speech of educated speakers from Madrid, but mainly upon the literary language. 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. In Colombia, the dialect of Bogotá ("Rolo") is valued across Latin America for its clear pronunciation.^[29]

See also

• Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache
• Classical language
• Dialect continuum
• Koiné language
• Language secessionism
• Literary language
• Mutual intelligibility
• National language
• Nonstandard dialect
• Official language
• Orthography
• Pluricentric language

References

Bibliography