Pluricentric language

A pluricentric language or polycentric language is a language with several codified standard forms, often corresponding to different countries.^[1][2][3][4] Many examples of such languages can be found worldwide among the most-spoken languages, including but not limited to Chinese in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore; English in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, India, and elsewhere; and French in France, Canada, and elsewhere.^[5] The converse case is a monocentric language, which has only one formally standardized version. Examples include Japanese and Russian.^[6] In some cases, the different standards of a pluricentric language may be

Examples of varying degrees of pluricentrism

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Arabic

varieties of Arabic include:

• Peninsular Arabic
  • Hejazi Arabic (urban cities of western Saudi Arabia)
  • Najdi Arabic (much of central Saudi Arabia)
  • Omani Arabic
  • Gulf Arabic (spoken around the coasts of the Persian Gulf in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, as well as parts of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Oman)
  • Yemeni Arabic
• Levantine Arabic (spoken in the Levant region)
  • Syrian Arabic
  • Jordanian Arabic
  • Lebanese Arabic
  • Palestinian Arabic,
• Maghrebi Arabic (spoken in the Maghreb region)
  • Algerian Arabic
  • Libyan Arabic
  • Moroccan Arabic
  • Tunisian Arabic,
• Mesopotamian Arabic
  • Baghdad Arabic
    ,
• Egyptian Arabic,
• Sudanese Arabic, and many others.

In addition, many speakers use Modern Standard Arabic in education and formal settings. Therefore, in Arabic-speaking communities, diglossia is frequent.

Armenian

The Armenian language is a pluricentric language with two standard varieties, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, which have developed as separate literary languages since the eighteenth century.^[9] Prior to this, almost all Armenian literature was written in Classical Armenian, which is now solely used as a liturgical language. Eastern and Western Armenian can also refer to the two major dialectal blocks into which the various non-standard dialects of Armenian are categorized. Eastern Armenian is the official language of the Republic of Armenia. It is also spoken, with dialectal variations, by Iranian Armenians, Armenians in Karabakh (see Karabakh dialect), and in the Armenian diaspora, especially in the former Soviet Union (Russia, Georgia, Ukraine). Western Armenian is spoken mainly in the Armenian diaspora, especially in the Middle East, France, the US, and Canada.

Additionally, Armenian is written in two standard orthographies: classical and reformed Armenian orthography. The former is used by practically all speakers of Western Armenian and by Armenians in Iran, while the latter, which was developed in Soviet Armenia in the 20th century, is used in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Catalan

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In the modern era, Catalan is a pluricentric language with differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. This language is internationally known as Catalan, as in Ethnologue. This is also the most commonly used name in Catalonia, but also in Andorra and the Balearic Islands, probably due to the prestige of the Central Catalan dialect spoken in and around Barcelona. However, in the Valencian Community, the official name of this language is Valencian. One reason for this is political (see Serbo-Croatian for a similar situation), but this variant does have its own literary tradition that dates back to the Reconquista.

Although mutually intelligible with other varieties of Catalan, Valencian has lexical peculiarities and its own spelling rules, which are set out by the

is the language regulator for these varieties.

Chinese

Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people spoke only their local varieties of Chinese. These varieties had diverged widely from the written form used by scholars,

. As a practical measure, officials of the , known as Guānhuà (官話, literally "speech of officials"), known as Mandarin in English after the officials. Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined.[10]

In the early years of the 20th century, Literary Chinese was replaced as the written standard by written vernacular Chinese, which was based on northern dialects. In the 1930s, a standard national language Guóyǔ (國語, literally "national language") was adopted, with its pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect, but with vocabulary also drawn from other northern varieties.^[11] After the establishment of the

, under the name Huáyǔ (华语/華語, literally "Chinese language").

Although the three standards remain close, they have diverged to some extent. Most Mandarin speakers in Taiwan and Singapore came from the southeast coast of China, where the local dialects lack the retroflex initials /tʂ tʂʰ ʂ/ found in northern dialects, so that many speakers in those places do not distinguish them from the apical sibilants /ts tsʰ s/. Similarly, retroflex codas (erhua) are typically avoided in Taiwan and Singapore. There are also differences in vocabulary, with Taiwanese Mandarin absorbing loanwords from Min Chinese, Hakka Chinese, and Japanese, and Singaporean Mandarin borrowing words from English, Malay, and southern varieties of Chinese.^[12][13]

Eastern South Slavic (Bulgarian–Macedonian–Torlakian (Gorani)–Paulician (Banat))

Some linguists and scholars, mostly from Bulgaria and Greece, but some also from other countries,^[14][15] consider Eastern South Slavic to be a pluricentric language with four standards: Bulgarian (based on the Rup, Balkan and Moesian ("Eastern Bulgarian") dialects), Macedonian (based on the Western and Central Macedonian dialects), Gorani (based on the Torlakian dialects), and Paulician (including Banat Bulgarian).^[16] Politicians and nationalists from Bulgaria are likely to refer to this entire grouping as 'Bulgarian', and to be particularly hostile to the notion that Macedonian is an autonomous language separate from Bulgarian, which Macedonian politicians and citizens tend to claim.^[16] As of 2021, the hypothesis that Eastern South Slavic, 'Greater Bulgarian', 'Bulgaro-Macedonian', or simply 'Bulgarian', is a pluricentric language with several mutually intelligible official standards in the same way that Serbo-Croatian is, and Czechoslovak used to be,^{[clarification needed]} has not yet been fully developed in linguistics; it is a popular idea in Bulgarian politics, but an unpopular one in North Macedonia.^[16]

English

English is a pluricentric language,

are almost completely mutually intelligible, but non-standard forms present significant dialectal variations, and are marked by reduced intelligibility.

British and American English are the two most commonly taught varieties in the education systems where English is taught as a second language. British English tends to predominate in Europe and the former British colonies of the West Indies, Africa, and Asia, where English is not the first language of the majority of the population. (The Falkland Islands, a British territory off the southeast coast of South America with English as its native language, have their own dialect, while British English is the standard.) In contrast, American English tends to dominate instruction in Latin America, Liberia, and East Asia^[19][20] (In Latin America, British English is taught in schools with British curriculum in countries with descendants of British settlers.)

Due to globalization and the resulting spread of the language in recent decades, English is becoming increasingly decentralized, with daily use and statewide study of the language in schools growing in most regions of the world. However, in the global context, the number of native speakers of English is much smaller than the number of non-native speakers of English of reasonable competence. In 2018, it was estimated that for every native speaker of English, there are six non-native speakers of reasonable competence,^[21] raising the questions of English as a lingua franca as the most widely spoken form of the language.

to make them more closely resemble the accents of their client countries.

Countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have their own well-established varieties of English which are the standard within those countries but are far more rarely taught overseas to second language learners.^[22] (Standard English in Australia and New Zealand is related to British English in its common pronunciation and vocabulary; a similar relationship exists between Canadian English and American English.)

English was historically pluricentric when it was used across the independent kingdoms of England and Scotland prior to the Acts of Union in 1707. English English and Scottish English are now subsections of British English.

French

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In the modern era, there are several major loci of the French language, including Standard French (also known as Parisian French), Canadian French (including Quebec French and Acadian French), American French (for instance, Louisiana French), Haitian French, and African French.

Until the early 20th century, the French language was highly variable in pronunciation and vocabulary within France, with varying dialects and degrees of intelligibility, the

.

North American French is the result of

has some distinctions not found in Canada in that there is more vocabulary derived from both local Native American and African dialects and a pronunciation of the letter r that has disappeared in France entirely. It is rolled, and with heavier contact with the English language than any of the above the pronunciation has shifted to harder sounding consonants in the 20th century. Cajun French equally has been an oral language for generations and it is only recently that its syntax and features been adapted to French orthography.

Minor standards can also be found in

or ring road. Also, in Belgium and Switzerland, there are noted differences in the number system when compared to standard Parisian or Canadian French, notably in the use of septante, octante/huitante and nonante for the numbers 70, 80 and 90. In other standards of French, these numbers are usually denoted soixante-dix (sixty-ten), quatre-vingts (four-twenties) and quatre-vingt-dix (four-twenties-and-ten). French varieties spoken in in its vocabulary and grammatical structure. African French is another variety.

German

(OSGA) as active in the field.

Hindustani

The

spoken in India.

Malay–Indonesian

The

) and grammar.

Malayalam

.

Persian

The

varieties, respectively.

The

The language spoken by

.

Portuguese

Apart from the

A

Spelling reforms of Portuguese

for additional details. Formal written standards remain grammatically close to each other, despite some minor syntactic differences.

Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian is a pluricentric language^[30] with four standards (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian) promoted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia.^{[31][32][33][34][35][36]} These standards do differ slightly, but do not hinder mutual intelligibility.^{[37][38][39][40][41][42]} Rather, as all four standardised varieties are based on the prestige Shtokavian dialect, major differences in intelligibility are identified not on the basis of standardised varieties, but rather dialects, like Kajkavian and Chakavian.^[34] "Lexical differences between the ethnic variants are extremely limited, even when compared with those between closely related Slavic languages (such as standard Czech and Slovak, Bulgarian and Macedonian), and grammatical differences are even less pronounced. More importantly, complete understanding between the ethnic variants of the standard language makes translation and second language teaching impossible."^[36]

Spanish

Spanish has both national and regional linguistic norms, which vary in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, but all varieties are mutually intelligible and the same orthographic rules are shared throughout.^[43]

In Spain, Standard Spanish is based upon the speech of educated speakers from Madrid.^[44] All varieties spoken in the Iberian Peninsula are grouped as Peninsular Spanish. Canarian Spanish (spoken in the Canary Islands), along with Spanish spoken in the Americas (including Spanish spoken in the United States, Central American Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Andean Spanish, and Caribbean Spanish), are particularly related to Andalusian Spanish.

The United States is now the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico in total number of speakers (L1 and L2 speakers). A report said there are 41 million L1 Spanish speakers and another 11.6 million L2 speakers in the U.S. This puts the US ahead of Colombia (48 million) and Spain (46 million) and second only to Mexico (121 million).^[45]

The Spanish of Latin Americans has a growing influence on the language across the globe through music, culture and television produced using the language of the largely bilingual speech community of US Latinos.^[46][47][48]

In

]

Swedish

Two varieties exist,^[

]; in addition, the two tones that are characteristic of Swedish (and Norwegian) are absent from most Finnish dialects of Swedish, which have an intonation reminiscent of Finnish and thus sound more monotonous when compared to Rikssvenska.

There are dialects that could be considered different languages due to long periods of isolation and geographical separation from the central dialects of Svealand and Götaland that came to constitute the base for the standard Rikssvenska. Dialects such as

. Some of them have a standardized orthography, but the Swedish government has not granted any of them official recognition as regional languages and continues to look upon them as dialects of Swedish. Most of them are severely endangered and spoken by elderly people in the countryside.

Tamil

The vast majority of Tamil speakers reside in southern India, where it is the official language of Tamil Nadu and of Puducherry, and one of 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India. It is also one of two official languages in Sri Lanka, one of four official languages in Singapore, and is used as the medium of instruction in government-aided Tamil primary schools in Malaysia. Other parts of the world have Tamil-speaking populations, but are not loci of planned development.^[50]

Tamil is

, with the literary variant used in books, poetry, speeches and news broadcasts while the spoken variant is used in everyday speech, online messaging and movies. While there are significant differences in the standard spoken forms of the different countries, the literary register is mostly uniform, with some differences in semantics that are not perceived by native speakers. There has been no attempt to compile a dictionary of Sri Lankan Tamil.^[51]

As a result of the

, Indian Tamil tends to avoid loanwords to a greater extent than Sri Lankan Tamil. Coinages of new technical terms also differ between the two.^[52] Tamil policy in Singapore and Malaysia tends to follow that of Tamil Nadu regarding linguistic purism and technical coinages.^[53]

There are some spelling differences, particularly in the greater use of Grantha letters to write loanwords and foreign names in Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia. The Tamil Nadu script reform of 1978 has been accepted in Singapore and Malaysia, but not Sri Lanka.^[54]

Others

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• Standard Irish (Gaeilge), Scottish Gaelic and possibly Manx can be viewed as three standards arisen through divergence from the Classical Gaelic norm via orthographic reforms.
• Komi-Zyrian and Komi-Permyak
  dialects.
• Korean: North and South (to some extent—differences are growing; see North–South differences in the Korean language and Korean dialects)
• Kurdish language has two main literary norms: Kurmanji (Northern Kurdish) and Sorani (Central Kurdish). The Zaza–Gorani languages, spoken by some Kurds, are occasionally considered to be Kurdish as well, despite not being mutually intelligible.^{[citation needed]}
• For most of its history,
  Sephardi, and Temani. When Hebrew was revived as a spoken language, there was a discussion about which pronunciation should be used. Ultimately, the Sephardi pronunciation was chosen even though most of the speakers at the time were of Ashkenazi background, because it was considered more authentic. The standard Israeli pronunciation of today is not Identical to the Sephardi, but is somewhat of a merger with Ashkenazi influences and interpretation. The Ashkenazi pronunciation is still used in Israel by Haredim
  in prayer and by Jewish communities outside of Israel.
• Lao alphabet.^[55]
• Norwegian consists of a multitude of spoken dialects displaying a great deal of variation in pronunciation and (to a somewhat lesser extent) vocabulary, with no officially recognized "standard spoken Norwegian" (but see Urban East Norwegian). All Norwegian dialects are mutually intelligible to a certain extent. There are two written standards: Bokmål, "book language", based on Danish (Danish and Norwegian Bokmål are mutually intelligible languages with significant differences primarily in pronunciation rather than vocabulary or grammar), and Nynorsk, "New Norwegian", based primarily on rural Western and rural inland Norwegian dialects.
• Pashto has three official standard varieties: Central Pashto, which is the most prestigious^{[citation needed]} standard dialect (also used in Kabul), Northern Pashto, and Southern Pashto.
• Romance languages
  • Istriot
    orthographies exist, with varying degrees of territorial specificity.
  • Romanian in Romania and that in Moldova during the Soviet era, but nowadays, Romania and Moldova use the same standard of Romanian.
  • Campidanese
    , as standardized varieties of the same language.
• Pannonian) are either considered to be standardized varieties of the same language
  or separate languages.
• Dutch is considered pluricentric with recognised varieties in Suriname, ABC Islands, Belgium and the Netherlands.
• The
  Tosk
  . Gheg is spoken to the north and Tosk spoken to the south of the Shkumbin river. Standard Albanian is a standardised form of spoken Albanian based on Tosk.
• The Belarusian language features two orthographic standards: official Belarusian, sometimes referred to as Narkamaŭka, and Taraškievica, also known as "classical orthography". The division stems from 1933 reform believed by some to be an attempt to artificially similarize Belarusian and Russian languages. Originally, these standards differed only in written form, but due to Taraškievica being widely used among Belarusian diaspora, it grew some distinct orthoepic features, as well as differences in vocabulary.
• Afrikaans varieties of South Africa and Namibia.

See also

References

Bibliography

• Annamalai, E. (1992). "Chinese as a pluricentric language". In Clyne, Michael G. (ed.). Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 305–324.
  ISBN 978-3-11-012855-0
  .
• Abd-el-Jawad, Hassan R.S. (1992). "Is Arabic a pluricentric language?". In
  ISBN 3-11-012855-1
  .
• 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
  .
• 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.
  OCLC 51961066
  .
• ISBN 3-11-012855-1
  .
• Clyne, Michael G.; & Kipp, Sandra. (1999). Pluricentric languages in an immigrant context: Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  ISBN 3-11-016577-5
  .
• Daneš, František (1988). "Herausbildung und Reform von Standardsprachen" [Development and Reform of Standard Languages]. In Ammon, Ulrich; Dittmar, Norbert; Mattheier, Klaus J (eds.). 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. pp. 1506–1516.
  OCLC 639109991
  .
• Dua, Hans Raj (1992). "Hindi-Urdu as a pluricentric language". In Clyne, Michael G (ed.). Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. Contributions to the sociology of language 62. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 381–400.
  OCLC 24668375
  .
• JSTOR 30029461
  .
• SSRN 3438216. CROSBI 426269. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 August 2012. Retrieved 9 May 2018. (ÖNB)
  .
• COBISS 171014403. Archived
  from the original on 2024-01-10. Retrieved 2024-01-22.
• ISBN 978-3-11-080537-6
  .

Further reading

• Dollinger, Stefan (2019). The Pluricentricity Debate: On Austrian German and other Germanic Standard Varieties. London: Routledge.
  ISBN 978-0-429-63179-5
  .
• Kircher, Ruth (2012). "How pluricentric is the French language? An investigation of attitudes towards Quebec French compared to European French". Journal of French Language Studies. 22 (3): 345–370.
  S2CID 143695569
  .
• Louw, Robertus de (2016). "Is Dutch a pluricentric language with two centres of standardization? An overview of the differences between Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch from a Flemish perspective". Werkwinkel. 11 (1): 113–135.
  doi:10.1515/werk-2016-0006
  .

External links

• Language Attitudes and language conceptions in non-dominating varieties of pluricentric languages by Rudolf Muhr
• International working group on Non-Dominant Varieties of pluricentric languages