Standard language
A standard language (or standard variety, standard dialect, standardized dialect or simply standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of its grammar, lexicon, writing system, or other features.[1][2] Typically, the varieties that undergo standardization are those associated with centers of commerce and government.[3] By processes that linguistic anthropologists call "referential displacement"[4] and that sociolinguists call "elaboration of function",[5][clarification needed] these varieties acquire high social prestige. As a sociological effect of these processes, most users of a standard dialect—and many users of other dialects of the same language—come to believe that the standard is inherently superior to, or consider it the linguistic baseline against which to judge, the other dialects.[6]
The standardization of a language is a continual process, because language is always changing and a language-in-use cannot be permanently standardized like the parts of a machine.[7] Typically, standardization processes include efforts to stabilize the spelling of the prestige dialect, to codify usages and particular (denotative) meanings through formal grammars and dictionaries, and to encourage public acceptance of the codifications as intrinsically correct.[8][9] In that vein, a pluricentric language has interacting standard varieties.[10][11][12] Examples are English, French, Catalan, and Portuguese, German, Korean, and Serbo-Croatian, Spanish and Swedish, Armenian and Mandarin Chinese.[13][14] Monocentric languages, such as Russian and Japanese, have one standardized idiom.[15]
The term standard language occasionally also refers to the entirety of a language that includes a standardized form as one of its varieties.[16][17] In Europe, a standardized written language is sometimes identified with the German word Schriftsprache (written language). The term literary language is occasionally used as a synonym for standard language, a naming convention still prevalent in the linguistic traditions of eastern Europe.[18][19] In contemporary linguistic usage, the terms standard dialect and standard variety are neutral synonyms for the term standard language, usages which indicate that the standard language is one of many dialects and varieties of a language, rather than the totality of the language, whilst minimizing the negative implication of social subordination that the standard is the only form worthy of the label "language".[20][21]
Linguistic standardization
The term standard language identifies a repertoire of broadly recognizable conventions in spoken and written communications used in a society; the term implies neither a socially ideal idiom nor a culturally superior form of speech.[22] These conventions develop from related dialects, usually by social action (ethnic and cultural unification) that elevate discourse patterns associated with perceived centers of culture, or more rarely, by deliberately defining the norms of standard language with selected linguistic features drawn from the existing dialects, as in the case of Modern Hebrew.[23][24]
Either course of events typically results in a relatively fixed orthography codified in
In those ways, the standard variety acquires
A standard variety can be conceptualized in two ways: (i) as the
Politically, in the formation of a nation-state, identifying and cultivating a standard variety can serve efforts to establish a shared culture among the social and economic groups who compose the new nation-state. In response to such political interference, linguists develop a standard variety from elements of the different dialects used by a society.
For example, when Norway became independent from Denmark in 1814, the only written language was Danish. Different Norwegian dialects were spoken in rural districts and provincial cities, but people with higher education and upper-class urban people spoke "Danish with a Norwegian pronunciation". Based upon the bourgeois speech of the capital
Likewise, in
Examples
Chinese
Chinese consists of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible, usually classified into seven to ten major groups, including Mandarin, Wu, Yue, Hakka and Min. Before the 20th century, most Chinese spoke only their local variety. For two millennia, formal writing had been done in Classical Chinese, a style modelled on the classics and far removed from any contemporary speech.[40] As a practical measure, officials of the late imperial dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as Guānhuà (literally "speech of officials").[41]
In the early 20th century, many Chinese intellectuals argued that the country needed a standardized language. By the 1920s, Literary Chinese had been replaced as the written standard by written vernacular Chinese, which was based on Mandarin dialects.[42] In the 1930s, Standard Chinese was adopted, with its pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect, but with vocabulary also drawn from other Mandarin varieties and its syntax based on the written vernacular.[43] It is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China (where it is called Pǔtōnghuà "common speech"), the de facto official language of the Republic of China governing Taiwan (as Guóyǔ "national language") and one of the official languages of Singapore (as Huáyǔ "Chinese language").[44] Standard Chinese now dominates public life, and is much more widely studied than any other variety of Chinese.[45]
English in the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the standard language is British English, which is based upon the language of the mediaeval court of Chancery of England and Wales.[46] In the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Standard English became established as the linguistic norm of the upper class, composed of the peerage and the gentry.[47] Socially, the accent of the spoken version of the standard language then indicated that the speaker was a man or a woman possessed of a good education, and thus of high social prestige.[48] In England and Wales, Standard English is usually associated with Received Pronunciation, "the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England.", but it may also be spoken with other accents, and in other countries still other accents are used (Australian, Canadian, American, etc.) [49]
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.[50]
Hindi-Urdu
Two standardised
Irish
An Caighdeán Oifigiúil ('The Official Standard'), often shortened to An Caighdeán, is the official standard of the Irish language. It was first published by the translators in Dáil Éireann in the 1950s.[52] As of September 2013,[53] the first major revision of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil is available, both online[54] and in print.[55] 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,[56] including allowing further use of the nominative case where the genitive would historically have been found.[57]
Italian
Standard
Latin
The standard language in the Roman Republic (509 BC – 27 BC) and the Roman Empire (27 BC – AD 1453) was Classical Latin, the literary dialect spoken by upper classes of Roman society, whilst Vulgar Latin was the sociolect (colloquial language) spoken by the educated and uneducated peoples of the middle and the lower social classes of Roman society. The Latin language that Roman armies introduced to Gaul, Hispania, and Dacia was of a different grammar, syntax, and vocabulary than the Classical Latin spoken and written by the statesman Cicero.[62]
Portuguese
In Brazil, actors and journalists usually adopt an unofficial, but de facto, spoken standard
Serbo-Croatian
Four standard variants of the
Somali
In Somalia, Northern Somali (or North-Central Somali) forms the basis for Standard Somali,[74] particularly the Mudug dialect of the northern Darod clan. Northern 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.[75]
Encoding
The Unicode Common Locale Data Repository uses 001
as the region subtag for a standardized form such as ar-001
for Modern Standard Arabic.[76]
See also
- Classical language
- Koiné language
- Language secessionism
- Literary language
- National language
- Nonstandard dialect
- Official language
- Vernacular
References
- ^ Richards & Schmidt (2010), p. 554.
- ^ Finegan (2007), p. 14.
- ^ Auer (2011), pp. 492–493.
- ^ Silverstein (1996).
- ^ Milroy & Milroy (2012), p. 22.
- ^ Davila (2016).
- ^ Williams (1983).
- ^ Carter (1999).
- ^ Bex (2008).
- ^ Stewart (1968), p. 534.
- ^ Kloss (1967), p. 31.
- ^ Clyne (1992), p. 1.
- ^ Clyne (1992), pp. 1–3.
- ^ a b Kordić (2007).
- ^ Clyne (1992), p. 3.
- ^ Сулейменова (2006), pp. 53–55.
- ^ Kapović (2011), pp. 46–48.
- ^ Dunaj (1989), p. 134.
- ^ Соціологія.
- ^ Starčević (2016), p. 69.
- ^ Vogl (2012), p. 15.
- ^ Charity Hudley & Mallinson (2011).
- ^ McArthur & McArthur (1992), p. 980.
- ^ a b c Ammon (2004), p. 275.
- ^ Ammon (2004), p. 276.
- ^ a b c Trudgill (2006), p. 119.
- ^ Chambers & Trudgill (1998), p. 9.
- ^ McArthur & McArthur (1992), p. 290.
- ^ Van Mol (2003), p. 11.
- ^ Starčević (2016), p. 71.
- ^ a b c d Romaine (2008), p. 685.
- ^ Milroy (2007).
- ^ Inoue (2006), p. 122.
- ^ Trudgill (2004).
- ^ Stewart (1968).
- ^ Chambers & Trudgill (1998), p. 11.
- ^ Chambers & Trudgill (1998), pp. 3–4.
- ^ Inoue (2006), pp. 123–124.
- ^ Trudgill (1992), pp. 173–174.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 108–109, 245.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 133, 136.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 133–134.
- ^ Norman (1988), p. 135.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 136–137.
- ^ Norman (1988), p. 247.
- ^ Smith (1996).
- ^ Blake (1996).
- ^ Baugh & Cable (2002).
- ^ Pearsall (1999), p. xiv.
- ^ Horrocks (1997).
- ^ a b c Blum (2002).
- ^ BBC (2005).
- ^ Ní Shúilleabháin (2012).
- ^ Eachach (2012).
- ^ Foilseacháin Rialtais (2012), p. 2: "M67B Gramadach na Gaeilge 9781406425766 390 10.00."
- ^ Eachach (2012), p. 2: "Rinneadh iarracht ar leith san athbhreithniú seo foirmeacha agus leaganacha atá ar fáil go tréan sa chaint sna mórchanúintí a áireamh sa Chaighdeán Oifigiúil Athbhreithnithe sa tslí is go mbraithfeadh an gnáthchainteoir mórchanúna go bhfuil na príomhghnéithe den chanúint sin aitheanta sa Chaighdeán Oifigiúil agus, mar sin, gur gaire don ghnáthchaint an Caighdeán Oifigiúil anois ná mar a bhíodh."
- ^ Eachach (2012), p. 7: "Triaileadh, mar shampla, aitheantas a thabhairt don leathnú atá ag teacht ar úsáid fhoirm an ainmnigh in ionad an ghinidigh sa chaint."
- ^ Maiden (2014), p. 3.
- ^ Coletti (2011), p. 318, quote="L'italiano di oggi ha ancora in gran parte la stessa grammatica e usa ancora lo stesso lessico del fiorentino letterario del Trecento."
- ^ Lepschy & Lepschy (1988), p. 22.
- ^ Maiden (2014), pp. 7–9.
- ^ Palmer (1988).
- ^ Mateus & d'Andrade (2000), pp. 5–6, 11.
- ^ Šipka (2019), pp. 166, 206.
- ^ Brozović (1992), pp. 347–380.
- ^ Kristophson (2000), pp. 178–186.
- ^ Kordić (2009).
- ^ Pohl (1996), p. 214, 219.
- ^ Kordić (2004).
- ^ Kafadar (2009), p. 103.
- ^ Thomas (2003), p. 314.
- ^ Methadžović (2015).
- ^ Gröschel (2009), p. 344–350.
- ^ Dalby (1998), p. 571.
- ^ Saeed (1999), p. 5.
- ^ Davis, Mark (25 October 2023). "Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML)". unicode.org. Retrieved 13 December 2023.
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- Starčević, Anđel (2016). "Govorimo hrvatski ili 'hrvatski': standardni dijalekt i jezične ideologije u institucionalnom diskursu". Suvremena Lingvistika (in Serbo-Croatian). 81. University of Zagreb: 67–103.
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- 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): 311–325. ZDB-ID 208723-6.
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- Trudgill, Peter (2004). "Glocalisation and the Ausbau sociolinguistics of modern Europe". In Anna Duszak, Urszula Okulska (ed.). Speaking from the margin: global English from a European perspective. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. pp. 35–49. ISBN 9783631526637.
- Trudgill, Peter (2006). "Standard and Dialect Vocabulary". In Brown, Keith (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 12 (2nd ed.). Elsevier. pp. 119–121. ISBN 978-0-08-044299-0.
- Van Mol, Mark (2003). Variation in Modern Standard Arabic in Radio News Broadcasts: A Synchronic Descriptive Investigation into the Use of Complementary Particles. Peeters Publishers. ISBN 9789042911581.
- Vogl, Ulrike (2012). "Multilingualism in a Standard Language Culture". In Hüning; Vogl, Ulrike; Moliner, Olivier (eds.). Standard Languages and Multilingualism in European History. Multilingualism and diversity management. Vol. 1. John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 9789027200556.
- Williams, Raymond (1983). "Standards". Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society' (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 296–299.
Further reading
- 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. OCLC 33981055.
- Joseph, John E. (1987). Eloquence and Power: The Rise of Language Standards and Standard Languages. New York: Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-55786-001-9.
- Kloss, Heinz (1976). "Abstandsprachen und Ausbausprachen" [Abstand-languages and Ausbau-languages]. In Göschel, Joachim; Nail, Norbert; van der Elst, Gaston (eds.). Zur Theorie des Dialekts: Aufsätze aus 100 Jahren Forschung. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, Beihefte, n.F., Heft 16. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner. pp. 301–322. OCLC 2598722.
External links
- Media related to Standard languages at Wikimedia Commons