A standard language (also standard dialect , standardized dialect , or standardised dialect ) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. As it is usually the form promoted in schools and the media, it is usually considered by speakers of the language to be more "correct" in some sense than other dialects.
Usually, but not always, based on the tongue of a capital city, a standard language is defined by the selection of certain regional and class markers, and the rejection of others. This is the version of a language that is typically taught to learners of the language as a foreign language, and most texts written in that language follow its spelling and grammar norms.
A standard written language is sometimes termed by the German word Schriftsprache .
Features
The creation of a prescriptive standard language, derives from the national (cultural, political, social) cohesion requiring an agreed, standardized tongue. Generally, standard languages usually are established upon:
- 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, the Royal Spanish Academy
- Constitutional (legal) status
- Effective public use (court, legislature, schools)
- A literary canon
Standard languages
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.
Spoken Chinese (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語) comprises many fangyan (Chinese: 方言; “regional speech”), or varieties, the primary spoken variants are (i) Mandarin, (ii) Wu, (iii) Cantonese, and (iv) Min. These language varieties are not mutually intelligible, thus why the English linguistic usage “dialect” is inaccurate, given it also denotes mutual intelligibility. Among the varieties, Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (ROC), and the Republic of Singapore. This standard language Chinese is named Putonghua ( 普通话 , “common speech”) in the PRC, Guoyu ( 國語 , “national language”) in the ROC, and Huayu ( 华语 , “Chinese language”) in Singapore. Standard Mandarin pronunciation derives from the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese, and the grammar and syntax are based upon modern vernacular Chinese.
In British English, the standard Received Pronunciation is based on the language of the London-area upper class, based upon the sociolect instilled in the British public school. 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, and the Omaha, Nebraska, accent is the approximate mean.
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 Low German became considered as the universal standard; in Hanover, because of that adoption, the local dialect disappeared.
Two standardized dialects of the Hindustani language have legal status India: 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 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 and and the latter using , , or . 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.
List of standard languages and regulators
Further information: List of language regulatorsSee also
- Official language
- National language
- Literary language
- Classical language
- Ausbausprache
- Dialect continuum
- Pluricentric language
- Orthography
- Koiné language
References
- ^ Mateus, Maria Helena &
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