A report on Standard language

Language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes a standardized form as one of its varieties.

- Standard language

37 related topics with Alpha

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The Royal Spanish Academy, Madrid

Linguistic prescription

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Establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language.

Establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language.

The Royal Spanish Academy, Madrid
Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese characters
Ptolemaic hieroglyphics from the Temple of Kom Ombo
Samuel Johnson, c. 1772

Linguistic prescriptivism may aim to establish a standard language, teach what a particular society or sector of a society perceives as a correct or proper form, or advise on effective and stylistically felicitous communication.

The West Germanic languages

English language

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West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England.

West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England.

The West Germanic languages
The opening to the Old English epic poem Beowulf, handwritten in half-uncial script: Hƿæt ƿē Gārde/na ingēar dagum þēod cyninga / þrym ge frunon... "Listen! We of the Spear-Danes from days of yore have heard of the glory of the folk-kings..."
Graphic representation of the Great Vowel Shift, showing how the pronunciation of the long vowels gradually shifted, with the high vowels i: and u: breaking into diphthongs and the lower vowels each shifting their pronunciation up one level
Braj Kachru's Three Circles of English
Countries in which English Language is a Mandatory or an Optional Subject
In the English sentence The cat sat on the mat, the subject is the cat (a noun phrase), the verb is sat, and on the mat is a prepositional phrase (composed of a noun phrase the mat headed by the preposition on). The tree describes the structure of the sentence.
Map showing the main dialect regions in the UK and Ireland
Rhoticity dominates in North American English. The Atlas of North American English found over 50% non-rhoticity, though, in at least one local white speaker in each U.S. metropolitan area designated here by a red dot. Non-rhotic African American Vernacular English pronunciations may be found among African Americans regardless of location.
Countries in which English Language is a Mandatory or an Optional SubjectEnglish is the dominant languageEnglish is a mandatory subjectEnglish is an optional subjectNo data

Through the educational reforms of King Alfred in the 9th century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex, the West Saxon dialect became the standard written variety.

A generative parse tree: the sentence is divided into a noun phrase (subject), and a verb phrase which includes the object. This is in contrast to structural and functional grammar which consider the subject and object as equal constituents.

Grammar

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Its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words.

Its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words.

A generative parse tree: the sentence is divided into a noun phrase (subject), and a verb phrase which includes the object. This is in contrast to structural and functional grammar which consider the subject and object as equal constituents.

This kind of linguistic description contrasts with linguistic prescription, an attempt to actively discourage or suppress some grammatical constructions, while codifying and promoting others, either in an absolute sense or about a standard variety.

Nonstandard dialect

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A nonstandard dialect or vernacular dialect is a dialect or language variety that has not historically benefited from the institutional support or sanction that a standard dialect has.

Samuel Crowther's Yorùbá grammar led to Standard Yoruba becoming a literary language.

Literary language

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Samuel Crowther's Yorùbá grammar led to Standard Yoruba becoming a literary language.

A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language.

Codification (linguistics)

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In linguistics, codification is the process of selecting, developing, and laying down (prescribing) a model for standard language usage.

Standard English

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In an English-speaking country, Standard English (SE) is the variety of English that has undergone substantial regularisation and is associated with formal schooling, language assessment, and official print publications, such as public service announcements and newspapers of record, etc. SE is local to nowhere: its grammatical and lexical components are no longer regionally marked, although many of them originated in different, non-adjacent dialects, and it has very little of the variation found in spoken or earlier written varieties of English.

Traditional Chinese syllable structure

Varieties of Chinese

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Branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible.

Branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible.

Traditional Chinese syllable structure
A school in Guangdong with writing "Please speak Standard Chinese. Please write standard characters" on the wall.

Simultaneously, especially in periods of political unity, there was a tendency to promote a central standard to facilitate communication between people from different regions.

The Codex Zographensis is one of the oldest manuscripts in the Old Bulgarian language, dated from the late 10th or early 11th century

Bulgarian language

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South Slavic language spoken in Southeastern Europe, primarily in Bulgaria.

South Slavic language spoken in Southeastern Europe, primarily in Bulgaria.

The Codex Zographensis is one of the oldest manuscripts in the Old Bulgarian language, dated from the late 10th or early 11th century
Cyrillic
Map of the Bulgarian dialects within Bulgaria
Extent of Bulgarian dialects according to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences shown encompassing the Eastern South Slavic dialects. Subregions are differentiated by pronunciation of man and tooth.
Areas of Eastern South Slavic languages.
Bulgarian cursive alphabet

Following the efforts of some figures of the National awakening of Bulgaria (most notably Neofit Rilski and Ivan Bogorov), there had been many attempts to codify a standard Bulgarian language; however, there was much argument surrounding the choice of norms.

Orthography

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Set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.

Set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.

The rules for doing this tend to become standardized for a given language, leading to the development of an orthography that is generally considered "correct".