Apluricentric language orpolycentric language is a language with several codifiedstandard 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 toChinese in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Singapore;English in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, India, Singapore, and elsewhere; andFrench in France, Canada, many African countries, and elsewhere.[5]
The converse case is a monocentric language, which has only one formally standardized version. Examples includeJapanese andRussian.[6]In some cases, the different standards of a pluricentric language may beelaborated to appear as separate languages, e.g.Malaysian andIndonesian,Hindi andUrdu, whileSerbo-Croatian is in an earlier stage of that process.[6]
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Pre-Islamic Arabic can be considered a polycentric language.[7] InArabic-speaking countries different levels of polycentricity can be detected.[8]Modern Arabic is a pluricentric language with varying branches correlating with different regions where Arabic is spoken and the type of communities speaking it. Thevernacular varieties of Arabic include:
In addition, many speakers useModern Standard Arabic in education and formal settings. Therefore, in Arabic-speaking communities,diglossia is frequent.
TheArmenian language is a pluricentric language with two standard varieties,Eastern Armenian andWestern Armenian, which have developed as separate literary languages since the eighteenth century.[9] Prior to this, almost all Armenian literature was written inClassical Armenian, which is now solely used as aliturgical language.[citation needed]
Eastern and Western Armenian can also refer to the two majordialectal blocks into which the various non-standard dialects of Armenian are categorized. Eastern Armenian is the official language of theRepublic of Armenia. It is also spoken, with dialectal variations, byIranian Armenians, Armenians inKarabakh (seeKarabakh dialect), and in theArmenian diaspora, especially in the former Soviet Union (Russia,Georgia, Ukraine). Western Armenian is spoken mainly in theArmenian diaspora, especially in the Middle East, France, the US, and Canada.[citation needed]
Additionally, Armenian is written in two standard orthographies:classical andreformed Armenian orthography. The former is used by practically all speakers of Western Armenian and by Armenians inIran, while the latter, which was developed inSoviet Armenia in the 20th century, is used in Armenia andNagorno-Karabakh.[citation needed]
In the modern era, Catalan is a pluricentric language with differences primarily in pronunciation and vocabulary. This language is internationally known asCatalan, as inEthnologue. This is also the most commonly used name inCatalonia, but also inAndorra and theBalearic Islands, probably due to the prestige of the Central Catalan dialect spoken in and aroundBarcelona.[citation needed] However, in theValencian Community, the official name of this language isValencian. 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 theReconquista.[citation needed]
Although mutually intelligible with other varieties of Catalan, Valencian has lexical peculiarities and minor differences in its spelling rules, which are set out by theAcadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua since 1998.[10][need quotation to verify] However, this institution recognizes that Catalan and Valencian are varieties of the same language. For their part, there are specific varieties in the two major Balearic islands, Mallorcan (Catalan:mallorquí) inMallorca, Menorcan (menorquí) inMenorca, Ibizan (eivissenc) inIbiza.[citation needed]
Until the mid-20th century, mostChinese people spoke only their localvarieties of Chinese.These varieties had diverged widely from the written form used by scholars,Literary Chinese, which was modelled on the language of theChinese classics. As a practical measure, officials of theMing andQing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using acommon language based on northern varieties, known asGuānhuà (官話, literally "speech of officials"), known asMandarin in English after the officials. Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined.[11]
In the early years of the 20th century, Literary Chinese was replaced as the written standard bywritten vernacular Chinese, which was based onnorthern dialects.In the 1930s, astandard national languageGuóyǔ (國語, literally "national language") was adopted, with its pronunciation based on theBeijing dialect, but with vocabulary also drawn from other northern varieties.[12]After the establishment of thePeople's Republic of China in 1949, the standard was known asPǔtōnghuà (普通话/普通話, literally "common speech"), but was defined in the same way asGuóyǔ in theRepublic of China now governing Taiwan.[11] It also became one of the official languages ofSingapore, under the nameHuáyǔ (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 theapical sibilants /ts tsʰ s/. Similarly, retroflex codas (erhua) are typically avoided in Taiwan and Singapore. There are also differences in vocabulary, withTaiwanese Mandarin absorbing loanwords fromMin Chinese,Hakka Chinese, andJapanese, andSingaporean Mandarin borrowing words from English,Malay, and southern varieties of Chinese.[13][14]
Some linguists and scholars, mostly fromBulgaria andGreece, but some also from other countries,[15][16] considerEastern South Slavic to be a pluricentric language with four standards:Bulgarian (based on theRup,Balkan andMoesian ("Eastern Bulgarian") dialects),Macedonian (based on theWestern and Central Macedonian dialects),Gorani (based on theTorlakian dialects), andPaulician (includingBanat Bulgarian).[17] 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, whichMacedonian politicians and citizens tend to claim.[17] 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 thatSerbo-Croatian is, andCzechoslovak 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.[17]
English is a pluricentric language,[18][19] withdifferences in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, etc., between each of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom, North America, the Caribbean, Ireland, English-speaking African countries, Singapore, India, and Oceania. Educated native English speakers using their version of one of thestandard forms of English are almost completely mutually intelligible, but non-standard forms present significant dialectal variations, and are marked by reduced intelligibility.[citation needed]
British and American English are the two most commonly taught varieties in the education systems where English is taught as asecond language. British English tends to predominate in Europe and the former British colonies of the West Indies, Africa, and Asia, where English is not thefirst language of the majority of the population. (TheFalkland Islands, a British territory off the southeast coast of South America with English as its native language, have theirown dialect, while British English is the standard.) In contrast, American English tends to dominate instruction in Latin America and East Asia.[20][21]
Due to globalisation and the resulting spread of the language in recent decades, English is becoming increasingly decentralised, 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,[22] raising the questions ofEnglish as a lingua franca as the most widely spoken form of the language.Philippine English (which is predominantly spoken as a second language) has been primarily influenced by American English. The rise of thecall center industry in the Philippines has encouraged someFilipinos to"polish" or neutralize their accents to make them more closely resemble the accents of their client countries.[citation needed]
Countries such asAustralia,New Zealand, andCanada 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.[23] (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 ofEngland andScotland prior to theActs of Union in 1707.English English andScottish English are now subsections of British English.[citation needed]
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In the modern era, there are several major loci of the French language, includingStandard French (also known as Parisian French),Canadian French (includingQuebec French andAcadian French),Belgian French,American French (for instance,Louisiana French),Haitian French, andAfrican 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, thelangues d'oïl. However, government policy made it so that the dialect of Paris would be the method of instruction in schools, and other dialects, likeNorman, which has influence fromScandinavian languages, were neglected. Controversy still remains in France over the fact that the government recognizes them as languages of France, but provides no monetary support for them nor has theConstitutional Council of France ratified theCharter for Regional or Minority Languages.[citation needed]
North American French is the result ofFrench colonization of theNew World between the 17th and 18th centuries. In many cases, it contains vocabulary and dialectal quirks not found in Standard Parisian French owing to history: most of the original settlers ofQuebec,Acadia, and later what would becomeLouisiana and northernNew England came from Northern and Northwest France, and would have spoken dialects like Norman,Poitevin, andAngevin with far fewer speaking the dialect of Paris. This, plus isolation from developments in France, most notably the drive for standardization byL'Académie française, make North American dialects of the language quite distinct. Acadian French, spoken inNew Brunswick, Canada, has many words no longer used in modern France, much of it having roots in the 17th century, and a distinct intonation. Québécois, the largest of the dialects, has a distinct pronunciation that is not found in Europe in any measure and a greater difference in vowel pronunciation, and syntax tends to vary greatly.[citation needed]
Cajun French 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.[citation needed]
Minor standards can also be found inBelgium andSwitzerland, with particular influence of Germanic languages on grammar and vocabulary, sometimes through the influence of local dialects. In Belgium, for example, various Germanic influences in spoken French are evident inWallonia (for example, toblink in English, andblinken in German and Dutch,blinquer inWalloon and local French,cligner in standard French).Ring (rocade orpériphérique in standard French) is a common word in the three national languages forbeltway or ring road.[citation needed]
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 ofseptante,octante/huitante andnonante for the numbers 70, 80 and 90. In other standards of French, these numbers are usually denotedsoixante-dix (sixty-ten),quatre-vingts (fourscore) andquatre-vingt-dix (fourscore-and-ten).French varieties spoken inOceania are also influenced by local languages. New Caledonian French is influenced byKanak languages in its vocabulary and grammatical structure.African French is another variety.[citation needed]
Standard German is often considered an asymmetric pluricentric language;[24]the standard used in Germany is often considered dominant, mostly because of the sheer number of its speakers, compared to theAustrian Standard German andSwiss Standard German varieties. Although there is a uniform stage pronunciation based on a manual byTheodor Siebs that is used in theatres, and, nowadays to a lesser extent, in radio and television news all across German-speaking countries, this is not true for the standards applied at public occasions in Austria, South Tyrol and Switzerland, which differ inpronunciation,vocabulary, and sometimes evengrammar. (In Switzerland, the letterß has been removed from the alphabet, withss as its replacement.) The varieties of Standard German used in those regions are to some degree influenced by the respectivedialects (but by no means identical to them), by specific cultural traditions (e.g. in culinary vocabulary, which differs markedly across the German-speaking area of Europe), and by different terminology employed in law and administration. A list of Austrian terms for certain food items has even been incorporated intoEU law, even though it is clearly incomplete.[25] Scholarly scepticism in German dialectology about the pluricentric status of German has led some linguists to detect aOne Standard German Axiom (OSGA) as active in the field.
TheHindi languages are a largedialect continuum defined as a unit culturally. MedievalHindustani (then known asHindavi[26]) was based on a register of theDelhi dialect and has two modern literary forms,Standard Hindi andStandard Urdu. Additionally, there are historical literary standards, such as the closely relatedBraj Bhasha and the more distantAwadhi, as well as recently established standard languages based on what were once considered Hindi dialects:Maithili andDogri. Other varieties, such asRajasthani, are often considered distinct languages but have no standard form.Caribbean Hindi andFijian Hindi also differ significantly from theSanskritized standardHindi spoken in India.[citation needed]
TheMalay language has many local dialects and creolized versions, but it has two main normative varieties which areMalaysian andIndonesian: Indonesian is codified byIndonesia as its ownlingua franca based on the dialect spoken inRiau Islands, whereasMalaysia codifies Malaysian based on the vernacular dialect ofJohor.[27] Thus, both lects have the same dialectal basis, and linguistic sources still tend to treat the standards as different forms of a single language.[28] In popular parlance, however, the two varieties are often thought of[by whom?] as distinct tongues in their own rights due to the growing divergence between them and for political reasons. Nevertheless, they retain a high degree ofmutual intelligibility despite a number of differences in vocabulary (including manyfalse friends) and grammar.[citation needed]
Malayalam is a pluricentric language with historically more than one written form.Malayalam script is officially recognized, but there are other standardized varieties such asArabi Malayalam ofMappila Muslims,Karshoni ofSaint Thomas Christians andJudeo-Malayalam ofCochin Jews.[citation needed]
ThePersian language has three standard varieties with official status inIran (locally known as Farsi),Afghanistan (officially known asDari), andTajikistan (officially known asTajik). The standard forms of the three are based on theTehrani,Kabuli, andDushanbe varieties, respectively.[citation needed]
ThePersian alphabet is used for both Farsi (Iranian) and Dari (Afghan). Traditionally, Tajiki is also written withPerso-Arabic script. In order to increase literacy, aLatin alphabet (based on theCommon Turkic Alphabet) was introduced in 1917. Later in the late 1930s, theTajik Soviet Socialist Republic promoted the use ofCyrillic alphabet, which remains the most widely used system today. Attempts to reintroduce the Perso-Arabic script were made.[29]
The language spoken byBukharan Jews is calledBukhori (or Bukharian), and is written inHebrew alphabet.
Apart from theGalician question,Portuguese varies mainly betweenBrazilian Portuguese andEuropean Portuguese (also known as "Lusitanian Portuguese", "Standard Portuguese" or even "Portuguese Portuguese"). Both varieties have undergone significant and divergent developments in phonology and the grammar of theirpronominal systems. The result is that communication between the two varieties of the language without previous exposure can be occasionally difficult, although speakers of European Portuguese tend to understand Brazilian Portuguese better than vice versa, due to the heavy exposure to music, soap operas etc. fromBrazil. Word ordering can be dramatically different between European and Brazilian Portuguese, without significantly hamperingmutual intelligibility.[30]
Aunified orthography for all the varieties (including a limited number of words with dual spelling) has been approved by the national legislatures of the Portuguese-speaking countries and is now official; seeSpelling reforms of Portuguese for additional details. Formal written standards remain grammatically close to each other, despite some minor syntactic differences.
African Portuguese andAsian Portuguese are based on the standard European dialect, but have undergone their own phonetic and grammatical developments, sometimes reminiscent of the spoken Brazilian variant. A number ofcreoles of Portuguese have developed in African countries, for example inGuinea-Bissau and on the island ofSão Tomé.[30]
Serbo-Croatian is a pluricentric language[31] with four standards (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian) promoted inBosnia and Herzegovina,Croatia,Montenegro, andSerbia.[32][33][34][35][36][37] These standards do differ slightly, but do not hindermutual intelligibility.[38][39][40][41][42][43] Rather, as all four standardised varieties are based on the prestigeShtokavian dialect, major differences in intelligibility are identified not on the basis of standardised varieties, but rather dialects, likeKajkavian andChakavian.[35] "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."[37]
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 sameorthographic rules are shared throughout.[44]
InSpain,Standard Spanish is based upon the speech of educated speakers fromMadrid.[45] All varieties spoken in theIberian Peninsula are grouped asPeninsular Spanish.Canarian Spanish (spoken in theCanary Islands), along withSpanish spoken in the Americas (includingSpanish spoken in the United States,Central American Spanish,Mexican Spanish,Andean Spanish, andCaribbean Spanish), are particularly related toAndalusian Spanish.
The United States is now the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking country afterMexico 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).[46]
The Spanish ofLatin 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.[47][48][49]
InArgentina andUruguay the Spanish standard is based on the local dialects ofBuenos Aires andMontevideo. This is known asRioplatense Spanish, (from Rio de la Plata (River Plate)) and is distinguishable from other standard Spanish dialects byvoseo. InColombia,Rolo (a name for the dialect of Bogotá) is valued for its clear pronunciation.[50] TheJudeo-Spanish (also known asLadino; not to be confused withLatino) spoken bySephardi Jews can be found inIsrael and elsewhere; it is usually considered a separate language.[citation needed]
Two varieties exist,[citation needed] though only one written standard remains (regulated by theSwedish Academy of Sweden):Rikssvenska (literally "Realm Swedish", also less commonly known as "Högsvenska", 'High Swedish' in Finland), the official language of Sweden, andFinlandssvenska which, alongside Finnish, is the other official language of Finland. There are differences in vocabulary and grammar, with the variety used in Finland remaining a little more conservative. The most marked differences are in pronunciation and intonation: Whereas Swedish speakers usually pronounce the so-called "tj-sound" as[ɕ], this phoneme is usually pronounced by a Swedo-Finn as[t͡ʃ]; 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 toRikssvenska.
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 standardRikssvenska. Dialects such asElfdalian,Jamtlandic, andGutnish all differ as much, or more, from standard Swedish than the standard varieties ofDanish. 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.
The vast majority ofTamil speakers reside in southern India, where it is the official language ofTamil Nadu and ofPuducherry, and one of 22 languages listed in theEighth Schedule to the Constitution of India.It is also one of two official languages inSri Lanka, one of four official languages inSingapore, and is used as the medium of instruction in government-aidedTamil primary schools in Malaysia.Other parts of the world have Tamil-speaking populations, but are not loci of planned development.[51]
Tamil isdiglossic, 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.[52]
As a result of thePure Tamil Movement, Indian Tamil tends to avoid loanwords to a greater extent than Sri Lankan Tamil.Coinages of new technical terms also differ between the two.[53]Tamil policy in Singapore and Malaysia tends to follow that of Tamil Nadu regarding linguistic purism and technical coinages.[54]
There are some spelling differences, particularly in the greater use ofGrantha letters to write loanwords and foreign names in Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia.The Tamil Naduscript reform of 1978 has been accepted in Singapore and Malaysia, but not Sri Lanka.[55]
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{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)whatever might be claimed by other centres, such as Valladolid, it was educated varieties of Madrid Spanish that were mostly regularly reflected in the written standard.
