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63-577: The institute was created in 1946, by transformation of the former Office for the Czech Lexicon ( Kancelář Slovníku jazyka českého ), founded in 1911 by the former Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 1953 it became a part of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and became a public research institution in 2007. In the Czech Republic, the institute is widely accepted as the regulatory body of

126-402: A standard variety , some lect that is selected and promoted prescriptively by either quasi-legal authorities or other social institutions, such as schools or media. Standard varieties are accorded more sociolinguistic prestige than other, nonstandard lects and are generally thought of as "correct" by speakers of the language. Since the selection is an arbitrary standard , standard forms are

189-487: A standard variety . The use of the word variety to refer to the different forms avoids the use of the term language , which many people associate only with the standard language, and the term dialect , which is often associated with non-standard language forms thought of as less prestigious or "proper" than the standard. Linguists speak of both standard and non-standard ( vernacular ) varieties as equally complex, valid, and full-fledged forms of language. Lect avoids

252-512: A Bulgarian dialect. 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. As

315-481: A grammar, syntax, and vocabulary different from the Classical Latin spoken and written by the statesman Cicero . In Brazil, actors and journalists usually adopt an unofficial, but de facto , spoken standard of Brazilian Portuguese , originally derived from the middle-class dialects of Rio de Janeiro and Brasília , but that now encompasses educated urban pronunciations from the different speech communities in

378-510: A language characterized by its own phonological , syntactic , and lexical properties." A variety spoken in a particular region is called a regional dialect (regiolect, geolect ); some regional varieties are called regionalects or topolects, especially to discuss varieties of Chinese . In addition, there are varieties associated with particular ethnic groups (sometimes called ethnolects ), socioeconomic classes (sometimes called sociolects ), or other social or cultural groups. Dialectology

441-547: 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. Standardization may originate from a motivation to make the written form of a language more uniform, as is the case of Standard English . 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

504-412: 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. Different national standards, derived from a continuum of dialects , might be treated as discrete languages (along with heteronomous vernacular dialects) even if there are mutually intelligible varieties among them, such as

567-423: A particular variety being selected (often towards a goal of further linguistic uniformity), accepted by influential people, socially and culturally spread, established in opposition to competitor varieties, maintained, increasingly used in diverse contexts, and assigned a high social status as a result of the variety being linked to the most successful people. As a sociological effect of these processes, most users of

630-440: 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"). 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

693-625: A proposal to initiate preparatory work on the dictionary. To assess the proposal, the Academy set up a Class III Commission, whose efforts culminated in the founding of the oldest academy department – the Office of the Dictionary of the Czech Language – in 1911. The Office immediately began collecting lexical material for a Czech Language Handbook, which was published as individual volumes starting in 1935 until

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756-421: A real entity, but does function as set of linguistic norms observed to varying degrees in the course of usus – of how people actually speak and write the language. In practice, the language varieties identified as standard are neither uniform nor fully stabilized, especially in their spoken forms. From that perspective, the linguist Suzanne Romaine says that standard languages can be conceptually compared to

819-422: 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. These conventions develop from related dialects, usually by social action (ethnic and cultural unification) that elevate discourse patterns associated with perceived centres of culture, or more rarely, by deliberately defining

882-425: A specific community". More recently, sociolinguists have adopted the concept of the community of practice , a group of people who develop shared knowledge and shared norms of interaction, as the social group within which dialects develop and change. Sociolinguists Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet explain: "Some communities of practice may develop more distinctive ways of speaking than others. Thus, it

945-520: 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. However, such beliefs are firmly rooted in social perceptions rather than any objective evaluation. Any varieties that do not carry high social status in a community (and thus may be defined in opposition to standard dialects) are called nonstandard or vernacular dialects. The standardization of

1008-487: Is any language variety that has undergone substantial codification of its grammar , lexicon , writing system , or other features and that stands out among related varieties in a community as the one with the highest status or prestige . Often, it is the prestige language variety of a whole country. In linguistics , the process of a variety becoming organized into a standard, for instance by being widely expounded in grammar books or other reference works, and also

1071-428: Is defined as "the language use typical of an individual person". An individual's idiolect may be affected by contact with various regional or social dialects, professional registers and, in the case of multilinguals , various languages. For scholars who view language from the perspective of linguistic competence , essentially the knowledge of language and grammar that exists in the mind of an individual language user,

1134-550: Is derived from the Tuscan dialect , specifically from its Florentine variety —the Florentine influence upon early Italian literature established that dialect as base for the standard language of Italy. In particular, Italian became the language of culture for all the people of Italy, thanks to the prestige of the masterpieces of Florentine authors like Dante Alighieri , as well as to the political and cultural significance of Florence at

1197-611: Is general social acceptance that gives us a workable arbitrary standard, not any inherent superiority of the characteristics it specifies." Sociolinguists generally recognize the standard variety of a language as one of the dialects of that language. In some cases, an authoritative regulatory body , such as the Académie Française , maintains and codifies the usage norms for a standard variety. More often, though, standards are understood in an implicit, practice-based way. Writing about Standard English, John Algeo suggests that

1260-459: Is the study of dialects and their geographic or social distribution. Traditionally, dialectologists study the variety of language used within a particular speech community , a group of people who share a set of norms or conventions for language use. In order to sidestep the vexing problem of distinguishing dialect from language , some linguists have been using the term communalect – defined as "a neutral term for any speech tradition tied to

1323-477: Is within communities of practice that linguistic influence may spread within and among speech communities." The words dialect and accent are often used synonymously in everyday speech, but linguists define the two terms differently. Accent generally refers to differences in pronunciation , especially those that are associated with geographic or social differences, whereas dialect refers to differences in grammar and vocabulary as well. Many languages have

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1386-507: The Académie Française and the Royal Spanish Academy , which respectively produce Le bon français and El buen español . A standard variety can be conceptualized in two ways: (i) as the sociolect of a given socio-economic stratum or (ii) as the normative codification of a dialect , an idealized abstraction. Hence, the full standardization of a language is impractical, because a standardized dialect cannot fully function as

1449-630: The Hindustani language have legal status in India: Standard Hindi (one of 23 co-official national languages) and Urdu ( Pakistan 's official tongue); as a result, Hindustani is often called "Hindi-Urdu". 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

1512-688: The Language law of Slovakia . A key year in the history of the Czech Language Institute was 1891, when the country’s leading research institution – the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts – was founded. Similarly to analogous institutions around the world, the Academy’s fundamental task was to compile a large explanatory dictionary of the national language. In 1906, František Pastrnek, leading lexicographer František Štěpán Kott and Josef Zubatý submitted

1575-480: The North Germanic languages of Scandinavia (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish). Moreover, in political praxis, either a government or a neighbouring population might deny the cultural status of a standard language. 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,

1638-532: 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 had

1701-400: The imagined communities of nation and nationalism , as described by the political scientist Benedict Anderson , which indicates that linguistic standardization is the result of a society's history and sociology, and thus is not a universal phenomenon; of the approximately 7,000 contemporary spoken languages, most do not have a codified standard dialect. Politically, in the formation of

1764-450: The same dialect basis ( Štokavian ). These variants do differ slightly, as is the case with other pluricentric languages, but not to a degree that would justify considering them as different languages . The differences between the variants do not hinder mutual intelligibility and do not undermine the integrity of the system as a whole. Compared to the differences between the variants of English, German, French, Spanish, or Portuguese,

1827-616: 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 , Scottish , etc.) 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 . Two standardized registers of

1890-403: The "correct" varieties only in the sense that they are tacitly valued by higher socio-economic strata and promoted by public influencers on matters of language use , such as writers, publishers, critics, language teachers, and self-appointed language guardians. As Ralph Harold Fasold puts it, "The standard language may not even be the best possible constellation of linguistic features available. It

1953-559: The 1950s. As of September 2013, the first major revision of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil is available, both online and in print. 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, including allowing further use of the nominative case where the genitive would historically have been found. Standard Italian

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2016-505: The Czech Republic. In 2011 the Czech Language Institute celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Office of the Dictionary of the Czech Language. Up until 2023, the Institute consists of 8 academic departments: Another core activity is publishing of science and popular science periodicals: Standard language A standard language (or standard variety , standard dialect , standardized dialect or simply standard )

2079-494: The Czech language. Its recommendations on standard Czech ( spisovná čeština ) are viewed as binding by the educational system, newspapers and others, although this has no legal basis. The institute's rich publishing activity has two main branches, firstly scientific monographies, magazines ( Naše řeč , Slovo a slovesnost ) and articles, that could be viewed as conversation between bohemists themselves, discussing matters of

2142-415: The Czech language. Secondly, what could be considered output of these discussions, is a consistent set of rules on vocabulary, grammar and orthography. Of the recommendations published most weight carry those, to which the institute itself assigns " codification status": monolingual dictionaries of the Czech language, Slovník spisovného jazyka českého and Slovník spisovné češtiny pro školu a veřejnost , and

2205-543: The Institute: František Daneš, Miloš Dokulil, Karel Horálek and Jan Petr. Following the 1989 Velvet Revolution , Fratišek Daneš once again assumed the directorship. Jiří Kraus succeeded him, serving from 1994 to 2002, Karel Oliva headed the Institute from 2003 to 2016 and since 2016 Martin Prošek has been the director. Since 1992 the Czech Language Institute has been part of the newly transformed Academy of Sciences of

2268-664: The Institute’s Brno office established a dialectology department, along with an etymology department on the initiative of Václav Machek. After the founding of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1952, the Czech Language Institute was incorporated into its structure and became one of its cornerstone departments. Bohuslav Havránek, one of the founders of the Prague Linguistic Circle , served as director until 1965. A number of leading Czech linguists subsequently led

2331-513: The capital of Minas Gerais , Belo Horizonte , is the accent from Brazilian Portuguese that is the nearest to sotaque neutro . European and African dialects have differing realizations of /ʁ/ than Brazilian dialects, with the former using [ʁ] and [r] and the latter using [x] , [h] , or [χ] . Four standard variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian are spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia , Montenegro , and Serbia . They all have

2394-466: The codifications as intrinsically correct. In that vein, a pluricentric language has interacting standard varieties. Examples are English , French , Portuguese , German , Korean , Serbo-Croatian , Spanish , Swedish , Armenian and Mandarin Chinese . Monocentric languages, such as Russian and Japanese , have one standardized idiom. The term standard language occasionally refers also to

2457-422: The completion of the series with the ninth volume in 1957. After World War II the Office was transformed into an institute and its tasks were expanded to include research about Czech dialects, Czech language history and the issue of contemporary standard language. This marked the establishment of the Czech Language Institute in 1946, with the then-Chancellor Alois Získal serving as its first director. In late 1952

2520-686: The course of a communicative event as the relationship between speakers changes, or different social facts become relevant. Speakers may shift styles, as their perception of an event in progress changes. Consider the following telephone call to the Embassy of Cuba in Washington, DC . Caller: ¿Es la embajada de Cuba? ( Is this the Cuban embassy? ) Receptionist: Sí. Dígame. ( Yes, may I help you? ) Caller: Es Rosa. ( It's Rosa. ) Receptionist: ¡Ah Rosa! ¿Cóma anda eso? ( Oh, Rosa! How's it going? ) At first,

2583-507: The distinctions between the variants of Serbo-Croatian are less significant. Nonetheless, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro have all named the language differently in their constitutions. In Somalia , Northern Somali (or North-Central Somali) forms the basis for Standard Somali , particularly the Mudug dialect of the northern Darod clan. Northern Central Somali has frequently been used by famous Somali poets as well as

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2646-523: The east, their Standard Macedonian was based upon vernaculars from the west of the republic, which were the dialects most linguistically different from standard Bulgarian , the previous linguistic norm used in that region of the Balkan peninsula . Although Macedonian functions as the standard language of the Republic of North Macedonia , nonetheless, for political and cultural reasons, Bulgarians treat Macedonian as

2709-478: The entirety of a language that includes a standardized form as one of its varieties. 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. In contemporary linguistic usage,

2772-466: The following sentence as an example of a nonstandard dialect that is used with the technical register of physical geography: There was two eskers what we saw in them U-shaped valleys. Most speakers command a range of registers, which they use in different situations. The choice of register is affected by the setting and topic of speech, as well as the relationship that exists between the speakers. The appropriate form of language may also change during

2835-558: The linguistic authority, as in the case of specialist terminology ; moreover, the standardization of spoken forms is oriented towards the codified standard. Historically, a standard language arises in two ways: (i) in the case of Standard English , linguistic standardization occurs informally and piecemeal, without formal government intervention; (ii) in the cases of the French and Spanish languages, linguistic standardization occurs formally, directed by prescriptive language institutions, such as

2898-412: The linguistic norm of the upper class , composed of the peerage and the gentry . 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 . In England and Wales, Standard English is usually associated with Received Pronunciation , "the standard accent of English as spoken in

2961-425: The norms of standard language with selected linguistic features drawn from the existing dialects, as in the case of Modern Hebrew . Either course of events typically results in a relatively fixed orthography codified in grammars and normative dictionaries , in which users can also sometimes find illustrative examples drawn from literary, legal, or religious texts. Whether grammars and dictionaries are created by

3024-502: The official languages of Singapore (as Huáyǔ "Chinese language"). Standard Chinese now dominates public life, and is much more widely studied than any other variety of Chinese . In the United Kingdom, the standard language is British English , which is based upon the language of the medieval court of Chancery of England and Wales. In the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Standard English became established as

3087-625: 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 Oslo (Christiania) and other major cities, several orthographic reforms, notably in 1907 and 1917, resulted in the official standard Riksmål , in 1929 renamed Bokmål ('book tongue'). The philologist Ivar Aasen (1813–1896) considered urban and upper-class Dano-Norwegian too similar to Danish, so he developed Landsmål ('country tongue'),

3150-438: The orthography manual Pravidla českého pravopisu . The recommendations published in new editions of these are usually subsequently accepted by a ministry of education to be used in schools. The publication of new editions has often been a source of heated debate and national controversy, as recently as 1993. There have been unsuccessful attempts to enshrine the position of the Czech language and its minders in legislation, akin to

3213-507: The political elite, and thus has the most prestige among other Somali dialects. The Unicode Common Locale Data Repository uses 001 as the region subtag for a standardized form such as ar-001 for Modern Standard Arabic . Variety (linguistics) In sociolinguistics , a variety , also known as a lect or an isolect , is a specific form of a language or language cluster . This may include languages , dialects , registers , styles , or other forms of language, as well as

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3276-425: The problem in ambiguous cases of deciding whether two varieties are distinct languages or dialects of a single language. Variation at the level of the lexicon , such as slang and argot , is often considered in relation to particular styles or levels of formality (also called registers ), but such uses are sometimes discussed as varieties as well. O'Grady et al. define dialect : "A regional or social variety of

3339-422: The process of making people's language usage conform to that standard, is called standardization . Typically, the varieties that undergo standardization are those associated with centres of commerce and government, used frequently by educated people and in news broadcasting , and taught widely in schools and to non-native learners of the language. Within a language community, standardization usually begins with

3402-418: The receptionist uses a relatively formal register, as befits her professional role. After the caller identifies herself, the receptionist recognizes that she is speaking to a friend, and she shifts to an informal register of colloquial Cuban Spanish . The shift is similar to metaphorical code-switching , but since it involves styles or registers, it is considered an example of style-shifting. An idiolect

3465-549: The southeast. This artificial accent is called sotaque neutro . 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/ ) and the rhotic consonant spelled ⟨r⟩ is pronounced [h] in the same situation (whereas in São Paulo this is usually an alveolar flap or trill ). The sociolect of prestige of mineiro spoken in

3528-561: The standard based upon the dialects of western Norway. In 1885 the Storting (parliament) declared both forms official and equal. In 1929 it was officially renamed Nynorsk (New Norwegian). Likewise, in Yugoslavia (1945–1992), when the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (1963–1991) developed their national language from the dialect continuum demarcated by Serbia to the north and Bulgaria to

3591-415: The standard usually functions as a normalizing reference for speech and writing. In educational contexts, it usually informs the version of the language taught to non-native learners. In those ways, the standard variety acquires social prestige and greater functional importance than nonstandard dialects , which depend upon or are heteronomous with respect to the standard idiom. Standard usage serves as

3654-566: The standard variety "is simply what English speakers agree to regard as good". A register (sometimes called a style ) is a variety of language used in a particular social setting. Settings may be defined in terms of greater or lesser formality, or in terms of socially recognized events, such as baby talk , which is used in many western cultures to talk to small children or as a joking register used in teasing or playing The Dozens . There are also registers associated with particular professions or interest groups; jargon refers specifically to

3717-435: The state or by private citizens (e.g. Webster's Dictionary ), some users regard such linguistic codifications as authoritative for correcting the spoken and written forms of the language. Effects of such codifications include slowing the pace of diachronic change in the standardized variety and affording a basis for further linguistic development ( Ausbau ). In the practices of broadcasting and of official communications,

3780-432: 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". The term standard language identifies

3843-525: The time and the fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. It would later become the official language of all the Italian states , and after the Italian unification it became the national language of the Kingdom of Italy . Modern Standard Italian 's lexicon has been deeply influenced by almost all regional languages of Italy . The standard language in

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3906-489: The vocabulary associated with such registers. Unlike dialects, which are used by particular speech communities and associated with geographical settings or social groupings, registers are associated with particular communicative situations, purposes, or levels of formality, and can constitute divisions within a single regional lect or standardized variety. Dialect and register may thus be thought of as different dimensions of linguistic variation . For example, Trudgill suggests

3969-580: Was based on Mandarin dialects. 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. 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

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