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71-455: The Bontnewydd palaeolithic site ( Welsh: [bɔntˈnɛuɨ̯ð] ), also known in its unmutated form as Pontnewydd ( Welsh for 'new bridge'), is an archaeological site near St Asaph , Denbighshire , Wales . It is one of only three sites in Britain to have produced fossils of ancient species of humans (together with Boxgrove and Swanscombe ) and the only one with fossils of

142-489: A dual number , e.g. llaw 'hand', dwylo '(two) hands', though llaw also has the general plural llawau . The dual dwylo comes from combining llaw with the feminine numeral dwy 'two'; dwylo is only used to refer to the hands of a single person, else llawau is used, e.g. dy ddwylo 'your hands', eich dwylo 'your hands', fy nwylo 'my hands', ein dwylo 'our hands', but mae llawau gyda phobol 'people have hands'. Deufis

213-512: 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

284-629: A classic Neanderthal . It is located a few yards east of the River Elwy , near the hamlet of Bontnewydd, near Cefn Meiriadog , Denbighshire. Bontnewydd was excavated from 1978 by a team from the University of Wales , led by Dr. Stephen Aldhouse Green. Teeth and part of a jawbone from a Neanderthal boy approximately eleven years old were dated to 230,000 years ago. Seventeen teeth from at least five individuals were found. The teeth show evidence of taurodontism , enlarged pulp cavities and short roots, which

355-411: A community (and thus may be defined in opposition to standard dialects) are called nonstandard or vernacular dialects. 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. Standardization may originate from a motivation to make the written form of a language more uniform, as

426-416: 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 the process of making people's language usage conform to that standard, is called standardization . Typically,

497-481: 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

568-524: 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 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

639-412: 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

710-440: 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

781-421: 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

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852-422: 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

923-460: A verb. In the inflected future of the verbs mynd, gwneud, dod , and cael , first-person singular constructions like do fi may be heard. I, e , and o are also used as objects with compound prepositions, for example o flaen o 'in front of him'. Fi, fe , and fo are used after conjunctions and non-inflected prepositions, and also as the object of an inflected verb: Fe and fo exclusively are used as subjects with

994-406: Is carreg , but "the stone" is y g arreg (soft mutation), "my stone" is fy ngh arreg (nasal mutation) and "her stone" is ei ch arreg (aspirate mutation). These examples represent usage in the standard language ; there is some regional and idiolectal variation in colloquial usage. In particular, the soft mutation is often used where nasal or aspirate mutation might be expected on

1065-734: Is characteristic of Neanderthals , and although it is not unique to them it is one of the reasons that the species was identified as Neanderthal. In Britain, the wolf Canis lupus was the only canid species present from Marine Isotope Stage 7 (243,000 years before present), with the oldest record from Pontnewydd Cave. The site is also important for its mammoth steppe fauna, such as reindeer and woolly rhinoceros , dating to between around 41,000 and 28,000 years ago. Colloquial Welsh morphology#Initial consonant mutation Modern Welsh can be written, and spoken, in several levels of formality, for example colloquial or literary , as well as different dialects. The grammar described in this article

1136-550: 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

1207-543: Is for Colloquial Welsh, which is used for speech and informal writing. Literary Welsh is closer to the form of Welsh used in William Morgan's 1588 translation of the Bible and can be seen in formal writing. It does not reflect the spoken language presented here. Initial consonant mutation is a phenomenon common to all Insular Celtic languages , although there is no evidence of it in the ancient Continental Celtic languages of

1278-489: Is found most often as the second-person singular pronoun, however di is used as the subject of inflected future forms, as a reinforcement in the imperative, and as following pronoun to the possessive adjective dy ... "your ..." Chi , in addition to serving as the second-person plural pronoun, is also used as a singular in formal situations, as is in French and Russian . Conversely, ti can be said to be limited to

1349-555: Is grammatically feminine), but otherwise there are no major patterns (except that, as in many languages, certain noun suffixes show a consistent gender, as sometimes do nouns referring to certain classes of thing, e.g. all months of the year in Welsh are masculine) and gender must simply be learnt. Welsh has two systems of grammatical number . Singular/plural nouns correspond to the singular/plural number system of English, although noun plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways, since

1420-483: Is implied by the lack of definite article or determiner. The noun cath , therefore, means both 'cat' and 'a cat'. English has no plural indefinite article proper, but often uses the word 'some' in place of one: compare "I have an apple" and "I have some apples", where the word 'some' is being used as an article because the English language calls for something in this position, compare "I have apples" and "I have some apples",

1491-417: Is often used even when aspirate mutation would be possible (e.g. glywais i ddim ); this reflects the fact that aspirate mutation is in general infrequent in the colloquial language (see above). Under some circumstances an h is added to the beginning of words that begin with vowels, a process commonly called ' h -prothesis ' and usually called pre-vocalic aspiration (PVA) by linguists. This occurs after

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1562-750: 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 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

1633-450: Is used for 'a period of two months' and deuddydd is 'a period of two days', these using dau rather than dwy . Welsh also has a special 'plural' for 'a period of three days', tridiau which is commonly used across Wales. The other system of grammatical number is the collective/singulative . The nouns in this system form the singulative by adding the suffix -yn (for masculine nouns) or -en (for feminine nouns) to

1704-566: 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

1775-630: 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

1846-480: 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,

1917-532: 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

1988-778: The full soft mutation occurs are as follows – this list is by no means exhaustive: The occurrence of the soft mutation often obscures the origin of placenames to non-Welsh-speaking visitors. For example, Llanfair is the church of Mair ( Mary ), and Pontardawe is the bridge on the Tawe ( pont ar + Tawe ). The nasal mutation (Welsh: treiglad trwynol ) normally occurs: Notes Under nasal mutation, voiced stop consonants become nasals , and unvoiced stops become voiceless nasals . A non-standard mutation also occurs in some parts of North Wales where nasal consonants are also unvoiced, e.g. fy mham ("my mother"; standard: fy mam ). This may also occur (unlike

2059-400: 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

2130-455: The nasal mutation ( Welsh : treiglad trwynol ), and the aspirate mutation ( Welsh : treiglad llaes ; also called spirant mutation in some grammars). These are also represented in the orthography : A blank cell indicates no change. The mutation ts → j reflects a change heard in modern words borrowed from English. Borrowed words like tsips (chips) can often be heard in Wales and

2201-450: 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,

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2272-616: 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

2343-559: 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

2414-401: The basis of these examples. Mutation is not triggered by the form of the preceding word; the meaning and grammatical function of the word are also relevant. For example, while yn meaning "in" triggers nasal mutation, homonyms of yn do not. For example: The soft mutation (Welsh: treiglad meddal ) is by far the most common mutation in Welsh. When words undergo soft mutation,

2485-513: 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

2556-430: The collective noun. Most nouns which belong in this system are frequently found in groups, for example, plant "children" and plentyn "a child", or coed "trees" and coeden "a tree". In dictionaries, the collective form, being the root form, is given first. Adjectives normally follow the noun they qualify, while a few, such as hen, pob, annwyl , and holl ("old", "every", "dear", "whole") precede it. For

2627-447: The construction, Welsh uses the feminine singular hi , thus producing sentences like: However, colloquially the pronoun is often omitted when it would be translated as "it" in English, leaving: Third-person masculine singular forms o and fo are heard in parts of mid- and north Wales, while e and fe are heard in parts of mid-, west and south Wales. The pronoun forms i, e , and o are used as subjects after

2698-763: The corresponding form of the personal pronoun, e.g. fy mara i "my bread", dy fara di "your bread", ei fara fe "his bread", etc. The corresponding pronoun is often dropped in the spoken language, fy mara (my bread), dy fara (your bread), ei fara (his bread) and ei bara (her bread). The possessive adjective fy is most often heard as 'yn or 'y followed by the mutated noun. For example, bara ('bread') would likely be heard as 'y mara ('my bread'). The demonstrative adjectives are yma "this"' and yna "that" (this usage derives from their original function as adverbs meaning "here" and "there" respectively). When used in this context they are almost always shortened to 'ma and 'na . They follow

2769-507: 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

2840-523: 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

2911-478: 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,

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2982-476: The first millennium AD; nor was there any evidence of this in the Insular Celtic languages around the 500s. The first consonant of a word in Welsh may change when preceded by certain words (e.g. i, o, yn , and a ), or because of some other grammatical context (such as when the grammatical object follows a conjugated verb). Welsh has three mutations: the soft mutation ( Welsh : treiglad meddal ),

3053-499: The former is rarely encountered in English. In these types of English sentences, the word 'some' is therefore left untranslated due to there being no concept of an indefinite article in Welsh: mae gen i afalau ('I have [some] apples'). The definite article, which precedes the words it modifies and whose usage differs little from that of English, has the forms y, yr , and ’r . The rules governing their usage are: The article triggers

3124-457: The general pattern is that unvoiced plosives become voiced plosives, and voiced plosives become fricatives or disappear; some fricatives also change, and the full list is shown in the above table. In some cases a limited soft mutation takes place. This differs from the full soft mutation in that words beginning with rh- and ll- do not mutate. Common situations where the limited soft mutation occurs include: Common situations where

3195-457: The grammatical gender of the antecedent. The English dummy or expletive "it" construction in phrases like "it's raining" or "it was cold last night" also exists in Welsh and other Indo-European languages like French, German, and Dutch, but not in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Indo-Aryan, or Slavic languages. Unlike other masculine-feminine languages, which often default to the masculine pronoun in

3266-428: The inflected conditional: Both i, e , and o and fi, fe , and fo are heard with inflected prepositions , as objects of verbal nouns, and also as following pronouns with their respective possessive adjectives: The use of first-person singular mi is limited in the spoken language, appearing in i mi "to/for me" or as the subject with the verb ddaru , used in a preterite construction. Ti

3337-467: The informal singular, such as when speaking with a family member, a friend, or a child. This usage corresponds closely to the practice in other European languages. An alternative form of ti , used almost exclusively in some north-western dialects, is chdi ; as an independent pronoun it occurs especially frequently after a vowel sound at the end of the phrase (e.g. efo chdi, i chdi, wela i chdi, dyna chdi ). The reflexive pronouns are formed with

3408-558: 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

3479-412: 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

3550-534: The most part, adjectives are uninflected, though there are a few with distinct masculine/feminine or singular/plural forms. After feminine singular nouns, adjectives receive the soft mutation. Adjective comparison in Welsh is fairly similar to the English system. Adjectives with one or two syllables receive the endings -ach "-er" and -a(f) "-est", which change final b, d, g into p, t, c by provection , e. g. teg "fair", tecach "fairer", teca(f) "fairest". Adjectives with two or more syllables use

3621-399: The mutated form jips is also common. Dw i'n mynd i gael tsips (I'm going to get chips); Mae gen i jips (I have chips). Despite this the 'ts' → 'j' mutation is not usually included in the classic list of Welsh mutations and is rarely taught in formal classes. Nevertheless, it is a part of the colloquial language and is used by native, first-language speakers. The word for "stone"

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3692-425: 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

3763-462: The noun they qualify, which also takes the article. For example, y llyfr "the book", y llyfr 'ma "this book", y llyfr 'na "that book"; literally the book here and the book there . The Welsh personal pronouns are: The Welsh masculine-feminine gender distinction is reflected in the pronouns. There is, consequently, no word corresponding to English "it", and the choice of e/o (south and north Welsh respectively) or hi depends on

3834-502: 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

3905-625: 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'),

3976-403: The ordinary nasal mutation) after ei ("her"): e.g. ei nhain hi ("her grandmother", standard ei nain hi ). The name aspirate mutation can be misleading as the affected consonants do not become aspirated, but become fricatives. This is represented by the addition of an h after the original initial consonant ( c /k/ , p /p/ , t /t/ → ch /χ/ , ph /f/ , th /θ/ ), but

4047-502: The plural form cannot be discerned simply by its singular form. Most nouns form the plural with a suffix (the most common, by far, is -au ), e.g. tad / tadau . Others form the plural through vowel change (a process known as affection in Celtic languages), e.g. bachgen / bechgyn 'boy / boys'. Still others form their plurals through some combination of the two, e.g. chwaer / chwiorydd 'sister / sisters'. A few nouns also display

4118-523: The possessive adjective followed by hun "self". There is variation between North and South forms. The first person singular possessive pronoun fy is usually pronounced as if spelt y(n) . Standard language A standard language (or standard variety , standard dialect , standardized dialect or simply standard ) 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

4189-566: The possessive pronouns ei ("her"), ein ("our") and eu ("their"), e.g. oedran ("age"), ei hoedran hi ("her age"). It also occurs with ugain ("twenty") after ar ("on") in the traditional vigesimal counting system, e.g. un ar hugain ("twenty-one", literally "one on twenty"). Although aspirate mutation also involves the addition of h in spelling, the environments for aspirate mutation and initial h addition do not overlap except for ei ("her"). Welsh has no indefinite article . This means that indefiniteness

4260-424: The resultant forms are pronounced as single phonemes. The aspirate mutation occurs: Aspirate mutation is the least-used mutation in colloquial Welsh. The only word that it always follows in everyday language is ei ("her") and it is also found in set phrases, e.g. mwy na thebyg ("more than likely"). Its occurrence is unusual in the colloquial Southern phrase dyna pham ("that's why") as dyna causes

4331-489: The soft mutation when it is used with feminine singular nouns, e.g. tywysoges "(a) princess" but y dywysoges ("the princess"). The definite article is used in Welsh where it would not be used in English in the following ways: As in most other Indo-European languages, all nouns belong to a certain grammatical gender ; the genders in Welsh are masculine and feminine. A noun's gender usually conforms to its referent's natural gender when it has one (e.g. mam 'mother'

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4402-629: The soft mutation, not aspirate mutation. Colloquially, the aspirate mutation is often replaced by the soft mutation, or ignored altogether – particularly mutation of t- and p- ; one is likely to hear paid â ph oeni, paid â p oeni , and paid p oeni for 'don't worry'. A mixed mutation occurs when negating conjugated verbs. Initial consonants undergo aspirate mutation if subject to it, and soft mutation if not. For example, clywais i ("I heard") and dwedais i ("I said") are negated as chlywais i ddim ("I heard nothing") and ddwedais i ddim ("I said nothing"). In practice, soft mutation

4473-549: 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

4544-561: 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

4615-415: 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

4686-435: 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,

4757-432: 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

4828-525: 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

4899-581: 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 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

4970-417: The words mwy "more" and mwya "most", e. g. teimladwy "sensitive", mwy teimladwy "more sensitive", mwya teimladwy "most sensitive". Adjectives with two syllables can go either way. There is an additional degree of comparison, the equative , meaning "as ... as ...". These are the possessive adjectives: The possessive adjectives precede the noun they qualify, which is often followed by

5041-580: 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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