Pluricentric language
A pluricentric language is a language with several standard versions, both in spoken and in written forms. This situation usually arises when language and the national identity of its native speakers do not coincide.
Examples
English
For example, English is a pluricentric language, with numerous differences in pronunciation, spelling, etc. between United Kingdom and the United States, and a variety of accents of those and other English-speaking countries. It is usually considered a symmetric case of a pluricentric language, because no variety clearly dominates culturally. Statistically, however, American English speakers constitute more than 70% of native English speakers, with British English in second place at 16% and other varieties having less than 5% each. Due to globalization in recent decades, English has become increasingly decentralized, with daily use and state-wide study of the language in schools growing at a rapid rate in most regions of the world. British English was formerly dominant in the education systems of most regions where English was taught as a foreign language (L2). In former colonies, British English remains strong. Standard British English is also the primary form taught in the EU and the rest of Europe. In many regions of the world, the use of American English is beginning to accelerate, sometimes outstripping British English in popularity among L2 student and business users. Other varieties of English, including Australian, Canadian, Indian, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and South African English, are almost unknown as distinct varieties in terms of the teaching of English as an L2 abroad.
German
By contrast, Standard German is often considered an asymmetric case of a pluricentric language, because the standard used in Germany is often considered dominant, mostly because of the sheer number of its speakers and their frequent unawareness of the Austrian German and Swiss Standard German varieties. While there is a uniform stage pronunciation (the Siebs Dictionary) which is used in theatres all across German-speaking countries, this is not true for the standards applied at public occasions in Austria and Switzerland, which differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, and sometimes even grammar. Sometimes this even applies to news broadcasts in Bavaria, a German region with a strong separate cultural identity. The varieties of Standard German used in those regions are to some degree influenced by the respective dialects (but by no means identical with 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 into EU law, even though it is clearly incomplete.
Portuguese
Portuguese varies mainly between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese. Both dialects have undergone significant and divergent developments in phonology and the grammar of their pronominal systems. Brazilian Portuguese is considerably more conservative in its phonology, but much less conservative in its grammar. The result is that communication between the dialects without previous exposure can be occasionally difficult, especially for a Brazilian attempting to understand a European. Each variety has its own orthography, although spelling differences are small. Formal written standards remain grammatically close to each other.
African Portuguese is based on the European dialect, but has undergone its own phonetic and grammatical developments, sometimes reminiscent of spoken Brazilian.
Galician
Galician is a special case. Originally the same language, it has lost almost all contact with Portuguese since the 14th century. Nowadays, a Galician standard has emerged which is still very close to European Portuguese. In pronunciation, however, each branch has gone very different ways, and as a result communication may be difficult at first. To a Galician speaker, Portuguese sounds like a kind of Galician with most vowels left out, whereas to a Portuguese speaker Galician may sometimes sound like Portuguese with a Spanish accent. The latter judgement, though, may be attributed to the fact that a large proportion of the Spanish citizens with whom a Portuguese speaker may have been in contact were Galicians. As further anecdotal evidence, a rural Galician accent is sometimes mistaken in Madrid for a Portuguese accent.
Spanish
Castilian Spanish is spoken in the central and southern parts of Spain while a range of Latin American Spanish is spoken in North, Central and South America, some with marked personalities like Rioplatense Spanish and Mexican Spanish. The two branches are perfectly intelligible in their acrolects, except for minor vocabulary differences caused by the specific environment or demographic composition of the area where the language is spoken. The basilects have diverged more, with different slangs, foreign influences and choices in verbal forms. However, the worldwide diffusion of telenovelas and Spanish-language music favor intercomprehension.
Chinese
Writing system
Chinese, at least in terms of its writing system, has been pluricentric since the mid-20th century, when simplified Chinese characters were introduced in the People's Republic of China. Simplified characters are now official in the PRC and Singapore, while traditional Chinese characters, the system originally used in Chinese societies before the advent of simplified characters, remain in use elsewhere, including the Republic of China on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and many overseas Chinese communities.
Spoken Chinese
Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language in China, Taiwan and Singapore, whilst Standard Cantonese is de facto official in Hong Kong and Macau. There are a few differences in the spoken Standard Mandarin promulgated in the PRC and the ROC (Taiwan). Some of the vocabulary is different and a few words are officially pronounced with different tones. See Taiwanese Mandarin for more details on the differences. This site also lists the differences in the pronunciation standards.
French
The three main standards of the French language are Parisian (Standard) French, Standard Canadian French (Québecois), and a more neutral International French (used in media and in teaching). The latter typically represents a French marked by much greater use of archaic vocabulary no longer current in metropolitan France. Québecois French also makes a conscious effort not to borrow foreign vocabulary (creating such words as "stationnement" for "parking", the English word used in French from France), making it prone to continued divergence from European. Some English words, colloquialisms, and sayings are used. There is also a variety of French, Acadian, which is distinct from Quebec French and is spoken mainly in the Maritime provinces, especially New Brunswick. Acadian is marked by differences in pronunciation, intonation, and vocabulary.
Minor standards can also be found in Belgium and Switzerland, with a particular influence of Germanic languages on grammar and vocabulary, sometimes through the influence of local dialects. In Belgium for example, various Germanic influences in the spoken French are evident in Walloon (for example,: to blink in English, German and Dutch, blinquer in Walloon and local French, briller in standard French). Ring (rocade or périphérique in standard French) is a common word in the three national languages for beltway.
Hindi-Urdu
It can be argued that Hindi and Urdu are one language, or a diasystem, sometimes called Hindustani, spoken in India and Pakistan respectively, though they are divided by two different writing systems. In addition, while both varieties include borrowings from Persian and Arabic, the influence of these languages on Urdu is much heavier, and Hindi vocabulary contains many Sanskrit words.
Others
- Arabic has a standard acrolect, with several mutually unintelligible basilects
- Danish: Once identical with Danish Rigsmaal, a number of spelling reforms have brought the Norwegian Riksmål closer to spoken Dano-Norwegian.
- Dutch: despite sometimes significant differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar between the Dutch, Flemish, Surinam, and the Netherlands Antilles variants, there is just one Standard Dutch orthography as regulated by the Dutch Language Union.
- Korean: North and South (to some extent—differences are growing; see Korean language North-South differences)
- Gaelic: Scottish, Irish and Manx.
- Serbo-Croatian: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian standard forms that are sometimes considered either two or three separate languages. Perhaps the biggest difference is in orthography, with the Serbian variety being written in the Cyrillic alphabet.
- Bulgarian and Macedonian standard forms which properly form a dialect continuum and share a set of grammatical features which set them apart from other Slavic languages, with the Bulgarian standard being based on the more eastern dialects, and the Macedonian standard being based on the more western dialects.
Bibliography
- Clyne, Michael G. (Ed.). (1992). Pluricentric languages: Differing norms in different nations. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-012855-1.
- Clyne, Michael G.; & Kipp, Sandra. (1999). Pluricentric languages in an immigrant context: Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016577-5.
- Dua, Hans R. (1992). Hindi-Urdu as a pluricentric language. In M. G. Clyne (Ed.)