Codification (linguistics) in the context of "List of language regulators"

In linguistics, diglossia (/daɪˈɡlɒsiə/ dy-GLOSS-ee-ə, US also /daɪˈɡlɔːsiə/ dy-GLAW-see-ə) is where two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled "L" or "low" variety), a second, highly codified lect (labeled "H" or "high") is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used normally for ordinary conversation. The H variety may have no native speakers within the community. In cases of three dialects, the term triglossia is used. When referring to two writing systems coexisting for a single language, the term digraphia is used.

The high variety may be an older stage of the same language (as in medieval Europe, where Latin (H) remained in formal use even as colloquial speech (L) diverged), an unrelated language, or a distinct yet closely related present-day dialect (as in northern India and Pakistan, where Hindustani (L) is used alongside the standard registers of Hindi (H) and Urdu (H); Germany, where Hochdeutsch (H) is used alongside German dialects (L); the Arab world, where Modern Standard Arabic (H) is used alongside other varieties of Arabic (L); and China, where Standard Chinese (H) is used as the official, literary standard and local varieties of Chinese (L) are used in everyday communication); in Dravidian languages, Tamil has the largest diglossia with Literary Tamil (H) used in formal settings and colloquial spoken Tamil (L) used in daily life. Other examples include literary Katharevousa (H) versus spoken Demotic Greek (L); Indonesian, with its bahasa baku (H) and bahasa gaul (L) forms; Standard American English (H) versus African-American Vernacular English or Hawaiian Pidgin (L); and literary (H) versus spoken (L) Welsh.

Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken form of a language or dialect, particularly when perceived as having lower social status or less prestige than standard language, which is more codified, institutionally promoted, literary, or formal. More narrowly, any particular variety of a natural language that does not hold a widespread high-status perception, and sometimes even carries social stigma, is also called a vernacular, vernacular dialect, nonstandard dialect, etc. and is typically its speakers' native variety. Regardless of any such stigma, all nonstandard dialects are full-fledged varieties of language with their own consistent grammatical structure, sound system, body of vocabulary, etc.

A standard language (or standard variety, standard dialect, standardized dialect or simply standard) is any language variety that has undergone substantial codification in 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 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 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 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.

Dialect levelling (or leveling in American English) is an overall reduction in the variation or diversity of a dialect's features when in contact with one or more other dialects. This can come about through assimilation, mixture, and merging of certain dialects, often amidst a process of language codification, which can be a precursor to standardization. One possible result is a koine language, in which various dialects mix together and simplify, settling into a new and more widely embraced form of the language. Another possible path is that a speech community increasingly adopts or exclusively preserves features with widespread social currency at the expense of their more local or traditional dialect features.

Dialect levelling has been observed in most languages with large numbers of speakers after industrialization and modernization of the areas in which they are spoken. However, while less common, it could be observed in pre-industrial times too, especially in colonial dialects like American and Australian English or when sustained linguistic contact between different dialects over a large geographical area continues for long enough as in the Hellenistic world that produced Koine Greek as a result of dialect leveling from Ancient Greek dialects.

Modern Hebrew (endonym: עִבְרִית חֲדָשָׁה, romanized: 'Ivrit ḥadasha, IPA: [ivˈʁit χadaˈʃa] or [ʕivˈrit ħadaˈʃa]), also known as Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It is the only extant Canaanite language, as well as one of the oldest languages to be spoken as a native language in the modern day, on account of Hebrew being attested since the 2nd millennium BC. It uses the Hebrew Alphabet, an abjad script written from right-to-left. The current standard was codified as part of the revival of Hebrew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and now serves as the sole official and national language of the State of Israel, where it is predominantly spoken by over 10 million people. Thus, Modern Hebrew is nearly universally regarded as the most successful instance of language revitalization in history.

A Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew was spoken since antiquity as the vernacular of the Israelites until around the 3rd century BCE, when it was supplanted by a western dialect of the Aramaic language, the local or dominant languages of the regions Jews migrated to, and later Judeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Spanish, Yiddish, and other Jewish languages. Although Hebrew continued to be used for Jewish liturgy, poetry and literature, and written correspondence, it became extinct as a spoken language.