Diasystem

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In linguistics, in the field of structural dialectology, a diasystem is a single genetic language which has two or more standard forms. Some dialects are often divided into separate languages due to different historical and cultural development. Other possible differences between languages include vocabulary, such as Occitan being affected by French and Catalan by Spanish words, and writing systems, such as Hindi in Devanagari and Urdu in the Arabic script, despite being mutually intelligible. Some languages are officially recognized as distinct despite having no barriers in speech, writing or lexicon, but are distinguished by legal and political factors, such as Catalan with Valencian. Thus, a diasystem can also be described as a single language that is spoken by two or more distinct communities.

Examples include:

Albanian language

• Gheg Albanian-Tosk Albanian (Tosk is the basis of the standard Albanian language)

Armenian language

• Eastern Armenian-Western Armenian (The two standard forms of the modern Armenian language)

Slavic languages

• Bulgarian-Macedonian
• Czech-Slovak
• Central South Slavic diasystem/Serbo-Croat (encompasses Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian) ^[1]
• Ukrainian-Rusyn

Romance languages

• Franco-Norman (French-Dgèrnésiais-Jèrriais-Sercquiais)
• Occitano-Romance languages (Occitan-Catalan-Valencian)
• Galician-Portuguese (Galician-Portuguese)
• Romanian-Moldovan-Istro-Romanian
• Spanish-Ladino
• Tuscan (Italian-Corsican)

Germanic languages

• Danish-Norwegian (Bokmål-Nynorsk)-Swedish
• Yiddish-German
• Afrikaans-Dutch-Flemish
• English-Scots

Austronesian languages

• Classical Tagalog-Filipino-Tagalog
• Indonesian-Malay

Indo-Iranian languages

• Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu)
• Persian-Tajik-Dari

Celtic languages

• Irish-Scottish Gaelic

Tai-Kadai languages

• Lao-Isan

Sino-Tibetan languages

• Mandarin Chinese-Dungan
• Ladakhi-Balti-Burig
• Min nan - Taiwanese

Turkic languages

• Tatar-Bashkir
• Uyghur-Uzbek

Finno-Ugric languages

• Finnish-Meänkieli-Kven
• Komi-zyrian-Komi-Permyak-Komi-Yodzyak

See also

• Dialect continuum
• Pluricentric language
• Standard language
• Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache

Sources

1. ^ (Croatian) Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics Organska podloga hrvatskog jezika

External links

• About Central South Slavic diasystem