1210: How to Standarize? Apr 2, 2018

Standardiszed languages are conceptual, to be sure, but they are not pulled out of thin air. Often it will be fairly logical how the standardized version comes from various capitals of a nation, such as that for culture, politics, or economy; for example British English comes from Britain's capital (if not for all of those things, then at least for the latter two). With German, the standard version comes not from Berlin, but from Vienna (historically, southern Germany and Austria), because the Habsburgs from Austria used it for commerce. There is a similar situation for Italian, which standarized only very late in the game; before then, every region had its own dialect (at times essentially a language) but a blend of the Florentine (Tuscan) variety became official because of the area's economic significance, certainly, but also because writers like Dante, and many linguists wrote in and recorded this variety, when Italy looked to standardize the language, it was easier to use the variety that had been studied the most.

Make sure to check out the newest Word Facts Video: https://youtu.be/Ay9PNWwcQwo

Support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts