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Concept
Pluricentric language
Summary
A pluricentric language or polycentric language is a language with several interacting codified standard forms, often corresponding to different countries. Many examples of such languages can be found worldwide among the most-spoken languages, including but not limited to Chinese in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore; English in the United Kingdom, the United States, India, and elsewhere; and French in France, Canada, and elsewhere. The converse case is a monocentric language, which has only one formally standardized version. Examples include Japanese and Russian.
In some cases, the different standards of a pluricentric language may be elaborated until they become autonomous languages, as happened with Malaysian and Indonesian, and with Hindi and Urdu. The same process is under way in Serbo-Croatian.
Varieties of Arabic
Pre-Islamic Arabic can be considered a polycentric language. In Arabic-speaking countries different levels of polycentricity can be detected. Modern Arabic is a pluricentric language with varying branches correlating with different regions where Arabic is spoken and the type of communities speaking it. The vernacular varieties of Arabic include:
Peninsular Arabic
Hejazi Arabic (urban cities of western Saudi Arabia)
Najdi Arabic (much of central Saudi Arabia)
Omani Arabic
Gulf Arabic (spoken around the coasts of the Persian Gulf in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, as well as parts of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Oman)
Yemeni Arabic
Levantine Arabic (spoken in the Levant region)
Syrian Arabic
Jordanian Arabic
Lebanese Arabic
Palestinian Arabic,
Maghrebi Arabic (spoken in the Maghreb region)
Algerian Arabic
Libyan Arabic
Moroccan Arabic
Tunisian Arabic,
Mesopotamian Arabic
Baghdad Arabic,
Egyptian Arabic,
Sudanese Arabic, and many others.
In addition, many speakers use Modern Standard Arabic in education and formal settings. Therefore, in Arabic-speaking communities, diglossia is frequent.
Official source
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