Diasystem

In linguistics, a diasystem is a term used in structural dialectology, to refer to a single genetic language which has two or more standard forms.

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Examples are Danish language and Norwegian Bokm?l, and the Dutch and Low Saxon languages. A well-known diasystem is that of the Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian languages, which were up until the breakup of Yugoslavia jointly referred to as the Serbo-Croatian language, but are now treated as separate languages.

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Linguistics: Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. (Lay people sometimes use the term linguistician, but as Aitchison 2003 points out, this is "too much of a tongue-twister to become generally accepted.")...

Dialect: A dialect (from the Greek word ?????????, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. The number of speakers, and the area itself, can be of size. It follows that a dialect for a larger area can contain plenty of (sub-) dialects, which in turn can contain...

Language: A language is a system of expression and communication. Individual languages use sound, gesture, and other means to express and communicate concepts, emotions, ideas, and thoughts. Expressions of a language are analysable into words, whose meanings are usually conventional. The word "language" is ...