German, like English, French, Swahili, Spanish, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese and other languages, is an instance of what Kloss (1978: 66–7) terms a ‘pluricentric’ language, i.e. a language with several interacting centres, each providing a national variety with at least some of its own (codified) norms. Hans Moser (1989: 20) describes pluricentric languages as ones which, while uniform across regions in all substantial structural features, cannot be viewed from the perspective of a single centre. This chapter starts by examining the properties of pluricentric languages and then describes the form and function of Standard German in each of the German-language nations and those in which German has some kind of official or quasi-official status. At the end of the chapter, convergence between national varieties of German is discussed.

Pluricentric languages

None of the national varieties of Standard German has developed into a separate language. Kloss (1978: Ch. 1) gives two criteria for language status: Abstand (distance) and Ausbau (elaboration). Some languages are guaranteed recognition as such, merely because of their distance from other languages (e.g. Frisian as distinct from Dutch and English). Some, on the other hand, could, historically speaking or in terms of linguistic distance, be regarded as varieties of the same language but are independent because they are assigned the same functions as all other (standard) languages, usually to stress political distinctiveness (e.g. Indonesian as distinct from Malay; Hindi as distinct from Urdu; Slovak as distinct from Czech). Sometimes such languages are written in different script.