Un tipo ordinario. An ordinary guy
Deutsch, or German, is definetely one language. Come and see.
However, it is regarded as a polycentric language, meaning that has more than one standard. At least three standards can be identified: German of Germany, German of Austria, and German of Switzerland. They do not differ much, but are clearly recognizeable.
Then, you have some regional variants, even within Germany, where a Brötchen (bread roll) in much of the South becomes a Semmel, but that’s usual in national languages, and it does not minimally question the fact that German is one language.
Finally, you have German regional languages, spoken dialects which are not to be seen as separate languages from a socio-linguistic standpoint, however might be regarded as separate languages from a purely linguistic point of view: main ones in my knowledge are Low German (Plattdüutsch), Austro-Bavarian, and Swiss-German. Recently (1984), one of those regional languages (Luxembourgish) has been ‘promoted’ to full language, being standardized and becoming an official language of Luxembourg.
The different standards (with variants) of the German language. Not to be confused with regional languages (e.g. Swiss-German) or separate languages (e.g. Luxembourgish).
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