Sentence examples for prestige dialect from inspiring English sources
Qur'anic Arabic uses a diaphonemic writing system that indicates both the pronunciation in Mecca, the western dialect the Qur'an was written in, and that of eastern Arabia, the prestige dialect of pre-Islamic poetry.
In such areas, the prestige dialect of the city has obviously expanded.
Akuapim Twi became the prestige dialect because it was the first dialect to be used for Bible translation.
Often, one form is the literary or prestige dialect, and the other is a common dialect spoken by most of the population.
Such a situation exists in many speech communities throughout the world e.g., in Greece, where Katharevusa, heavily influenced by Classical Greek, is the prestige dialect and Demotic is the popular spoken language, and in the Arab world, where classical Arabic (as used in the Qurʾān) exists alongside the colloquial Arabic of Egypt, Morocco, and other countries.
Dictionaries were originally invented as instruments for improving social interaction, and marketed to the upwardly mobile, giving them the lexical keys they needed to do business, participate in culture, adopt prestige dialects, and acquire power.
The reason why only two linguistic varieties are found in the glyphic texts is probably that these served as prestige dialects throughout the Maya region; hieroglyphic texts would have been composed in the language of the elite.
They may have served as prestige languages, coexisting with other dialects in some areas.
As James Collins (1988) explains, "…languages are systems, of formidable and roughly equal complexity, whether classic 'world languages' or the speech of economically simple societies, whether prestige standards or stigmatized dialects" (p. 301).
Of these, Rākhshānī is the most widely spoken and is used for broadcasting both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, but the coastal dialects have the greatest prestige and the most extensive literature.
As a general rule, those dialects, or at least certain dialectal features, with greater social prestige tend to replace those that are valued lower on the social scale.
