Standardization processes: The cases of Basque and Galician

Abstract

Basque and Galician are languages that undertook standardization processes in the last part of the 20th century. These processes show similarities as well as differences. Both standards are “compositional” since they are based on the central varieties of the two languages. However, the distances between dialectal varieties are much greater in Basque than in Galician. Basque is an abstand language, whereas Galician bears significant structural similarities to Portuguese. All these factors influenced the codification of the respective standards. Both Basque and Galician are today ausbau languages (Kloss, 1967) and their standard varieties have wide social acceptance. Nevertheless, they still lack a sufficiently developed oral standard to meet the needs, among others, of the media.

Keywords: Basque, Galician, standardization, Haugen’s model.