Certain dialects lost status by failing to secure their own print form

Evidence

Third, print-capitalism created languages-of-power of a kind different from the older administrative vernaculars. Certain dialects inevitably were ‘closer’ to each print-language and dominated their final forms. Their disadvantaged cousins, still assimilable to the emerging print-language, lost caste, above all because they were unsuccessful (or only relatively successful) in insisting on their own print-form. ‘Northwestern German’ became Platt Deutsch, a largely spoken, thus sub-standard, German, because it was assimilable to print-German in a way that Bohemian spoken-Czech was not. High German, the King’s English, and, later, Central Thai, were correspondingly elevated to a new politico-cultural eminence. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 189

Categorization

• XREF: This hierarchy of dialects into ‘sub-standard’ versus ‘language-of-power’ is a template for racialised/linguistic subordination central to Islamophobia’s construction of the Other’s speech as inferior. — connects to: Print created unified language-fields where unrelated speakers understood each other — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 187
• DEFINE: Shows how ‘languages-of-power’ differ from mere administrative vernaculars through print dominance.

Related

• Print-languages made mutually unintelligible dialects into unified national communities (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Print created unified language-fields where unrelated speakers understood each other #complicates (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 187