It is impossible to draw exact lines of des mar cation between either dialects or languages, for at their frontiers they merge imperceptibly one into another unless great natural barriers intervene. Within Great Britain it is impossible to say precisely where English ends and Welsh or Scots Gaelic begins. Suppose that in a particular language area, one city becomes an important religious centre; another is situated at the junction of important roads, and a third is the favourite seat of the ruler of the region. The importance of the areas surrounding these cities will tend to make their dialects corre-spendingly more important than those of the other areas, 1
Suppose, further, that the commercial importance of one city becomes such that the ruler makes it his capital, then the religious rulers will probably also tend to gravitate thither, with the result that it finally becomes the chief centre of the entire dialect-area, Its dialect will thus come to be regarded as the dialect of the whole region and will be the standard language, while the others will tend to become less and less important.
This is precisely what: has happened in France. Parisian French has become standard although Parisian French is intrinsically no better than that of Picardy, except insofar as it has been cultivated more carefully.
The standard language thus evolved will not be entirely uniform, but will have certain stratifications. At the one extreme will be the highest classes who will use the language in the form regarded as the best; at the other extreme, the lowest classes who will speak in a fashion regarded as the most slovenly, Between these extremes will be various intermediate grades.
With the use of literature and the development of formal systems of grammar, the standard language in its highest types may tend to develop two forms. People seldom speak just as they write, otherwise their conversation i9 apt to be dubbed bookish or their writing colloquial; and, to complicate the situation, literature tends to be conservative in diction, while speech constantly changes in greater or less degree.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.