ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the rules for allocating varieties to languages. To determine the position of German in the world or in a specific region with any precision requires careful definition of the term German language. The distinction between “variety” and “language” is intended to guarantee that, on one hand, German is considered as comprehensively as possible as a whole language, but, on the other hand, remains intrinsically limited as a single language. In practice, language codices can never contain all forms of a standard variety, because this would make changes of the standard variety between editions of the codex impossible. The terms deutsche Sprachnation and deutsche Kulturnation, which, in their determinative parts, express what the exponents of these concepts take as constitutive of a German ethnic group, have approximately the same conceptual scope. Ideas about typical “German” attributes, which have been discussed in numerous publications, vary widely.
