Abstand
A language may be an abstand language without being an ausbau language. This is often the case with minority languages used within a larger nation state, where the minority language is used only in private and all official functions are performed in the majority language. A variety is called an abstand language in relation to another language if both are so different from each other that the one cannot be considered a dialect of the other. This criterion deals with objective structural properties of the language systems. The framework does not in itself specify exactly how "distance" is to be measured objectively. An often used, but debated criterion is mutual intelligibility.
Examples of an abstand language is Basque with respect to Spanish, Ogham to Pictish, distance and whatnots:
Of all the known Pictish Ogham inscriptions on the assumption that they are a form of Basque, the Picts were Celts who spoke a language related to Welsh. They spoke a P-Celtic language in addition to another, non Indo-European language, although Ogham has no letter P unless Q means son and was borrowed from Gaelic. All of the inscriptions are written in a known alphabet (Ogham). The only other sources of information on Pictish are the lists of kings and very few inscriptions in the Roman alphabet. Many of the Pictish names are not Indo-European since the first North Pictish kings/brudes. No Rosetta Stone, no languages desended from Pictish and no unknown relatives relate to some affinities.
It is not known with any certainty when speakers of a Goidelic (or Q-Celtic) language reached Ireland, or how they came to be the dominant culture, or if Q-Celtic didn't develop entirely in Ireland from a previous dialect. Some believe Goidelic replaced a pre-existing Brythonic (or P-Celtic) with the historical expansion and spread of a new lingua franca. The Lebor Gabála Érenn is the Middle Irish title, Taking of Ireland , the book catalogues the path of the Gaels' ancestors in a way that, while mostly mythic, may be an account of the creation of the world down to the Middle Ages, as well as actual historical events from discovery of a form of early Ogham script in Celtic Gallaecia, as well as genetic studies linking the Gaels to the Basques and Galicians in northwestern Spain. In the 3rd century, Diocletian created an administrative division which included the conventus of Gallaecia, Asturica and perhaps Cluniense. It is usually known in English as The Book of Invasions or The Book of Conquests.
In 863, Dorestad in Frisia, the Franks' main commercial centre on the Rhine was over before the Danes had set up a new trade network in place of an older and opposing one. The Danish chiefs tried to emulate the success of Björn in Gascony and to create their own overseas kingdoms. Northumbria, Mercia, Frisia, Aquitaine, Bretagne and Normandy were all affected by these attempts to found Scandinavian settlements. Gascony stayed under the Vikings’ control for 140 years where their continuing presence in the Biscay area may help to explain why the Basques have so many traditions, according to legend becoming despised and ostracized Agotes or Cagots said to have reached America one hundred years before Christopher Colombus. The Gascons of Nordic origin were allowed to stay in the country not to mix with other communities during the succeeding rule from Périgord and Navarre of the Aquitaine region.
The essentials of the Maya calendric system are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 6th century BCE. It shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Zapotec and Olmec, and contemporary or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec. Although the Mesoamerican calendar did not originate with the Maya. The Maya numeral system was essentially vigesimal (i.e., base-20), and each unit of a given position represented 20 times the unit of the position which preceded it. An important exception was made for the second place value, which instead represented 18 × 20, or 360 days, more closely approximating the solar yeare than would 20 × 20 = 400 days. It should be noted however that the cycles of the Long Count are independent of the solar year. The Maya believed that each day of the Tzolkin had a character that influenced events. The Maya had a shaman-priest, whose name meant day keeper, and who read the Tzolkin to predict the future.
By the Maya mythological tradition, as documented in Colonial Yucatec accounts and reconstructed from Late Classic and Postclassic inscriptions, the deity Itzamna is frequently credited with bringing the knowledge of the calendar system to the ancestral Maya, along with writing in general and other foundational aspects of Maya culture. Many Maya Long Count inscriptions are supplemented by what is known as the Lunar Series, another calendar form which provides information on the lunar phase and position of the Moon in a half-yearly cycle of lunations. With the development of the place-notational Long Count calendar (believed to have been inherited from other Mesoamerican cultures), the Maya had an elegant system within which events could be recorded in a linear relationship to one another, and also with respect to the calendar ("linear time") itself. A different form of calendar was used to track longer periods of time, and for the inscription of calendar dates. Many different Mayan languages are still spoken as their primary language.
Ausbau
A language may be an ausbau language even when it has relatively little abstand from its neighbours. A variety is called an ausbau language if it is used autonomously with respect to other related languages. This typically means that it has its own standardized form independent of neighbouring standard languages. This often involves being taught in schools, and being used as a written language in a wide variety of functions, possibly including that of an official national language. These are often Romance Languages having elements translated into or by other Romance Languages. With the exception of Greek descriptives which maintain classic features or alphabetical order of other descriptives. The concept of ausbau is particularly important in cases where the local spoken varieties across a larger region form a dialect continuum. In such cases, the question of where the one language ends and the other starts is often a question more of ausbau than of abstand.
In contrast, varieties that are not ausbau languages are those that are only spoken and typically only used in private contexts. Examples are the Scandinavian languages Danish, Norwegian, which are mutually intelligible to a large degree but nevertheless constitute three separate languages on criteria of ausbau.
The local dialects of Dutch and German on both sides of the Dutch-German border are very similar, with both languages effectually merging gradually into each other; nevertheless, on the level of the ausbau standard languages Dutch and German clearly constitute two separate languages. In some instances, ausbau languages have been created out of dialects for purposes of nation building.
This applies for instance to Luxembourgish vis-a-vis German, or to Macedonian vis-a-vis Bulgarian and Serbian. In some instances where ausbau languages have been created for political purposes on the basis of very little abstand, the separate-language status of the resulting variety may be quite controversial, as in the case of Moldovan vis-a-vis Romanian. Other examples of ausbau languages are Persian of Iran and Afghanistan (cf. Dari), Serbian and Croatian, Dutch and Afrikaans, and to some extent Hindi and Urdu.
Dachsprache
Dachsprache means a language form that serves as standard language for different dialects, mostly in a dialect continuum, even though these dialects may be so different that mutual intelligibility is not possible on the basilectal level between all dialects, particularly those separated by significant geographical distance.
In 1982, "Rumantsch Grischun" was developed by Heinrich Schmid as such a Dachsprache for a number of quite different Romansh language forms spoken in parts of Switzerland. Standard German and standard Italian to some extent function in the same way. Perhaps the most widely used Dachsprache is Modern Standard Arabic, which links together the speakers of many different Arabic dialects. Kloss has also used the term pseudo-dialectized abstand language for cases where a variety is so different from its Dachsprache that it ought to be regarded as a separate language on abstand grounds, but is nevertheless treated more like a dialect in social practice. Examples include Sardinian vis-a-vis Italian, or Occitan vis-a-vis French.
Ausbausprache may be translated literally as 'upgrade language', although Heinz Kloss describes it as "language by development", Abstandsprache as 'distance language' and Dachsprache as 'umbrella language' (literally: 'roof language'). The terms are also often rendered with the qualifier untranslated in English, as ausbau language and abstand language.