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So the traditional story goes that Standard German (Hochdeutsch) was born out of the Early Modern Saxon dialect spoken by Luther. General American is a hybrid of the New York and Midland dialects because newscasters in New York didn't want to sound like those filthy immigrants (link to cool Ted talk by one of my professors) Standard French was based on the Parisian dialect, because Paris is the City in France. What are some other plausible standardizations for language?