An umbrella language is a language that serves as a common standard language for a group of idioms (see also dialect continuum ). Classic examples of umbrella languages are German , Italian and Malay . The term was coined by Heinz Kloss .
The term umbrella language is also used for literary languages in the narrower sense, which are written and read, but rarely used as everyday colloquial language . This could be the case with Rumantsch Grischun in the future.
Various umbrella or macro languages are recognized in ISO 639-3 , which coexist as languages with their main dialects. Among other things, Ripuarian and Bavarian ( language codes ksh and bar ) are mentioned as the main dialect groups (languages) of the (high) German standard and umbrella language (language code deu ).