an official language. By extension, a sprachraum can also include a group of related languages. Thus the Scandinavian sprachraum includes Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands, while the Finnic sprachraum is Finland, Estonia and adjacent areas of Scandinavia and Russia. Even within a single sprachraum, there can be different, but closely related, languages, otherwise known as dialect continua. A classic example is the varieties of Chinese, which can be mutually unintelligible in spoken form, but are typically considered the same language (or, at least, closely related) and have a unified non-phonetic writing system. Arabic has a similar situation, but its writing system (an abjad) reflects the pronunciation and grammar of a common literary language (Modern Standard Arabic). Examples Germanic languages Anglosphere (the English-speaking world) Dutch Language Union List of territorial entities where German is an official language Germanic Europe cluster (continental West Germanic and North Germanic) Romance languages Catalan Countries (the Catalan-speaking part of Europe) List of territorial entities where French is an official language List of countries and territories where Romanian is an official language Hispanophone world (where Spanish is spoken) Latin Europe Lusofonia (the Lusophone world) Other Indo-European languages Hindi belt Bengal Slavisphere Greater Iran (Persian and closely related languages) Other languages Arab world Austronesia Malay world Sinophone (where various forms of Chinese is spoken) Turkic countries See also Dachsprache Dialect continuum Lingua franca Pluricentric language Sprachbund World language References Further reading Joachim Born, Sylvia Dickgießer: Deutschsprachige Minderheiten. Ein Überblick über den Stand der Forschung für 27 Länder. Institut für deutsche Sprache, Mannheim 1989, . dtv-Atlas Deutsche Sprache. 15., durchgesehene und aktualisierte Auflage. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München 2005, . Alfred Lameli: Strukturen im Sprachraum. Analysen zur arealtypologischen Komplexität der Dialekte in Deutschland. Berlin, Boston 2013, . Wolfgang Viereck, Karin Viereck, Heinrich Ramisch: dtv-Atlas Englische Sprache. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München 2002, , pp. 95–99. Language geography Dialectology