" 

 ::There are linguistic standards that are detached from such ""socio-cultural-historico-political motivation."" Disagreement with motivation does not make the scientific fact of the thing any less verifiable. The phonetics, phonology, and morphology of Alsatian are a combination of elements from other languages, as are its lexicon and syntax. It is a regional dialect. This is not a value judgment. Just as the many forms of British, American, Canadian, and Australian are kinds of English, rather than separate languages, Alsatian too is a dialect.  "