The purpose of the symposium was to exchange experiences in the standardization of national languages in different socio-cultural contexts. Examples of the strategies and results of such experiences in Africa, Latin America, and Europe were presented for discussion. Papers presented at the symposium include the following: "Language Standardization in Mali" (Adama Ouane); "Lexical Innovation in Hausa (Niger, Nigeria)" (J. A. McIntyre); "Standardization and Varieties of Written Hausa (West Africa)" (H. Ekkehard Wolff); "Normalization in Andean Languages" (Rodolfo Cerron-Palomino); "The Standardization of Quechua: Some Problems and Suggestions" (Wolfgang Wolck); "Aspects of Language Planning in Ashaninka (Eastern Peru)" (Thomas Th. Buttner); "A Characterization of Alphabetical Writing Systems" (Xavier Lamuela); "Some Aspects of the Standardization of the Basque Language" (Axel Mahlau); "The State of Codification of Aranese" (Joachim Born); and "Standardization Beyond the State: The Cases of Yiddish, Kurdish and Romani" (Yaron Matras and Gertrud Reershemius). (JL)