Standard languages have high symbolic significance but little actual use in highly multilingual national contexts. This chapter explores the tension between the reification of fluid language use into codified languages and fluid and variable communicative practices in speech and writing in a number of African sociolinguistic settings. Starting with the observation that the notion of standard languages and of the ethnolinguistic groups using them goes back to the colonial period, I proceed to investigate different visions of language as they emerge from the writing conventions and language visions of colonial/anticolonial actors from this time, focusing on a case study on the West Afrian Manding cluster. I continue to explore attitudes to purity and standardization in contemporary scripts and language policies and in written and spoken language use, also including so-called mixed registers such as Urban Wolof and Sheng. I end the chapter by presenting innovative approaches to bypassing the standard (yet maintaining compatibility with it), focusing on the LILIEMA programme for inclusive education in a highly multilingual region of Senegal.
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