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I've seen this incredibly often on StackOverflow, but also on a few other internet sites. "Standart" is an extremely common misspelling of "standard".

Is there a reason in how English is taught to non-native speakers, or another language which spells standard in this way, which results in the confusion?

Usually when I see this the rest of the conversation is otherwise flawless, which gives this an air of a careless mistake — e.g. confusing the English word with a cognate in another language. However, I don't know enough about other languages to tell if that's what's going on, or if it's something else.

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    Never seen this - you have even a single example to support the claim of commonness?
    – Grant Thomas
    May 15, 2011 at 8:06
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    Hm, with the one referenced I'm tempted to conjecture it is simply a mistake. The rest of the post shows that, while probably not a native speaker, they have a reasonably good grasp.
    – Grant Thomas
    May 15, 2011 at 8:12
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    @Mr. Disappointment: See.. that's the interesting thing. Usually when I see this it is cases where the rest of the conversation is otherwise flawless. That makes me think there's another language where "standard" is a cognate to "standart" and it's a mistake -- but I don't know enough other languages to be sure.
    – Billy ONeal
    May 15, 2011 at 8:14
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    Here are some better examples: stackoverflow.com/search?q=standart
    – Kobi
    May 15, 2011 at 10:17
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    This is not a real answer, but the word was borrowed into Hebrew and is pronounced Standart. It is so commonly used I had to use a dictionary to find out what the original Hebrew word was. :)
    – Omer van Kloeten
    May 15, 2011 at 15:01

6 Answers 6

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This is a common misspelling in German. The word also is "Standard" there, but as @Tim points out, "Standard" and "Standart" sound the same, and it is easy to mistakenly assume it's related to German "Art" (Way, manner, fashion).

I think this is a case where an error in the native language is repeated when those making it write in English.

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I don't think it's a very common mistake in general. In the case you quote, it is probably because standard is Стандарт in Russian, which ends with a т.

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In some languages, such as Russian and German, voiced consonant sounds at the end of a word change into their unvoiced counterparts, such as d to t and g to k. There is no Russian word ending with д and a d sound.

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    In German, this change is only in speaking, not in spelling (thus der Standard is spoken with a "t" sound, but spelled with "d").
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    May 15, 2011 at 9:28
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    @Paŭlo: Indeed, same goes with Russian, e.g. хлеб (/xlʲep/). Sorry if my answer was unclear, I'll edit it.
    – user4727
    May 15, 2011 at 9:40
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In Czech language, "standarta" means flag. "Standard" is commonly misspelled as "standart" even by native speakers, because they don't see the difference.

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In German, it's "die Standarte". In Russian, it's стандарт (standart) - probably because the word was borrowed from German.

I've consulted four dictionaries to see how the word came into English, and they give four different origins! So much for comparative etymology...
One of them, the Collins English Dictionary (10th ed., 2009) gives this as the source:

C12: from Old French estandart gathering place, flag to mark such a place, probably of Germanic origin; compare Old High German stantan to stand, Old High German ort place

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    In fact, the german word for standard (in the sense as published by standardizing organizations) is "der Standard". "Die Standarte" is a kind of flag. (There also is the composed word "die Standart" = "the way of standing", but this is almost never meant here.) In fact, "der Standard" is also often misspelled in German as "der Standart", which might then copy to English.
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    May 15, 2011 at 9:26
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    The English/German dictionary I (hurriedly) consulted didn't distinguish between the meanings of "standard", and I didn't think to look further. Foolish of me.
    – MT_Head
    May 15, 2011 at 9:39
  • In Hebrew it's also "Standart", and isn't limited to the last letter: "StandarTi" (as in "standard process"), or "StandarTim" (for "standards"). This isn't a mistake, either: "Standard" in Hebrew is plain wrong.
    – Kobi
    May 15, 2011 at 10:22
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    Both German "Standarte" and "Standard" are loan words, the first being much older than the latter. German "Standard" comes from the English "standard". Hebrew "standart" like most early modern Hebrew loan words from the west derives from German "Standard" pronounced with a "t" at the end.
    – Andrew J. Brehm
    May 15, 2011 at 14:23
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    "Standard" in English also means flag. So there you go.
    – Mei
    May 27, 2011 at 0:11
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In Polish language, the proper word is "standard", but lots of people are pretty sure it's "standart" and that's how they write and speak. Because of many word endings, we can usually hear the difference between forms like "standardy" and "standarty" ("y" at the end makes it plural), but still most of the people aren't sure enough of which form is proper, so they don't object.

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    How exactly does this relate to the question about English that is under consideration?
    – Robusto
    Dec 9, 2012 at 19:42

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