I don't think it's that ambiguous, at least not in French. Even if you are more familiar with a local variation of the language or have an accent (that's my case, my native language is technically Swiss-French, and we have strong local accents) you are still aware of the "standard French" pronunciation.
I face this with German too, people might speak a dialect or have a local accent but are also familiar with Hochdeutsch.
English doesn't have a standard body as far as I know, and pronunciation vary a lot between different countries, so that may be different.
> you are still aware of the "standard French" pronunciation.
Not that well, at least for me, I think I know most cases where it changes from my local accent, but I would struggle to emit the "correct" sound. It wasn't that long ago that I learnt that "é, ais, er, et, ez" were not supposed to be pronounced the same, and I cannot tell how each one is supposed to be pronounced. I would say people from Switzerland are probably more aware of the difference, because it is acknowledged that it is slightly different, whereas I have never heard anyone tell me that I wasn't learning "proper/standard" French and that it's "supposed" to be pronounced differently.
You make a very good point, I never thought about this.
Btw, I was 16 when I learned that "un" (like in the number 1), "en", and "an" have different pronunciations and that I pronounced them incorrectly my entire life! I still have to force myself from time to time to make a clear distinction.
It'd be wherever it wouldn't be a dialect, which to my mind is obviously british english. Other variations are regional dialects born of distance and time.
Every variety of a language is a dialect; what OP means is that there is no governing body determining what constitutes "standard" English, like the Académie française. Rather, there is an informal standard used by the media and elites in every English-speaking country, making it a pluricentric language[0].
