Language Maintenance and Shift

In an earlier article, I identified those in Kirk Michael Parish who were recorded in the 1901 and 1911 censuses as speakers of Manx.  Here I attempt to do something similar for the parish of Lezayre, including those parts of Ramsey town lying in Lezayre Civil Parish. I focus now more specifically on the households that contained one or more Manx speakers. And in such households in which members of more than one generation were present, we may observe, and to some degree date, the break in intergenerational transmission of the Manx language.

This paper focuses on the circumstances surrounding Hungarian language maintenance in Cleveland, Ohio, home to one of the most important Hungarian-American communities in the USA. Built in the 1890's by Cleveland's Hungarian residents, the first Hungarian schools were organized in the Roman Catholic, Reformed and Greek Catholic Churches on Buckeye Road. St. Emeric Parish, established in 1904 on the nearby west side area, is the location for both the Hungarian School and scouting movement. In higher education, Hungarian Studies had its beginnings in Hungarian cultural courses held at Western Reserve University. As of the 1960s, the center for Hungarian Studies could be found at Cleveland State University. Following a lengthy hiatus, this program has recently been reestablished at the Department of Modern Languages.

Language attitudes and language behaviour are important factors for language maintenance in a situation of two languages in one space, especially when one of those languages is the dominating language of the environment and the other is a minority or only a home language, for instance, in case of emigration. The paper deals with language attitudes in an atypical situation of international adoption. It analyses data from a sociolinguistic survey to Italian families who have adopted children from Lithuania. In the situation under study the attitudes cannot influence the language behaviour and this gives a possibility to observe how the language is not maintained and how rapid the process is, despite the positive language attitudes of the adoptive parents.

Kalbinės nuostatos ir kalbinis elgesys yra svarbūs kalbos išlaikymo dviejų kalbų vienoje erdvėje aplinkybėmis veiksniai, ypač kai viena iš tų kalbų yra dominuojanti aplinkos kalba, o kita-mažumos ar tik namų aplinkos kalba, pavyzdžiui, emigracijoje. Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos kalbinės nuostatos netipiškomis-tarptautinio įvaikinimo-aplinkybėmis. Analizuojami sociolingvistinės apklausos, kurią vykdant apklaustos iš Lietuvos į Italiją vaikus įvaikinusios šeimos, duomenys. Tiriamoje situacijoje nuostatos negali paveikti realaus kalbinio elgesio, o tai suteikia galimybę matyti, kaip kalba neišlaikoma ir kaip greitai tai įvyksta, nepaisant teigiamai veikiančių įtėvių kalbinių nuostatų.

The eleven articles in this collection on the relationship of languages and their speakers in different international settings, the existing power and dominance relationships affecting educational programs, and the role language planning has played in the past and is playing today in areas of the world such as Australia, Europe, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and others.

Parents' assessment of children's development in the first and the second language is an essential part of their family language policy (FLP) and an important component of parent–child communication. This paper presents a pilot study focused on Russian-speaking immigrant parents' assessment of their children's language knowledge in Russian as a first language and Hebrew as the second language in the context of their FLP. The research questions were as follows: How is parents' assessment of their children's bilingual language development linked to their choice of bilingual versus monolingual preschool education? To what degree are parents' reports of their children's language knowledge similar or different to their children's actual language knowledge? Which domains of language knowledge do parents relate to or ignore when assessing their children's language development? The sample consisted of 27 children (14 from bilingual and 13 from monolingual kindergartens), and their parents. Two sets of measurements were used, one to obtain parents' reports on child's knowledge of Russian and Hebrew and the other to assess children. The finding points out parents' insensitiveness to the length of the children's utterances and their tendency to rationalise FLP by overestimating their children's general language knowledge.

The optimal language for literature and educational materials is not the same for all Zay areas. The data gathered during the current study points to Zay as optimal for the islands on Lake Ziway and Oromo as optimal for the lakeshores. However, the Zay people living on the islands would probably be well served by Amharic literature and educational materials until most of them immigrate to the shore or the Oromo educational system causes a shift in preference to Oromo. Zay’s case is one of an endangered language that could prove to be a development success story, but only if the level of motivation for a language development project is high enough to initiate and sustain the effort.

With the topic of language endangerment becoming more pronounced in the recent years, there is an on-going debate of whether anything should be done and if so, by whom? There have been some scholars who call for action from both descriptive linguists and applied linguists to be more actively involved in the work of saving these endangered languages. The aim of this paper is to describe the events of Language Travels in Malacca, a programme initiated by the Free Linguistics Conference (FLC) group, and how Language Travels was able to empower the Malaccan Portuguese community through tourism and encourage language maintenance efforts of their language known as Papia Kristang, or Malaccan Portuguese Creole (MPC), which is severely endangered. As this is a case study approach, data was collected by the Linguistics and Language Faculty of the University of Malaya through a variety of methods including interviews, survey questionnaire, video recordings, pictures and fieldnotes. This project has met the ethics requirement for the University of Malaya.

From the analysis of data, four main themes emerge: (1) Language Travels brought economic benefit to the community through channelling the expenses of the programme straight back to the community; (2) Language Travels improved the prestige of the language in the eyes of the community through participation from a wide audience and the intentional learning and performance of the language; (3) Language Travels helped to build self-confidence in early language learners in the community through their participation in language teaching activities; (4) the success of Language Travels can be measured through parameters that can be short-term and/or long-term such as participant engagement, community feedback, programme continuity and increased use in the language.

Language Travels was conducted as a pilot project to explore the use of tourism as a means of prestige planning to empower communities of endangered languages to value and keep using their language. The emerging themes from the data point to the success of Language Travels in creating a language-based micro-economy surrounding the use of MPC in a tourism setting. As such, Language Travels can provide a model to adapt from for future projects seeking to achieve similar goals.

Második generációs magyarok nyelvválasztásáról és identitásáról egy kutatómunka alapján Az Uppsalai Egyetem PhD-hallgatójaként egy összehasonlító nyelvszociológiai doktori kutatómunkát készítettem 2004 és 2009 között, amelynek a középpontjában Svéd-és Finnországban élő második generációs magyarok nyelvi identitása állt. Munkámban különös hangsúlyt kaptak a magyar nyelv és kultúra ismeretével, nyelvválasztással, nyelhasználattal, nyelvi attitűdökkel, nyelvme-gőrzéssel, valamint a magyar-svéd illetve magyar-finn identitással kapcsolatos kérdések. Ezen kutatómunka eredményeként két kötetem született: 2011-ben doktori disszertációs munkám, mely az " Ungerska för rötternas skull ". Språkval och identitet bland andragenerationens ungrare i Sverige och Finland címet viseli (magyarul " Magyart a gyökerek kedvéért. " Nyelvválasztás és identitás második generációs magyarok körében Svéd-és Finnországban), valamint 2010-ben az ennek a munkának egyfajta háttérinformációt biztosító, a Svéd-és Finnországban élő magyarok történetébe és kultúrájába betekintést nyújtó tanulmány Ungrare, ungerska och ungersk kultur i Sverige och Finland (magyarul Magyarok, magyar nyelv és kultúra Svéd-és Finnországban). Az alábbiakban e két munkát, valamint kutatásom egy-egy eredményét mutatom be röviden és tömören. A Svéd-és Finnországban élő magyarok történetét és kultúráját feldolgo-zó bő 100 oldalas digitális kiadvány, Ungrare, ungerska och ungersk kultur i Sverige och Finland (2010), két északi országba bevándorolt magyar csoport éle-téről ad egy átfogó képet tudományos forrásokra, valamint néhány, a Svéd-és Finnországban élő magyarok életében kulcsfontosságú szerepet játszó személlyel készült interjúra támaszkodva. A mű olyan társadalmi és a bevándorló csoportra jellemző tényezők bemutatására tér ki, amelyek központi szerepet játszanak az egyéni és családi szinten történő nyelvmegőrzésben és egyben megvilágítja, hogy mily módon tér el egymástól a svéd és finn társadalom és hogy ez milyen hatással lehet a magyarok életére, valamint a magyar nyelv és kultúra megőrzésére. Be-mutatásra kerül először a két csoport bevándorlásának rövid története, valamint demográfiai és geográfiai felosztottsága statisztikai adatokra épülve és egy-egy térképpel illusztrálva. A második fejezetben a befogadó társadalom bevándorlási-és nyelvpolitikája, valamint a magyarokhoz való viszonyulása kerül bemutatásra. A harmadik fejezet a svéd-és finnországi magyarok szervezeti életét, a nyelv-és kultúra megőrzéséért tett fáradozását dolgozza fel részletesen. Ezután a svéd-és finnországi magyar média kap központi szerepet, míg a következő fejezet témája a magyar nyelv oktatása, különös hangsúlyt fektetve az anyanyelvi oktatás szervezettségére. Végül a két csoport szociokulturális sajátosságainak összehasonlítása szerepel.

Introduction: Why an Uchinaguchi Martial Arts Lexicon?

    One of the things that sets practitioners of Okinawan karate and kobudo, and martial arts in general, apart from other athletes is their strong interest in the culture from which their art originates. Many martial artists wish to learn more about the places, people and language of the home country of
their art, and often find themselves hosting teachers from abroad, travelling to their teachers' home countries or even studying additional languages in order to deepen their understanding. However, even as the world-wide practice of traditional Okinawan karate and kobudo has blossomed through the international exchange martial arts travel provides, Okinawan, the primary original language of these
martial arts, has not been transmitted to the next generation. If current language maintenance efforts are unsuccessful, the Okinawan language, including all the martial arts information contained in its nuances and rich vocabulary, will be lost.

    Japanese is frequently used in karate and kobudo practice to refer to techniques, weapons, kata, terms of respect, exercises and even numbers in the dojo. Speaking the Okinawan language in Okinawan karate and kobudo dojo, even within Okinawa, is currently a rare practice, and yet Okinawan
and international dojo provide an ideal place in which the language may be used. By using the original language of Okinawa, karate and kobudo learners would likely gain some insight into the cultural context of Okinawan martial arts practices that would improve their understanding of Okinawan
martial arts techniques. This would not only increase the number and fluency of Uchinaguchi speakers, but also promote awareness of Okinawan language and culture among the martial arts community and members of the general public. Since foreigners and the martial arts occupy a respected place in Okinawan and Japanese society, the usage of Okinawan by Okinawan and international martial artists
would increase the prestige of this language both domestically and internationally, thereby promoting its revitalization.

    In short, this book is for Okinawans who wish to revitalize Uchinaguchi, and also for the international community of karate and kobudo practitioners and others with an appreciation of Okinawan culture and language. The more reasons people have for using Okinawan now, the greater
the likelihood that traditional Okinawan language and culture will be maintained and passed on in the future.

The paper argues that language communities can be conceptualised as autopoietic systems aimed at their own reproduction, i.e. ensuring their own sustainability in time. Factors influencing language sustainability can be divided into three wide-ranging categories: (1) factors of the external environment, (2) factors of the internal environment, (3) ethnolinguistic vitality of the community. Like biological species that are unable to adapt to the changing environment, cultures and languages also become extinct when they are unable to function in the changed environment. To react to the changes in the external environment and to preserve their integrity, language communities attempt to develop their internal environment (social institutions) as fully as possible. The strength of the internal environment depends, crucially, on the third factor: the subjective ethnolinguistic vitality of the community, i.e. its ability to behave in interethnic communication as a distinctive collective entity. The article outlines the main components of all three sustainability factors and characterises their interaction.

Der Erhalt von Minderheitensprachen ist ein in der Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung aktuell vielfach diskutiertes Thema. Die Beschäftigung mit diesem Gegenstand stellt nicht nur das gängige Verständnis von „muttersprachlicher“ Kompetenz infrage, sondern erweitert auch eine idealisierte Vorstellung von balanciert Mehrsprachigen um Sprecher mit vielfältigeren Sprachprofilen. Dieser Band stellt nach einem umfassenden, interdisziplinär angelegten Überblick über das Forschungsfeld eine empirische quantitative Studie vor, die den Einfluss unterschiedlicher außersprachlicher Faktoren auf den Erhalt bzw. den Verlust der Minderheitensprache bei Jugendlichen der zweiten Migrantengeneration in Deutschland untersucht.

Ovaj prilog bavi se problematikom održavanja hrvatskog jezika među članovima drugog naraštaja australsko-hrvatske zajednice u drugom najvećem australskom gradu Melbourneu. Cilj priloga jest najprije prikazati opće podatke o brojčanosti hrvatske govorne zajednice u Australiji i u Melbourneu i prezentirati stopu 'prelaženja' na engleski kod djece čiji su roditelji u jednonacionalnim (i u jednojezičnim) bračnim zajednicama u usporedbi s djecom čiji su roditelji u dvonacionalnim (što skoro uvijek znači i u dvojezičnim) bračnim zajednicama. Glavni dio priloga sačinjava pregled najvažnijih domena u životu govornika manjinskog jezika i opis jezičnih kombinacija koje se koriste u tim životnim domenama. U zaključku su navedene prognoze o budućnosti hrvatskog jezika ukoliko sadašnji članovi druge generacije prenesu hrvatski na buduću treću generaciju, odn. na unučad hrvatskih doseljenika koji su se otisnuli na peti kontinent u pedesetim, šezdesetim i ranim sedamdesetim godinama prošlog stoljeća.


Abstract in English

This paper gives a brief statistical overview of the number of Croatian-speakers in Australia in relation to other ethnic or community languages and concentrates on aspects of language use amongst second-generation Croatian-Australians. Language maintenance or shift factors are framed within an examination of language use within sociolinguistic domains: home/family; personal/intimate; leisure/social life/religious affiliations; media; workplace/shopping/ neighbourhood; education; spouse/partner; (future) children. Second-generation members are generally English-dominant in terms of their proficiency and English is the unmarked choice in a large number of situations. Croatian is the unmarked choice with informants' parents and with others members of the first generation. However, the language variety 'Croatian and English' is used in a number of situations such as leisure, religious activities, the workplace and even eduation. Further, Croatian and English are frequently used as the languages to swear in, communicate with pets and to a lesser with the domain media. Few informants have children and so projections about language use with the succeeding, 'third' generation remain hypothetical. Informants do report a desire for their own future children to gain a knowledge of Croatian although there are a variety of responses to how this can be achieved.

Signs of Identity presents an transdisciplinary introduction to collective identity, using insights from social psychology, anthropology, sociology and the humanities. It takes the basic concept of semiotics – the sign – as its central notion, and specifies in detail in what ways identity can be seen as a sign, how it functions as a sign, and how signs of identity are related to those who have that identity. Recognizing that the sense of belonging is both the source of solidarity and discrimination, the book argues for the importance of emotional attachment to collective identity. The argument is supported by a large number of real life examples of how collective emotions affect group formation, collective action and intergroup relations. By addressing the current issues of nationalism, multiculturalism and social justice, and the controversies of authenticity and the Self, the book helps to stimulate discussion of the contested topics of identity in contemporary society.

В докладе представлен анализ того, как в середине 2010-х гг. осуществляется преподавание чувашского языка в образовательной системе Чувашии и как оно влияет на семейную передачу языка. Для сравнения изучены результаты внедрения моделей двуязычного образования в Канаде, Уэльсе, Стране Басков и Татарстане. Анализ ситуации с обучением чувашскому языку в Чувашии показывает снижение его позиции как языка обучения и уменьшение количества часов, посвященных ему как предмету. Прогнозируется ускорение утраты использования чувашского как языка домашнего общения, если не будут сломлены эти тенденции.

This chapter analyses the changing status of a minority Indian language, Malayalam, in Singapore and the factors that contribute to the three phrases of language use: language maintenance (1900 -1960s), language shift (1970s – 1980s) and language revitalization (1990 – 2019). In doing so, it examines (a) the factors that led to a shift away from Malayalam in a community where the language had once thrived (b) how these can be mitigated to allow the language to thrive at a community level and (c) the factors that contribute to its survival in the face of the demands made by current sociopolitical and economic imperatives within Singapore’s framework of bi/multilingualism. The chapter draws on data collected from an autobiographic narrative lens to highlight the effects of changes in demographic factors (such as the changes in population) and domains of use as well as the types of the community-driven initiatives that have kept the language alive, whilst pointing out the need for greater institutional support, moving forward.

This chapter provides a broad overview of the way in which language shift has progressed in the Ryukyus over the last century. It is organized roughly in chronological order, beginning with a brief introduction to the literature on Ryukyuan sociolinguistics. The main text is divided into two main sections. The first is a roughly chronological account of the language shift process as it has progressed in the Ryukyus to date. It deals first with the period of Japanese language spread in the public domains through education and punishment in the early twentieth century before summarizing the post-war era of broken intergenerational transmission and subsequent decline of Ryukyuan languages in private domains. The second section focuses on the observable effects of language shift on Ryukyuan people’s language repertoires, behaviors and attitudes in the present day.

This chapter discusses the phenomenon of 'Heritage Language' as a whole with a focus on Persian as a heritage language. Studying heritage languages is an emerging field, which has flourished within the past several decades and as migration and globalization grows, heritage languages are becoming more important. The first part of this chapter provides an original contribution by unifying the existing research on Persian as a heritage language. This is a crucial task because various researchers have already explored this topic from different perspectives. However, many scholars are not aware of the existing research, which causes them to start the work from the ground up. The second part of this chapter examines various characteristics of heritage Persian speakers in terms of their linguistic and metalinguistic abilities, compares their profiles with that of a native speaker and a second land-language learner, and sheds light on the current challenges within this field.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented changes worldwide and continues to affect societies and communities in a number of different ways. Challenges of linguistic minorities during the COVID-19 pandemic have been recently described in the light of the inaccessibility to emergency language services and in the light of linguistic racism pointing at dual pandemics that these communities are undergoing. The proposed study will contribute to the investigation of experience of multilingual communities by documenting language practices in multilingual families during COVID-19. Based on the perceived experiences of multilingual communities, we aim to provide an after-COVID-19 roadmap which is aimed at enhancing harmonious multilingual development. The project comes at a critical point in time for countries with multilingual populations, like Germany and Israel: the two countries have the largest proportions of preschool and school children with immigrant backgrounds of the first and second generation (Israel: 17%; Germany: 16.9%).

https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/bilingualism-and-covid/index

E’ risaputo quanto sia difficile determinare con esattezza le condizioni sufficienti per assicurare l’inversione della deriva linguistica. Nonostante ciò, l’introduzione della lingua locale o di minoranza nel sistema scolastico è ampiamente accettata come una delle poche condizioni necessarie per il mantenimento di tale lingua, oltre ad essere un diritto particolarmente difficile da ottenere. Facendo riferimento ai concetti di “diglossia” e “bilinguismo”, questo articolo esamina le dinamiche comunicative che caratterizzano le comunità linguistiche d’Italia, ponendosi il doppio scopo di (i) provvedere una tassonomia che inserisca tali dinamiche in un contesto più ampio e (ii) esaminare le implicazioni di tale tassonomia in relazione alla deriva linguistica ed alla sua eventuale inversione. Questo esame dimostra come l’Italia sia passata da una situazione di stabilità (diglossia) ad una di deriva linguistica (bilinguismo verticale), e rivela dunque l’immediata necessità di inserire le lingue locali nelle scuole come primo passo verso l’istituzione di un bilinguismo di tipo “orizzontale” attraverso il quale gli idiomi locali possano, sottoforma di lingue regionali, coesistere a livello istituzionale con la lingua di Stato pur non entrando in conflitto con essa.

Il est bien connu combien il est difficile de déterminer avec précision les conditions suffisantes pour assurer l'inversion de la dérive linguistique. Cependant, l'introduction de la langue locale ou minoritaire dans le système scolaire est largement acceptée comme l'une des rares conditions nécessaires pour le maintien de telle langue. Mais il est bien connu aussi que ce droit est particulièrement difficile à obtenir. En utilisant les concepts de "diglossie" et de "bilinguisme" cet article considère les forces dynamiques et communicatives qui caractérisent les communautés linguistiques d'Italie, ayant pour double but, (i) fournir une taxonomie qui intègre ces forces dynamiques dans un contexte plus ample et (ii) examiner les implications de cette taxonomie en relation à la dérive linguistique et à sa propre inversion éventuelle. Cette analyse démontre que l'Italie est passée d'une situation stable (diglossie) à une situation de dérive linguistique (bilinguisme vertical) et révèle donc la nécessité d'insérer dans l'immédiat les langues locales dans les écoles comme premier pas vers l'institution d'un bilinguisme de type "horizontal" à travers lequel les idiomes locales puissent, sous forme de langues régionales, coexister au niveau institutionnel avec la langue d'état, sans pour autant entrer en conflit avec celle-ci.

This paper presents a critical review of three theoretical perspectives on language maintenance (LM) and language shift (LS) in minority language contexts. These three perspectives are (1) LS and subtractive bilingualism, (2) reversing LS and additive bilingualism, and (3) a critical perspective on bi/multilingualism. The review aims to demonstrate that much of the LM/LS literature as reflected in the first two perspectives (i.e., LS and subtractive bilingualism, and reversing LS and additive bilingualism) has been dominated by an essentialised view of language and its related concepts (i.e., identity and community) as whole, separate and autonomous entities within the bounds of nation-states. Such perspectives tend to reinforce a simplistic view of LM/LS as an all-or-nothing phenomenon and to advance its pessimistic outlook as language loss or language death. Hence, for a more fruitful framework, this paper presents a critical perspective on bi/ multilingualism that draws on postmodern and poststructuralist theories (Heller 2007a, 2012; Makoni and Pennycook 2007; Pennycook 2010). By seeking to investigate bi/ multilingual speakers' local language ideologies and practices, this critical perspective enables not only a reconceptualisation of language, identity and community but also a more realistic and hopeful vision of bi/multilingualism in our pluralist, diverse, transnational and translocal world.

Studies of Louisiana French, a language long spoken by people in Louisiana, almost unanimously lament the inevitable death of the language, yet very little information exists on the strengths and weaknesses of the language in various media. These predictions are generally based only on the change in the number of speakers over
time obtained through census data (Bankston and Henry 1998; Henry 1997:186-187), which is notoriously unreliable (Blyth 1997:28-29; Dubois 1997:47; Brown 1997:224).

Census data does not differentiate who in the house is speaking French nor to what extent they speak French. The questions on the census are not necessarily consistent over time nor entirely clear in a linguistic climate where the terms French, Cajun French, Louisiana French, and Creole, may all mean different things to different people. This thesis took a different approach by measuring the strength of Louisiana French via its use in Cajun music. The language is used in the music often but its overall importance in defining the music, the fluency of the singers, and the form it takes—be it clearly Louisiana French or a mixture of Standard French as well—have not been thoroughly analyzed before. Two conclusions were arrived at: Louisiana French is an integral aspect of Cajun music and the French being used is highly marked as being Louisiana French. The music itself was defined using a method inspired by optimality theory, allowing the importance of French in the music to be compared to various other musical and extramusical features. The quality of the language used in each recording was then examined to  determine how native-like it was.

This chapter offers an overview of contemporary issues in language acquisition/socialization, shift, and revitalization in Latin America and the Caribbean. This diverse region is home to Indigenous peoples who are citizens of multiple nation-states with similar histories of colonization that, with a few notable exceptions, were precursors to contemporary language policies subjugating Indigenous languages. Native language acquisition and socialization are both supported and hindered by complex ideologies of language and revitalization at both local and national levels, in homes, and in schools. The authors offer examples of linguistic vitality programs along with ideas for local language revitalization projects.

Abstract: The article focusses on the sustainability of the nine largest language communities in the Baltic countries: Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian language communities, Russian speaking communities in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Võro regional language community in Estonia, Latgale regional language community in Latvia, and Polish language community in Lithuania.
The sustainability of these language communities is analysed in respect of their demographics, geographical distribution, institutional support and ethnolinguistic vitality. The coverage includes the impact of different macro-factors, such as globalization, EU ascendancy, Soviet post-colonialism, Nationalism, and Regionalism in the four-way competition between English, Russian, the state language and regional language in each of the three countries. The language political incentives to shape the language ecology are reviewed, and their impact discussed.
In the concluding section the article discusses the definitional issues of the notion of minority language: in the modern world, language dominance and language competition have moved beyond the nation state frame that has been the traditional reference point for defining minority languages. This shift necessitates a refinement of the notion of the minority language. The setting of the Baltic Countries could be instrumental for theoretical research on this topic.

The loss of a minority group's language may or may not be accompanied by the loss of the same group's identity. This study explores the factors that appear to condition such choices among minority communities. A number of language communities in advanced stages of language shift are chosen as case studies. The relevant factors are organized as either language internal or language ecology factors. In the concluding section, a pair of these factors is combined to show how such an analysis can suggest certain tendencies.

Chapter 2, Section 7(3), of the Kenyan constitution, of (The Re public of Kenya 2010) stipulates that the state shall develop, promote and protect the diversity of languages of the people of Kenya. Although this statement has no direct implication to the language of education policy in the Kenyan system of education, their implementation will largely affect the language policy in education. This paper explores ways in which the constitution can be used as a catalyst in the promotion; developments, protection of indigenous languages and at the same time use them as medium of instruction in schools in Kenya.

This book is an innovative contribution to contact linguistics as it presents a rarely studied but sizeable diaspora language community in contact with five
languages – English, German, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish – across four continents. Foregrounded by diachronic descriptions of heritage Croatian in long-standing minority communities, the book presents synchronically based studies of the speech of different generations of diaspora speakers. Croatian offers excellent scope as a base language to examine how lexical and morpho-structural innovations occur in a highly inflective Slavic language where external influence from Germanic and Romance languages appears evident. The possibility of internal factors is also addressed and interpretive models of language change are drawn on.

Discourses of Gaelic language revitalization in Scotland are analyzed as examples of Greg Urban’s ‘metaculture’ in order to gain a better understanding of how people attempt sociolinguistic change through minority language revitalization efforts. After describing the 18th-century emergence of ‘discourses of revitalization and redemption’ about Gaelic, this paper analyzes seven different themes or predications about Gaelic made in the 18th through 20th centuries to justify its salvation. I demonstrate how the discourses constitute metacultural and meta-linguistic commentaries on cultural and linguistic practices, and how previously circulating elements of culture, including language ideologies and affective stances, are dialogically contained within each creative revitalizing response and facilitate its circulation.

Whole article available at:
http://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/ahea/article/download/231/427

The following paper analyses the situation of the Csángó dialect spoken in the Romanian region of Moldavia. After a review of the global phenomenon of language death, its causes, and some resources to evaluate language vitality, the study focuses on the Csángó community and its Hungarian dialect. A short description of some fundamental facts about the group, such as ethnicity, religious affiliation, and linguistic background sets the base for an in-depth study of the language situation. In order to achieve that goal, the language was scrutinized according to the nine factors proposed by the UNESCO's Language Vitality and Endangerment (LVE) framework. The results confirm previous research in the field and show that Csángó is experiencing a decisive and most difficult phase in its history. It is expected, however, that this paper can contribute to create a successful planning to preserve not only Csángó but many other languages and dialects in similar situations.

This chapter focuses on varieties of Japanese spoken in the Ryukyus which have retained a substratum showing certain features of Ryukyuan languages. These varieties can be summarized under the term Ryukyu-substrate Japanese. The text provides insights into Ryukyu-substrate Japanese by summarizing the literature from 1930 to the present day, and traces the emergence of an apolitical linguistics approach in the Ryukyus. The reader is shown how past scholars viewed substratal influence as something that must be corrected through school education, while more recent scholars generally regard it as a positive marker of local identity. This comprehensive review of the studies to date allows the reader to understand how the foci of research have diverged into four main areas: survey questionnaires, theoretical classification, interviews and conversation analysis. The text concludes with a discussion of different scholars’ predictions as to the future of Ryukyu-substrate Japanese.

The role of religion for migrants in Australia has generated much interest in recent years. A growing area of scholarly inquiry is how religion can assist in migrant language maintenance. This thesis looks at the interaction between language and religion within the goal of heritage language maintenance and how this plays out in a particular migrant religious institution and for a particular ethnoreligious group, namely Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus. It is the result of an 18-month ethnographic study situated in a Tamil Hindu temple in Australia.

The study investigates the role of the Tamil language in the temple, the types of language practices that the second generation employ in the space, and the relevance of the Tamil language and Hindu religion in the lives of second-generation devotees. It provides an insight into how migrant youth skilfully use their heritage language and English to achieve communication and index their hybrid identifications as they grow up in Anglo-dominant, multicultural Australia. It also highlights the important role played by the temple in supporting these migrants.

At a macro-level, this study shows how the temple, as a religious institution, not only provides a space for Hindu worship, but one for socialising, cultural identification and the transmission of language, religion and culture. In Sri Lanka the Tamil language and Hindu religion are closely linked in a Tamil Hindu culture and this strong language-religion ideology is reflected in the language practices of the temple. However, in the Australian setting, the temple faces sociocultural change including an increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse congregation and disengagement by the second generation. Therefore there is a tension between the extent to which the temple remains linked to its Tamil identity and to which it must change its policies to accommodate those who do not speak Tamil.

On the micro-level, as an insight into language practices for the second generation, the thesis focuses on one class in the temple’s Tamil-medium religious school. Naturalistic linguistic data collected from a small class of teenage devotees reveals that translanguaging is the usual code for interactions. While English is dominant in the students’ lives, practices in the classroom show that approximately 30 per cent of their speech contains Tamil, thus evidencing the language-religion ideology being transmitted to the next generation. English and Tamil features perform particular but also overlapping functions in the classroom. The students and teacher create a safe space where they can use their individual repertoires to explore and challenge their beliefs and positions in terms of their heritage culture and religion. Through the analysis of selected linguistic extracts, the multicompetence, creativity, criticality, cooperation and subversion of the students is evident in their language use.

While pure Tamil is not necessarily used in the class, the ways in which Tamil features are adopted to signal a connection to Tamil culture, the ethnoreligious community and to perform a Tamil Hindu identity are highly significant. It forms part of the picture of a group of second-generation migrants who can practice their heritage language, religion and culture with confidence in Australian society, and at the same time, bring their strong proficiency in English into these expressions of heritage, identity and faith.

Buku ini mendeskripsikan salah satu pemikiran Filsuf Filsafat Bahasa yang berasal dari Austria Ludwig Wittgenstein yang tertuang di dalam bukunya yang fenomenal Philosophical Investigations (1953). Pada buku inilah pemikiran Wittgenstein menemukan bentuk yang khas dan mempengaruhi perkembangan  pelbagai aliran filsafat dan ilmu pengetahuan. Pemikirannya itu disebutnya sebagai Language-Games (Permainan Bahasa). Bagi Wittgenstein, bahasa itu seperti permainan olah raga yang memunyai aturannya masing-masing. Di dalam aturan-aturan itulah ditemukan suatu bentuk kehidupan (form of life),yakni bahasa berkelindan dengan pola aktivitas dan karakter manusia, dan makna bahasa diproses melalui ekspresi kebersamaan dan kodrat pengguna bahasa. Teori Permainan Bahasa yang diciptakannya itu salah satunya menjadi dasar bagi teori Tindak Tutur John langshaw Austin.

Selain eksplorasi teoritis, buku yang ditulis oleh dosen Filsafat Bahasa di Fakultas Bahasa & Sastra, Universitas Nasional, Jakarta, ini juga menerapkan teori dari Wittgenstein tersebut ke dalam  penelitian tentang pemertahanan bahasa.

Berdasarkan penelitian dengan menggunakan teori dari Wittgenstein tersebut, penulis buku ini mendapati bahwa paradigma yang digunakan untuk menjelaskan isu pemertahanan  bahasa tidak cukup jika hanya  disandarkan pada teori strukturalisme Ferdinand de Saussure. Sebab, premis-premis yang dibangun oleh Wittgenstein memberikan pemahaman yang lebih komprehensif ketimbang premis-premis yang dibangun oleh de Saussure ketika harus berhadapan dengan isu pemertahanan bahasa.

The existence of language surely cannot be separated from our daily life. Through language, the interaction among tribes and religions can be delivered smoothly. As a system of communication, language also helps humans to complete all of their activities without facing the scarcity in understanding of one’s another language. That is under the condition they share the same knowledge of a certain language and utter it as the medium of communication. They also share the same understanding in all of their vernacular aspects, like the grammatical, structure, and the choice of words (either it is formal or not).  And they should have agreed about some puns and slangs that are allowed to use in the middle of conversation. But how about people from different ethnic groups or tribes understanding what people from out of their groups say? Are they going to face difficulties as the result of not having clear mind about the dominant language they find in society?

Increasingly, the field of linguistics is highlighting and attending to global patterns of diminishing linguistic diversity but to a significant extent it remains unclear what the loss of a language actually entails in cultural terms. In the Roper River Region of the Northern Territory few Marra people speak their heritage language, shifting almost completely to becoming a Kriol-speaking population. This study considers the Marra language and its speakers and the Kriol spoken by young adults to explore loss and maintenance evidenced in the lexicons of the two languages and cultural and linguistic practices of speakers of both languages. A detailed timeline embeds the study in its social and cultural context (Chapter 2), populating it with stories of those whose lives intersect various stages in the shift. A survey of the lexicon of Kriol (Chapter 3) demonstrates the extent to which Marra lexical material and associated denotata have infiltrated the newer, supplanting language. This survey reveals a previously under-documented prevalence of Marra verbs in Kriol (Chapter 4), belying popular notions that substrate lexical material most commonly occurs in nominal classes. Person reference and the domain of kinship are considered (Chapter 5). A comparison of kin categories and kinterms used by Marra and Kriol speakers shows that Kriol speakers use fewer kinterms and have collapsed some distinctions found in Marra. Yet many categories and some lexical forms are maintained in Kriol, while the use of kinterms in person reference and other pragmatic uses, such as politeness strategies, is similar across both languages. Additionally, Kriol speakers have innovated upon their kinship system in some ways not attested in Marra or English. Finally, the domain of ethnobiology is considered, with specific attention paid to traditional medicine – a domain typically thought to clearly show the effects of shifts in language and lifestyle. A first pharmacopeia of Marra bush medicine is presented (Chapter 6), followed by a quantitative study of Kriol speakers’ knowledge and use of bush medicine (Chapter 7). This reveals a shift in the salience of ethnobiological taxa in relation to the ceremonial lives of Kriol speakers and an overall reduced knowledge base. However, Kriol speakers are found to be maintaining core health beliefs pertaining to bush medicine, and display a greater degree of knowledge, usage and nomenclature than had been previously described.

Given the large-scale social disruption and lifestyle changes that have occurred since Marra ceased being transmitted to children, it is impossible to reach definitive conclusions about the manifestations that the loss of the language has for the ontology of Kriol-speaking Marra people. This study describes numerous continuations of lexical use, pragmatics and cultural practices among Kriol speakers, alongside expected areas where Kriol speakers’ cultural practices and language use does not reflect the knowledge of their Marra speaking forebears and the intricacies of their language. Given the examples of maintenance and innovation, I warn against simplistic negative generalisations about the effects of language loss on the culture of generations who live on the other side of language shift boundaries.