Language death, billingualism and multilingualism

language planning goals, examples of corpus and usage planning, linguistic diversity, diglossia, language shift, globalisation of English, critical approaches to linguistic imperialism, practice of LLP in selected regions and countries: North America, EU, UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Malaysia, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, the Baltic states, Uzbekistan

A study of the limits of multilingual literary expression in print culture. Beginning with the insight that multilingual literature defies simple translation, Brian Lennon examines the resistance multilingual literature offers to book publication. Looking closely at the limit of multilingual literary expression and the literary journalism, criticism, and scholarship that comments on multilingual work, In Babel’s Shadow presents a critical reflection on the fate of literature in a world gripped by the crisis of globalization.

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.

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?

Previous research has shown that the Boro people, also known as the Shinasha, are in the process of shifting from the Borna language to Oromo and Amharic (Lemma and Wedekind 2002). However, the qualitative information gleaned from sociolinguistic interviews had not yet been quantified by the testing of bilingual proficiency. A new survey of the Boro area, completed in 2004, has combined bilingualism testing with a study of social interaction and language attitudes. This paper will present the results of the survey, showing the patterns of language vitality and language endangerment in several different Boro communities. The vitality of Borna across a wider area than expected, combined with the Boro people’s interest in preserving their language, points to the possibility that language shift will be stabilized and eventually reversed.

The study is based mainly on the author’s field materials, collected between 1993 and 1997 during an ethno-linguistic research assignment. These materials include systematised observations concerning the sociolinguistic situation in the area, as well as linguistic data pertaining to language use of Pashtun migrants living and working there. The aim of the study is to define the place of Pashto speakers in the multiethnic and multilingual environment of the Northern Areas of Pakistan and to analyse the impact of this environment on their communication patterns and language use.
        Chapter one provides an overview of the socio-linguistic situation prevalent in Pakistan's Pashto speaking core areas. It contains an outline of Pashto's place within the Pakistan's language environment, a short overview of Pashto's dialectal divisions. Pashto is one of the more than 60 languages current on the territory of Pakistan, where it is spoken by about 23 million people, mostly living in the North Western Frontier Province, in Baluchistan and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The language is divided into a great number of varieties, most of them identified with one specific geographical area, some of them of supra regional occurrence. Over the centuries Pashto has been in close contact with a number of small neighbouring languages influencing their lexicon and grammar, and sometimes even replacing them. At the same time, Pashto has been and continues to be influenced by important supra regional languages, mostly by Persian, but also by Turkic and Indo-Arian languages.
        Chapter two investigates the socio-linguistic situation in the Northern Areas of Pakistan. On their territory in the mid-1990s were living and interacting more than ten large ethno-linguistic groups, who were speaking languages belonging to the Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan, Iranian and Turkic language families. The numerically most widespread local languages were Dardic Shina and Khowar, Burushaski (a language isolate) and Balti (western Tibetan). Indo-Aryan Gujari, Turkic Uighur and Eastern Iranian Pashto were spoken by minorities; Urdu (member of the Central group of Indo-Arian languages) was functioning as the regional lingua franca.
        Chapter three outlines, mainly on the base of oral sources, the settlement history of Pashto speakers in Pakistan’s Northern Areas over the last 150 years, beginning in colonial times and concentrating on the decades following the opening of the Karakoram Highway in 1978. Interwoven with the narrative are childhood memories and life stories re-counted by the Pashto speakers interviewed by the author. Their stories provide a voice to the Pashto speaking migrants themselves and give the reader a fascinating insight into their lives.
        Chapter four deals with the dynamics of the Pashtuns' migration process and the patterns of linguistic interactions to be observed among contemporary migrants. The beginning of Pashtun migration to the Northern Pakistan can be dated back to the 19th century. According to their way of life, the Pasthuns of the Northern Areas were divided into two groups: permanent and temporary migrants. Permanent migrants were using their mother tongue mostly in the family domain, whereby the younger generation tended to switch from Pashto to the local dominant language while communicating among themselves each other. Temporary migrants used their mother tongue in all communication situations with other Pashtuns. Urdu was widely known among the migrants and employed by them while communicating with non-Pashto speakers.
        Chapter five deals with the phenomenon of language shift among permanent Pashtun migrants. Similar to the Pashtun core areas, also in the Northern Areas Pashto was a perceived as a strong identity marker. This perception played a key role in the decision of permanent Pashtun migrants to transmit their mother tongue to their children. In the mid-1990s for a majority of permanent Pashtun migrants, most of them living in urban settings, the preservation of their traditional mother tongue was indispensable: A comparatively smaller group of permanent Pashtun migrant families, most of them settled in rural areas, was in the process of giving up Pashto and shifting to the local majority langue.
        An annex contains a political map of the Northern Areas and adjoining regions and a table demonstrating the continuity of the use of Pashto among permanent Pashtun migrants within the family domain.

This study examines schwa deletion and insertion in the Louisiana Regional French (LRF) spoken in Ville Platte, Evangeline Parish, Louisiana. Since stylistic range tends to contract towards an informal register in dying languages (Dressler 1972, Dorian 1977), and other varieties of LRF exhibit reduced register differentiation (Rottet 2001), the investigation tests whether or not there is a relationship between the formality of the speech event and schwa behaviour. The analysis shows that schwa has a highly variable phonetic realization in LRF. Furthermore, instances of deletion reveal that speech register and a word’s status (root or clitic) play a role in schwa deletion. Moreover, environments encouraging schwa epenthesis underline this vowel’s interaction with morpho-syntactic, syllabic and pronunciation constraints. A quantitative analysis of these processes is complemented by an Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993, McCarthy & Prince 1994) analysis.

Iran as a linguistically diverse country, proved to be a rich venue for linguistic studies. Hence, the preservation and protection of linguistic variants merit twofold consideration. Adopting a sociological approach to Bakhtiari dialect in Ardal, a region in Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari province, the present study is an attempt to investigate the rate of decline or dynamism regarding a number of social characteristics such as age, sex, occupation, and education. Contrary to the results of Zolfaghari (1376) who firmly believed in a relatively good condition of the usage of Bakhtiari in Masjed-Soleiman, statistical analysis of the current data showed that a gradual and relative decline of Bakhtiari is felt in Ardal. Finally, according to the classification of Kincade (1991) and due to the findings of the research, Bakhtiari can be classified as an endangered language, and on the other hand, drawing on the classification proposed by Wurm (1998), focusing on weaker languages, it can be classified as a potentially endangered language.

Jól ismert tény, hogy a nyelvek gyakran hamarabb tűnnek el, mint a beszélőik. Az utolsó
beszélők gyakran egymástól távol élnek, és fi zikai lehetőségük sincs használni a nyelvüket.
Az elszigetelt (potenciális) beszélők nem alkothatnak nyelvközösséget, ezért a nyelvközös-
ség hamarabb eltűnik, mint maga a nyelv. A beszélő is túlélheti a nyelvet, ha elfelejti a nyel-
vet (természetesen ekkor megszűnik beszélőnek lenni).
Kevésbé nyilvánvaló, hogy a nyelv akkor is kihalhat, ha az azt beszélő közösség
lényegében érintetlen marad. Mégis, ez a tipikus helyzet a bevándorló közösségek eseté-
ben. Az alábbiakban arra szeretnék rámutatni, hogy ez a jelenség általános az oroszországi
kisebbségi nyelvközösségek esetében is. Ezekben az esetekben a helyzet szándékos nyelv-
gyilkosság következménye.
Az első részben leírom, milyen körülményekkel szembesültem a Hanti-Manysi Auto-
nóm Körzetben 2009-ben. A második részben felvázolom azokat a történelmi körülménye-
ket, a közösségek nyelvhasználatának változásait, melyek ehhez a helyzethez vezettek, és
amelyek a nyelvgyilkosság bizonyítékai. A harmadik részben arra hívom fel a fi gyelmet,
hogy eredményeim milyen következtetések levonását teszik szükségessé a nyelvi doku-
mentációval kapcsolatban.

... Come Agostino, anche Attilio ha imparato il bovese in condizioni di uso comunitario: ... Dall'analisi delle retroversioni fornite da Agostino, Attilio e Bruno per 26 forme riconducibili a suffissazione con -ía, al suffisso non sembrano però attribuite le funzioni appena descritte. ...

Percezione del repertorio multilingue e selezione lessicale nel greco di Calabria Maria Francesca Stamuli L'enclave greco-calabra si estende sul territorio aspromontano della provincia di Reggio; Condofuri, Amendolea, Gallicianò, Roccaforte e il suo Chorìo, Rochudi e il suo Chorio, Bova sono i comuni della valle dell'Amendolea, a ridosso dello stretto di Messina, la cui parlata greca, insieme a quella di Cardeto, è stata documentata a partire dal XIX secolo. Con la legge 482 del 1999, il territorio della minoranza storica si allarga a Bova Marina, Palizzi, San Lorenzo, Melito Porto Salvo, Staiti, Samo, Montebello Jonico, Bagaladi, Motta San Giovanni, Brancaleone, alla stessa città di Reggio; di queste comunità non si possiede, circa l'alloglossia, alcun dato. Per quel che riguarda l'enclave tradizionale, invece, la varietà è ormai uscita fuori dall'uso comunitario ovunque 1 ; gli studi linguistici condotti sull'area ne segnalano la progressiva dismissione già a partire dagli anni '50. Oggi non si può sentire parlare in greco che su richiesta 2 ; il dialetto romanzo è il mezzo di comunicazione abituale.

Despite the status of Irish as the first official language in Ireland under Article 8 of the constitution, and current policies such as the Official Languages Act of 2003 which state that Irish and Irish speakers are entitled the same rights and privileges as English and English speakers, Irish is still in a marginalised position within the public and private sectors. Official policies have been criticised as simply lip service, or what Joshua Fishman, a language revitalisation scholar who was hired by the Irish government as a policy consultant, termed “a master plan to do nothing”. The establishment of various Irish-language media platforms has caused a shift in the linguistic political landscape, giving Irish a foundation on which it may re-establish itself as a relevant, modern language. This paper will examine two aspects of minority language media: how it may productively aid linguistic revitalisation, allowing for a constant linguistic exposure and socioeconomic motivations to learn the language, and how it may serve as a vehicle for the promotion of minority rights.

This chapter examines the use and function of neo-Punic inscriptions and neo-Punic/Latin bilingual inscriptions in Roman North Africa, especially Lepcis Magna. It considers how and why Punic was used as a language for monumental euergetism alongside Latin - both the public setting of the Punic texts, and the similarities and differences in phrasing between the two languages in bilingual texts such as the building inscription on the theatre of Lepcis Magna (AD 1-2), where differences in the Latin and Punic versions of the text point up differences in epigraphic habit between Latin and Punic and are clearly designed to appeal to different readerships. Conversely, brickstamps of the early second century AD show idiomatic corresponsions, where Punic stamps on locally produced bricks render the normal Latin epigraphic formulae on the imported bricks from the Tiber Valley used in the same projects. The chapter also tracks the persistence of Punic epigraphy on monumental buildings into the second century AD, examines the changes in the contexts in which Punic texts appear, and the emergence of Latino-Punic inscriptions in rural Tripolitania.

The term 'Death' sounds stark in every of its form with unwelcoming effect whether it is a death of human being or of a language. The diversity of the worldly languages is getting shrunk day by day because of the some major reasons like dominancy, suppression, prejudice and death. One of the major causes behind the reduction of the languages is cultural genocide. The present paper is about this specific area of Genocide.

Pojęcie "wyspy" oznacza obszar zamieszkany przez przedstawicieli danego etnosu w izolacji od Ojczyzny - ich "kontynentu" językowego i kulturowego. Celem publikacji był interdyscyplinarny opis izolowanych wspólnot słowiańskich w obcym - słowiańskim i niesłowiańskim otoczeniu, przede wszystkim z perspektywy językoznawczej oraz socjologiczno-etnologicznej.