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Language Maintenace and Language Shift

Language maintenance

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28 views1 page

Language Maintenace and Language Shift

Language maintenance

Uploaded by

munawarshah9686
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Language Maintenance and Language Shift

Define language shift and language death/loss?


Language shift is the process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking
another language. It is also known as language transfer and language replacement.
Language death or loss is the end or extinction of a language. It is also called language
extinction in which the last native speaker has died.
Factors contributing to language shift:
Factors contributing to language shift are economic, social and political factors; demographic
factors; and attitudes and values.
The economic factor:
Obtaining work is the most obvious economic reason for learning another language. In English-
dominated countries, for instance, people learn English in order to get good jobs. This results in
bilingualism. The high demand from industries for employees with fluent English has
successfully encouraged job seekers to equip themselves with English. In fact, being competent
in English leads to well-paid jobs.
Social factor:
Language shift occurs when the community sees no reason to take active steps to maintain their
ethnic language. When a community of speakers moving to a region or country whose language
is different from theirs, there is a tendency to shift to the new language. Every time an
immigrant learns the native language of the new country and passes it down to children in place
of the old country language. For example, when a migrant minority group moves to a
predominately monolingual society dominated by one majority group language in all the major
institutional domains – school, TV, radio, newspaper, government administration, courts, work –
language shift will be unavoidable unless the community takes active steps to prevent it.
Political factor:
A rapid shift occurs when people are anxious to ‘get on’ in a society where knowledge of the
second language is a prerequisite for success.
Demographic factor:
Resistance to language shift tends to last longer in rural than in urban areas because rural groups
tend to be isolated from the centers of political power for longer. The rural people can meet
most of their social needs in the ethnic or minority language. For example, Ukrainians in Canada
who live out of town on farms have maintained their ethnic language better than those in the
towns because of their relative social isolation.
Attitudes and values: Language shift tends to be slower among communities where the
minority language is highly valued. When the minority group support the use of the minority
language in a variety of domains, it helps them to resist the pressure from the majority group to
switch to the majority group language.
How can a minority language be maintained?
If the minority language is considered an important symbol of a minority group’s identity, the
language is likely to be maintained longer. For example, Polish people have regarded language
as very important for preserving their identity in the many countries they have migrated to, and
they have consequently maintained Polish for three to four generations. The language also can
be maintained if families from a minority group live near each other and see each other
frequently or if they have a frequent contact with their homeland.
What is language revival and how is a language revived?
Language revival is when people try to make a language that is not spoken or is spoken very
little, spoken more often again. While language death is what happens when a language is not
used by the people who spoke it before. Thus, language revival wants to save a language that is
dead or endangered.
The language can be revived through television channel or bilingual education program. The
bilingual education programmes start from preschool to tertiary level. An effective bilingual
schooling has generally involved a process known as ‘immersion’. Children are immersed in the
language and it is used to teach them science, maths and social studies, for instance. They are
not ‘taught’ the language. It is used as a medium of instruction to teach them the normal school
curriculum.

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