Reversing Language Shift: How to Re-awaken a Language Tradition: Proceedings of the Conference FEL Xiv, 13-15 September 2010, Carmarthen Wales - Couverture souple

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0956021026 ISBN 13 : 9780956021021

Editeur : Foundation for Endangered Languages, 2010

Synopsis

Language revitalisation is now receiving greater attention from academics, language planners, politicians, institutions and organisations worldwide. A step further than documentation, language revitalisation, supported by active policy, offers the possibility of reversing a shift that threatens over half of the world s languages. Many take language vitality to be symbolic of national and cultural identity. In the Celtic regions, in particular, governments are taking a leading role in the struggle to reverse language shift by various efforts including attempts to increase the number of speakers of the respective languages. Wales provides a good vantage point from which to consider prospects for reversing language shift. It has experience in gauging levels of political support at local, national and international levels. Census figures show an increase in the number of users of Welsh, especially amongst the younger generation, which can be attributed, like the language revival in Estonia, to the education system. However, some academics doubt whether such increases in speaker numbers lead to increased language fluency and use. While efforts to achieve the Welsh Assembly's goal of a bilingual Wales have led to demands for greater legislative powers and autonomy on linguistic issues, the constant net immigration into the traditional heartlands is steadily reducing the density of Welsh-speakers there. Language revitalisation requires the collaboration of a wide range of expertise. Institutional, political, and local support all play crucial roles, along with educationists and language planners. But how can these, working together, have practical effects in the daily language usage of ordinary people, and how can they achieve the goal of slowing down language erosion and revitalising language tradition? Welsh-speakers have been in the forefront of last few decades of active resistance to language decline. They have been inspirational role-models, in a movement for language protection which has become global, despite the vast diversity of situations in which minority languages find themselves threatened. This engaging level of success is particularly impressive in a language area that has a long, and highly permeable, border with the homeland of the most dominant language in the world, not laughingly called The Queen's English. English Royalty in fact has an ambivalent record in service to the Welsh language. It was the one Welsh dynasty of English kings and queens, the Tudors (Tewdwr ultimately from Greek theódo:ros God-gift !) which sadly played the key role, both to doom and to redeem Cymraeg in the 16th century. Henry VIII, himself son of a king who had taken power with Welsh and Cornish support, passed the fatal Act of Union of 1536, including the provision: 'from henceforth no person or persons that use the Welsh speech or language shall have or enjoy any manner of office or fees within this realm of England, Wales or other the Kings dominion'. Yet it was his daughter Elizabeth I who offered the redeeming thread of hope by ordering, in 1563, the Welsh translation of the Bible. It was fully delivered by William Morgan in 1588, and ultimately ensured that Christian worship in Welsh would remain central in Wales. That was then. This is now. And there is now room for realistic hope of a flourishing future for Welsh. To think this is not wishful thinking . In fact, if anyone should be thought guilty of indulging a taste for pipedreams, it should rather be the dreary prophets of the exclusive triumph of English, triumphalist though they have long been, and too often still are. Welsh is not alone. All enthusiasts for cultural wealth, diversity and independence stand to gain if ways can be found to reverse language shift, and so re-awaken endangered language traditions.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Hywel Glyn Lewis, a PhD graduate of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, co-ordinates Bilingual Studies at Trinity College, Carmarthen, Wales. He also pursues research in bilingual education for the Welsh Assembly Government. He is widely experienced as a teacher and inspector in secondary education: over the years, he has seen a dramatic increase in the number of pupils from non-Welsh-speaking homes, usually achieving academic outcomes superior to their English-only cohorts. *** Nicholas Ostler holds a PhD in theoretical linguistics from MIT. After 3 years as a lecturer at Japanese Universities, he then worked for two decades as a consultant in natural language technology in the UK. Since 1995, he has been chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, based in Bath. Most recently he has written 'Empires of the Word - a language history of the world' (2005), 'Ad Infinitum - a biography of Latin' (2007), and 'The Last Lingua Franca - English until the return of Babel' (2010).

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Foundation for Endangered Languages
• Date d'édition: 2010
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0956021026
• ISBN 13: 9780956021021
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 195
• Éditeur: Lewis Hywel Glyn, Ostler Nicholas
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible