Re: Language revival revisited
Posted: Sun May 17, 2015 6:40 am
But those are all part of a dialect continuum. Welsh, Irish, and English do not belong to any such continuum with each other.
Only one of the best things to come out of British telly.marconatrix wrote:*LOL!!*Yng wrote:There already is plenty of media in Welsh. Some of it even gets consumed.
Rwy mor grac oherwydd na alla i gael y fersiwn Cymraeg fan hyn.Dewrad wrote:Only one of the best things to come out of British telly.marconatrix wrote:*LOL!!*Yng wrote:There already is plenty of media in Welsh. Some of it even gets consumed.
Actually, when I traveled in the Balkans I was pretty surprised by the amount of English people spoke, particularly when comparing those countries to certain other Central European countries. Not blown away, but it's something I noticed. In my experience, people in the former Yugoslavia really do have more English than people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and I think the main reason for this is subtitling vs. dubbing. I'm speaking particularly about a passive understanding of the spoken language, particularly among people who either never learned English in school at all or claim not to have paid attention in class. I suppose you could say that Balkan people are more exuberant and extroverted than the reticent Central Europeans, and it may be that English was taught more widely in the former Yugoslavia than in Czechoslovakia prior to 1989 for political reasons or that more English-speaking tourists visited, or that people there are more likely to have relatives who are living abroad. But yeah, this is something I've noticed all over Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, so make of it what you will.linguoboy wrote:Are you blown away by the English competence of people from the Balkans? Or the Portuguese? Moreover, what proves the causation isn't the other way around?
Creda neu beidio, well gen i'r fersiwn dwyieithog na'r fersiwn Cymraeg. Dwi'n meddwl bod Mathias yn fwy diddorol fel allanolwr di-gymraeg. (Hefyd, mae o mor ffit â ffwc, yn y marn fi...)linguoboy wrote:Rwy mor grac oherwydd na alla i gael y fersiwn Cymraeg fan hyn.Dewrad wrote:Only one of the best things to come out of British telly.marconatrix wrote:*LOL!!*Yng wrote:There already is plenty of media in Welsh. Some of it even gets consumed.
Da iawn, dyma un yn y Gymraeg i gyd : S02E01 Welsh with Eng. subs :Dewrad wrote:Creda neu beidio, well gen i'r fersiwn dwyieithog na'r fersiwn Cymraeg. Dwi'n meddwl bod Mathias yn fwy diddorol fel allanolwr di-gymraeg. (Hefyd, mae o mor ffit â ffwc, yn y marn fi...)linguoboy wrote:Rwy mor grac oherwydd na alla i gael y fersiwn Cymraeg fan hyn.Dewrad wrote:Only one of the best things to come out of British telly.marconatrix wrote:*LOL!!*Yng wrote:There already is plenty of media in Welsh. Some of it even gets consumed.
Within Canada, Quebec should be red; everything is dubbed, even adult stuff. However, when in Montreal, you can simply go and watch the original version without any sub.linguoboy wrote:
Key: "Dark blue is dubbing for children only, otherwise subtitling. Purple is dubbing in all cases except non-children's films. Red is all dubbing. "
Because language switch does not actually work the way most people have written here. The most important thing is not its use in media; it's its use in daily life.sirdanilot wrote:that goes for standard Dutch. Nobody is arguing that standard Dutch is endangered. I was talking about the dialects (Zeeuws in my case) which are still going strong despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing in terms of orthography, media or literature in the dialect. Even the regional TV station does everything in standard Dutch, only sporadically having a tiny thing on the dialect (this is word X and it has etymology Y).
This all sounds reasonable. In light of this, though, I find your post earlier in this thread about the incursion of English in Japan even more peculiar, so I'd like to ask you to explain it a bit more. 6-year-olds growing up in Japan, with Japanese-speaking peers, will certainly learn Japanese and not English, right? I didn't have the impression that there is a very large community of native English-speakers in Japan, so it's not like these children, no matter how rich their parents, will be growing up with English-speaking peers.Yiuel Raumbesrairc wrote: Because language switch does not actually work the way most people have written here. The most important thing is not its use in media; it's its use in daily life.
Languages can be quite resilient in very isolated situations. French has endured without much disturbance in most of Quebec, New Acadia and Northeastern Ontario; the latter despite being in an environment that provided almost no media in French. It's probably why Welsh remainded a lot stronger than Irish.
However, Welsh, Irish and French in many parts of Canada, the problem is not really about media, but about daily life.
Children have a huge tendency to level differences. For most of the first six years of my life, speaking French led nowhere; my peers were English more often than not. French was only the language I'd use at home and ostensibly as school. (French schools.) This resulted in my own awkward acquisition of English as a native language, which has surprised many an online person (many expect a thick French/Quebecker accent; I am always happy to disappoint).
How can their using English later in an academic context, even from as early as kindergarten, cause them to lose proficiency with the Japanese language? Do they stop talking to their friends, family, people at stores? It seems unbelievable. Do they switch to using English with everybody? It seems inconceivable. It sounds like a myth to me, or like an incomplete story that's missing part of the context. By "losing proficiency," are you just talking about character amnesia? If so, it's a rather misleading way of putting it. And the idea that these people lose spoken Japanese proficiency just seems impossible to me: they can't be isolated in their English-speaking classroom all the time, and they and the majority of their peers have Japanese as a native language. Even if they consume English media, read English books, watch English TV, I can't imagine they stop using spoken Japanese to speak to people in their day-to-day life.Yiuel Raumbesrairc wrote:I mean there are some kids going from Kindergarten to University in English only, with some of them losing proficiency in Japanese.
I must first say that the emergence of such situations is, for now, rare. But the fact that it exist where I am, which is rather isolated countryside region, forces me to wonder if its not stronger in urban areas, which tend to be the most innovative places. However, this is how it goes.Sumelic wrote:This all sounds reasonable. In light of this, though, I find your post earlier in this thread about the incursion of English in Japan even more peculiar, so I'd like to ask you to explain it a bit more. 6-year-olds growing up in Japan, with Japanese-speaking peers, will certainly learn Japanese and not English, right? I didn't have the impression that there is a very large community of native English-speakers in Japan, so it's not like these children, no matter how rich their parents, will be growing up with English-speaking peers.
Because of this fact, I find it difficult to believe what you said earlier:How can their using English later in an academic context, even from as early as kindergarten, ccause them to lose proficiency with the Japanese language? Do they stop talking to their friends, family, people at stores? It seems unbelievable. Do they switch to using English with everybody? It seems inconceivable. It sounds like a myth to me, or like an incomplete story that's missing part of the context. By "losing proficiency," are you just talking about character amnesia? If so, it's a rather misleading way of putting it. And the idea that these people lose spoken Japanese proficiency just seems impossible to me: they can't be isolated in their English-speaking classroom all the time, and they and the majority of their peers have Japanese as a native language. Even if they consume English media, read English books, watch English TV, I can't imagine they stop using Japanese to speak to people in their day-to-day life.Yiuel Raumbesrairc wrote:I mean there are some kids going from Kindergarten to University in English only, with some of them losing proficiency in Japanese.
There certainly is, and I was (still am?) guilty of quite a loss in academic register in English. (Though it seems to be strong enough to have passing grades.)Sumelic wrote:Thanks, I'm a lot less confused about this now. There certainly is a world of difference between not acquiring the written academic register of a language vs. losing proficiency in colloquial spoken language.
Japan is dissimilar to both in many ways. For instance, there are no English speaking authorities, which precludes many total all-English moves. So, in many ways, it is far from the position of French in both Brussels and Algeria. Academia is still done in Japanese. And the Japanese government would not, for now, go as far as Iceland and produce a huge report in English only.Thank you also for mentioning the case of Brussels; I hadn't known about its linguistic history before now, and it was interesting to read about. It may be similar; but then again there are also differences; who can tell. I was sort of mentally comparing the possible, projected future Japan where English has become the dominant academic language with Algeria, where from what I understand French is the main academic language used, and when Arabic is used it is generally Standard Arabic, which is nearly a different language (there has also been some use of English in academic contexts). Despite the fact that the Algerian native language is not used for academic writing, as far as I can tell it doesn't seem like the language is in any immediate danger of disappearing. There are plenty of French loanwords in the vernacular, of course, just as Japanese has a fair amount of English loanwords, but no amount of loanwords is sufficient on its own to effect language change.
Perhaps I've been misunderstanding the slow, but sure path you see Japan as going on, though. If you merely mean that you see Japanese as falling in importance in the academic sphere and in education, and increasing use of English in Japan, you may well be right, however unfortunate that may be. If you mean that you see a significant possibility of English actually becoming the main spoken language in Japan, with Japanese becoming less and less spoken, I still can't see that happening (even considering the greater importance of the school environment in Japanese children's social lives). Your allusion to the language situation in Canada is what made me think you were suggesting the latter, since I believe at least some people have the attitude that French as a native language in Canada is doomed to fade away.
I was surprised myself when I learned about those cases where the children go out to an English kindergarten in my region and end up speaking no Japanese at all; while I didn't find the whole thing cruel (I can think of many things that may make children not visit family much, including expatriation, where most family members are quite far away, like with one of my cousin), I have found the whole situation weird enough to shock me and try to see how that could happen; as it happens, it's really a weird combination of sururban life where all interactions with the child are done in English. It is not common, admittedly.clawgrip wrote:Frankly, I really have trouble imagining Japan switching from Japanese to English in even the remotely near future. Sure, there are many people studying English, but with the quality of English-language education in general combined with the practical differences between the two languages, and of the actual purpose of English education (rather than what people think it's for) makes it just really hard to understand what you're feeling.
You say that there is no street life, but I have seen my own kindergarten-age children interact with strangers in the park. I have seen them interact with people in stores and so on. They have heard announcements, seen outdoor performance type things, and so on in Japanese. I have also seen them interact with their Japanese family members. I have seen them interact with Japanese friends of ours. Real isolation of the sort you insinuate is borderline cruel, as it permits no life outside of school and the immediate family. I have trouble believing there will ever be enough people willing to cut off all interaction, such that the children are even prohibited from talking to their grandparents/aunts/uncles/etc.!
I went to a French school in North Bay, ON. However, Canada has its own language issues, and my going to a French school was a garanteed right there... and I have become a rather (un)fortunate product of it.On the academic side, there are certainly some rich folks who send their children international schools, but this is a major exception to the rule. In any society you will have parents sending their children to some sort of class that gives them prestige. Sure, full education in a language not of that area is a bit extreme, but I went to French immersion elementary school in Toronto, and obviously there are no signs that Toronto is shifting towards French as its standard language.
I am not; indeed, I was the unfortunate target of such behavior, which has tainted my experience here, and I just got to see a feed on my Facebook about one who's doing exactly that.And the key here is prestige. English has always been associated with prestige in Japan. In the Meiji era, Japanese people had to get an extensive, passive knowledge of English (and other European languages) to import all the technological advances that had occurred while Japan was shutting itself up. This eventually became irrelevant, but it was followed up by the rise of the United States after World War II which helped maintain the prestige of English, this time for reasons of cultural export as well as the more business-related reasons. People study English in Japan, but they often don't know why. You would (or maybe you wouldn't) be surprised how many people say "to talk with foreigners" or "for travel" or "to watch movies with no subtitles" even if the only foreigner they interact with is their teacher, or they have only travelled two or three times to Hawaii and Guam where everyone speaks Japanese anyway. These are the best excuses people can come up with, because they don't all know why; many just feel a vague societal pressure to do so. A lot of these people's proficiency plateaus because the differences between English and Japanese are very difficult to overcome (as I am sure you know well), and they don't have any practical use for the language that can push them over the hump.
The first part of this is one reason I'm getting out, though I am sure my own children would probably be able to get English proficiency anyway, given I'm sure I'd still use English in my daily life. (I never did the tests myself, though; I'll have to do one, eventually, I suppose.) Proficiency tests are a huge culture in Japan, with this plethora of tests being one of the subjects at my seminar last year, so it's not only about English, though the test-as-a-badge is quite a thing. (Incidently, as a Quebecker, this whole culture falls flat on me; our focus on actual proficiency is quite different.)However, there is one other important reason in Japan for studying English: English proficiency is an arbitrary marker of social prestige. To get into a good university, you need to pass entrance exams that include difficult English tests. To get jobs at a large number of companies, or to get raises, you need to get X score on the TOEIC test. In these cases, English test scores, rather than English itself, are what matter.
My point is that it is only a very small number of people who are learning English for the actual purpose of using the language itself practically on a daily basis to improve their lives, and the rest who study English only do so either out of the need to pass some test that uses English test results as a marker social prestige, or out of some sort of fuzzy social obligation that knowing English is "good" or "cool" or "important". That this society will ever transition from this mostly meaningless use of English into the standard of communication in the country seems highly unlikely.
EDIT: re-reading my post, if I seem a little harsh or excessively argumentative, I apologize!
It struck me that bilingual drafting, especially in two dissimilar languages, would help focus on the underlying meaning/intention of the legislation, rather than the superficial form of words. The danger I suppose is that even then, once the process becomes bedded in, there would simply arise parallel sets of matching jargon with a one-to-one correspondence in each language.linguoboy wrote:There's an interesting wrinkle to the situation in Ireland: The constitution is officially bilingual but--in cases of conflict--the Irish version takes precedence. Nowadays amendments are draughted first in English and then translated, rather than being worked out in parallel, as was earlier the case. Here's a brief article on some of the complications involved, with specific reference to the recent referendum on same-sex marriage.
In Canada, this is exactly what happens. There are one-to-one corresponding terms in each language. Due to Quebec's constitutional requirement to have all laws translated into English, you have the whole civil code translated into Legalese English, while, due to New Brunswick's bilingual institutions, common law terms have been worked out by the University of Moncton as required. So while the intention is still important, parallelisms are probably the norm.marconatrix wrote:It struck me that bilingual drafting, especially in two dissimilar languages, would help focus on the underlying meaning/intention of the legislation, rather than the superficial form of words. The danger I suppose is that even then, once the process becomes bedded in, there would simply arise parallel sets of matching jargon with a one-to-one correspondence in each language.
Everyone has been forgetting the key fact in the cases of Scotland and Ireland: Irish and Gaelic are not the traditional languages of the main population centres of Ireland and Scotland and haven't been for 500 years. In Scotland we speak Scots, in Ireland they speak Hiberno English, one of the more unintelligible English dialects when in full flow. After the highland clearances, Gaelic pretty much dissappeared as a major language in Scotland and existed only in islands and highland areas. People do make music and websites and Facebook groups for their regional languages, but their regional languages are dialects of English, same as in the Netherlands with Dutch. The only places where people still speak Gaelic are infested with monolingual English speakers, and in the case of some of the Irish ones are so small you can throw a stone from one end to the other. They're little more than glorified hamlets excepting the bigger ones in Donegal, Southern Connaught and the Aran islands.sirdanilot wrote:What I also find funny is that the situation of Irish (official language, orthography, lots of literature, more speakers) is worse than the situation of my native dialect of Dutch (not recognized as a language, no fixed orthography, almost no literature at all, only about 100.000? speakers). Children here in the villages still learn my dialect (Zeeuws) and it's normal in the villages to speak it. It has only been lost in the larger towns.
Even I, coming from parents not originally speakers of Zeeuws, have learned the dialect through friends who spoke it. I know a lady who is virtually monolingual in Zeeuws. Although there is hardly any written material due to lack of an orthography, people are starting little websites, make music in Zeeuws and there are all sorts of Zeeuws facebook groups and stuff like that to keep the language alive.
Why can a bunch of farmers and fishermen on some remote south-western Dutch islands do better than the Irish?