The replaced language

The other role in language shifts is played by the language which is being replaced, either voluntarily or by force. So-called “dead languages,” such as Latin, were never displaced but developed into

daughter languages. Present-day French and Italian derived from Latin and “normal” language change processes affecting the language structure gave rise to these new languages. Complete language

displacement is characterized by the death of an ethnic tongue, which implies that the language is not transformed into a successive language.

In most parts of the world it is quite obvious which languages are endangered, such as the American Indian languages or Australian Aboriginal languages, this is not so clear in the many regions of Africa. In the following the term “minority language” will be used simply to indicate that a particular language is threatened by extinction. A seemingly obvious criterion for identifying minority languages is the size of the ethnolinguistic community.

Schmidt regards languages spoken by more than 250 people

as viable languages. Out of 400 languages spoken by the estimated 100 million Nigerians, over 380 are widely given the status of minority

languages.

The number of speakers is not an unambiguous indicator for

detecting the actual risk of a language being replaced. Small speech communities, of course, are more susceptible to existential changes, which can result in a rapid decline of their ethnic tongue. The mere

fact that only a few parents may decide not to use the minority language with their children already results in endangering the entire transmission from one generation to the next. Intermarriage and

migration from rural to urban regions by just a few members can have a dramatic impact on the survival of a minority language. Many languages with small numbers of speakers but with strong loyalties which seem not to be threatened.

The most serious indicator of the vitality of a language, may be the ratio between the number of members of the ethnic group and the number of speakers of the ethnic tongue. That would

mean an ethnic group with say 200,000 members, of whom only 50,000 were speakers of the ethnic tongue, would be regarded as being endangered

Minority languages are languages which exist in environments hostile to them – the schools, media, administration, etc., being dominated by other languages. As they are limited to being used exclusively within the speech community, the external threat to minority languages derives from these other domains and the weight of pressure falls in line with the importance these domains hold within the community. Whereas many ethnolinguistic minorities on the African continent are not exposed to national education and media, this is not the case for most other minorities.

To reach a real insight into language shifts one has to study the speech community, as this is the scene in which language displacement takes place, as well as the social environment of the speech community.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 812