Suriname represents an interesting case of unidirectional multilingual convergence in a linguistic area. The multilingual ecology of Suriname is hierarchical. The Germanic language Dutch exerts structural and lexical influence 'downwards', but other languages do not do so 'upwards' to the same degree. This study analyses the development of word…

The process by which Irish-speaking regions became English-speaking regions over a period of centuries is examined. The first part argues that schooling played far less of a role in the shift than some scholars have suggested, because schools were not structured to be particularly effective in teaching the second language (English) to…