Much has been written about the necessity of having a standard variety for a particular language. There has also been a great deal of literature on the emergence of a particular variety to be the standard language for a multidialectal language community. This report attempts to look at the various types of choice of a standard language or the…

Critically examines existing government and constitutional provisions that amount to a national language policy in Nigeria. An alternative policy in which the three indigenous Nigerian languages in the present policy are replaced with a neutral one is proposed. (21 references) (GLR)

The development of the national language of the Philippines is sketched from the initial selection of Tagalog to its standardization and propagation as national language and its renaming as Pilipino, subsequently Filipino. The intellectualization phase is examined as process and product and according to its psychological and sociological…

A case of corpus cultivation language planning is reported: the 1990 Luso-Brazilian Orthographic Accord for the seven Portuguese-speaking countries discussed here, signed by representatives of all seven countries that have Portuguese as their official language. Socio-historical background is provided about Portuguese standardization and spread,…

Examines the likelihood of the dominant position of English coming under serious challenge as a world language. Discusses factors such as writing systems, standardization, and modernization.(Author/VWL)

Addresses problems that arise when literacy education is brought from national and international centers to people whose identity is with local languages and literacies. Local literacies are defined with respect to different languages and writing systems, invented local literacies, and vernacular literacies. (Contains 33 references.) (Author)

Discusses publication of two recent dictionaries of Modern Greek. Suggests their respective lexical coverage reveals the continuing survival of the underlying ideologies of the two sponsoring institutions concerning the history of the Greek language and their opposing standpoints in relation to Greek diglossia. The two dictionaries proceed from…

The purpose of the symposium was to exchange experiences in the standardization of national languages in different socio-cultural contexts. Examples of the strategies and results of such experiences in Africa, Latin America, and Europe were presented for discussion. Papers presented at the symposium include the following: "Language…

A discussion of language policy formation and planning in Western European countries covers the following: implications of the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, European Community initiatives, language planning at the regional level, the European Science Foundation, bilingual education, and the Council of Europe. (Contains 47 references.) (LB)

Discusses the background and implications of the 1990 Luso-Brazilian Orthographic Accord signed by the seven nations that have Portuguese as their official language. Concludes that while most of the debate over the accord revolves around issues of linguistic efficiency, the accord and its proponents are primarily concerned with political and…

Sociolinguistic data are presented in the form of sophisticated maps and tables in this pioneering study on the status of the Basque language. Based on information collected from the 1986 census, the major demographic characteristics of Basque are examined in order to ascertain the factors and processes that have contributed to its current status.…

The Arabization of sciences, and especially of the language of the sciences, poses problems because of poor coordination among institutions and countries and because of the Arabic language itself. Instruction in French is still the best solution while Arabization becomes established. (MSE)

Reviews the "Speak Mandarin Campaign," that is intended to persuade the Singaporean ethnic Chinese to use Mandarin in place of Chinese dialects. The purported educational, cultural, and practical advantages are discussed, and the support of higher education and the media is evaluated. (Author/CB)

Drawing from the study of efforts to revitalize Quichua in the Southern Ecuadorian Highlands, this article describes what may be some of the common language corpus and language status transformations that threatened languages undergo during the process of language revitalization. (Author/VWL)

The Draft of the Second Chinese Character Simplification Scheme proposed by the Chinese Committee on Language Reform, published in 1977, is discussed. The political history of the draft and current uncertainty about character simplification are examined, and a rigorous methodology for determining the success rate of a script reform is proposed.…