Recounts the history of interest in developing Esperanto as a lingua franca for international law and diplomacy, beginning with Zamenhof's development of Esperanto and proceeding through the development of a lexicon for the language and through its application to legal issues. Prospects for the future of Esperanto are discussed. (DJD)

Looks at Europe-wide experiments on the role of Esperanto in facilitating language learning. (31 references) (Author)

Argues that two influential studies of multilingualism in India are misleading in that they claim India's situation is unique and cherish this uniqueness as a value. It is proposed instead that this sociolinguistic diversity is inherently conflict-producing and leads to loss of "weak" languages, similar to documented situations in other…

Language-spread policy (LSP) is policy promulgated by groups seeking to spread their languages to speakers or communicative domains. LSP can be internal or external, overt or disguised, and related in different ways to national policy. Intent may be to increase native-language advantage in international communication, disseminate ideology, create…

Chronicles Ethiopia's history of language policy, and describes the first three years of the country's initiative to provide native language instruction to all its people, focusing on the materials development process and program effectiveness. Teachers are working to develop content-area instructional materials in eight of over fifty languages.…

Two policy documents supporting education for ethnolinguistic or socioeconomic minorities in Catalonia are examined, identifying underlying assumptions and the views of cultural diversity implicit in them. It is concluded that the policy is formulated vaguely, incorporates contradictory statements, and neglects learners' first languages. Further…