The emergence of Indigenous language revitalization seeks to address historical domination over Indigenous peoples and to recover the loss of ancestral languages as embedded in Indigenous knowledge systems. This paper draws from long-term linguistic ethnographic research on one of the Indigenous Ryukyuan languages: Yaeyaman. I highlight one…

This regional dossier aims to provide a concise, description and basic statistics about minority language education in a specific region of Europe. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements, and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects, such as the…

Hindi, a less commonly taught language in Australian higher education, was catapulted into the list of four strategically significant languages in the Commonwealth Government's 2012 White Paper, Australia in the Asian Century. Hindi's inclusion is, perhaps, predictable in view of the Commonwealth Government's economic and trade agendas, though the…

On the basis of an ethnographic study of the Voro-language revitalization in Estonia, this article explores the way teachers function as policy actors in the broader context of the school. As policy actors, the language teachers' appropriation of regional-language policy helps simultaneously to reproduce and challenge existing ideologies in the…

Discusses to what extent the broadcast media in the Breton language has acted as a vital link to language maintenance in Brittany. Highlights the background context of the Breton language, reasons for its decline, and what the broadcast media can do to help reverse language shift. (Author/VWL)

A majority of the population of Friesland in the Netherlands can speak the Frisian language and over 90 percent can understand it. Frisian is spoken by 55 percent of the population but only 10 percent of the population claim to be fluent in writing Frisian. A brief review of the development of Frisian in education suggests that Frisian has a…

Describes recent developments in heritage language education in British Columbia, Canada, discussing issues a heritage language advisory committee encountered in creating such policy, defining heritage language and the clientele for heritage language education, reviewing appropriate curricula, encouraging program development, and arranging…

Because Yugoslavia is a multinational, culturally pluralistic, and multilingual society, one of its educational aims is to develop the motivation for the equal use of its languages, so that the languages of national minorities/nationalities become appropriate instruments for communication in public and social life and are not restricted to usage…

Examines the position of Tamil as the language of an ethnic minority in Malaysia and Singapore, placing the issue of Tamil and language maintenance within the larger sociolinguistic milieu in the two countries and drawing conclusions about the role of language policy and planning in the determination of linguistic outcomes. (SM)

Examines the impact of language policy in Ukraine on language utilization patterns of school children in Kyiv. Using quantitative data from student responses to a questionnaire focusing on subject background, native and home language, including reported usage of interactive and interpretive language, examines the extent to which language shift or…

Compares the use and maintenance of the Quechua language in a bilingual and nonbilingual education school and community. Findings indicate a significant change in teacher-pupil language use, an improvement in pupil participation in the bilingual school, and an improved attitude among the community members regarding the value of their language.…

Canadian Heritage and Native language maintenance, as an educational goal, is a worthwhile and valuable investment, especially because this goal helps to dispel assimilationist educational policy. Teachers of these languages should benefit from programs designed for second language teachers. (CB)

Kuot is a language in a critical situation. Most adults of lower middle age and older are full speakers but children are not learning it. In other words, it will become extinct in a few decades if nothing is done; but it is not too late if the community decides to turn it around, and do so fast. Thus far, the community has shown little interest.…

This work is one in a series that focuses on nine languages representing the bulk of the second language learning effort in Australian education (Arabic, Modern Standard Chinese, French, German, Modern Greek, Indonesian/Malay, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish). These languages were categorized as the Languages of Wider Teaching. This particular…

A study investigated (1) the role of English as a language of power, and how it has affected multilingualism in Canada and South Africa, (2) the nature and implementation of South Africa's multilingual policy, (3) how South Africa's language education policy and policy implementation compare to those in Canada, (4) how South African language…