Examines the decline, death, and resurrection of the Cornish language. Looks at 17th and 18th century writings on the subject and at the problems faced in reviving the language, especially in connection with the reconstruction of its phonological and lexical components. Considers the state of Unified Cornish today. (SED)

Presents a classification of 11 language planning functions or goals that academies, committees, and commissions have been engaged in since language planning began several centuries ago or could adopt in the future. Language planning is defined as deliberate, institutionally organized attempts at affecting linguistic or sociolinguistic status or…

Situates two papers on Papua New Guinea in the context of discussion about maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages and about education through the medium of indigenous and minority languages. The articles are "What Is Our Culture? What Is Our Language? Dialogue Towards the Maintenance of Indigenous Culture and Language in Papua…

The linguistically mixed marriage stands at he crossroads of important factors in the future of French in North American and Catalan in Europe: reversing language shift. While Quebec and Catalonia appear strikingly similar, strong evidence indicates that demographic, linguistic, socioeconomic, and even lifestyle factors may make linguistic exogamy…

Discusses the writing of literary works in languages other than English in the United States with a a particular focus on authors who write in Italian. Asks whether it is possible to talk about multiculturalism in the United States without multilingualism and whether or not texts written in languages other than English can be part of the American…

Discusses language maintenance and language shift among historical German-speaking North American Amish and Mennonite communities. Supports the view that individual communities may actively direct language change. (Author/VWL)

This article examines the various ways in which deaf people have protected and promoted sign language during the early decades of the twentieth century. Arguing that deaf people played an active role in their own history, the author shows how members of the community--through formal and informal collaboration--ultimately defeated strict oralist…

Fort Belknap College President Carole Falcon-Chandler does not fluently speak the "A'ani" (White Clay) language, but her granddaughter does. The girl, one of the 12 students in the White Clay Language Immersion School located on the college campus in Harlem, Montana, is part of the next generation of fluent A'ani speakers. The language…

English-only policies and the expiration of the "Bilingual Education Act," which is now replaced by "No Child Left Behind," make it clear that English is the official language of schools in the United States with the emphasis moved from the goal of maintaining students' home languages while learning English to a focus of ignoring minority…

Many Japanese families come to the US because the fathers are dispatched to work at Japanese companies in the US, and they return to Japan after a 3-4 year stay. Many children attend an American local school as well as a supplementary Saturday school, hoshuko, in order to keep up academically after they return to Japan. However, balancing an…

The family unit and home domain have been and remain important in heritage language maintenance efforts. There are complex relationships between parental language attitudes, their application in everyday language management activities and the children's knowledge of home language vocabulary. The present large-scale study examined the family policy…

The Mongolian language in Ningcheng county is in a state of endangerment. In endangered Mongolian (Harqin dialect) communities, the family is the mother-tongue source, whereas society is the Han-language source, and under normal circumstances the actual language use by members of the community approaches the median of the use of both languages.…

This paper reports on an investigation of the effect of religion on language use in Singapore. Data come from the Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore, 2006, a large-scale language survey linked to follow-up studies. The conceptual framework was based upon Castells' idea of a new social order in the network society; the main research questions were…

This article examines the parallel development of language planning and land planning within the Loon River Cree First Nation. Loon River Cree territory, located in north-central Alberta, Canada, is an area where major oil and gas industry, as well as logging and mining are constantly encroaching. The community, who still use Cree in their daily…

This paper tells a tentative story from the preliminary findings of The Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore, 2006 (SSS 2006). Though the main study reports on language use amongst Chinese, Malay and Indian communities, my focus is only on Indian homes. The paper reports results from five domains: school, family and friends, media, public space and…