Discusses the experiences of Chinese immigrants when first generation children quickly replace the primary language with English rather than becoming bilingual, noting what is lost when languages are lost and how languages are lost, and presenting suggestions for educators to make the process of learning the school language and adapting to…

Surveys of 510 Chinese-Canadian adolescents attending 3 Chinese language schools in Calgary (Alberta) found that older immigrant children maintained or developed the native language better than younger ones, and limited teaching hours and insufficient reinforcement for using Chinese outside school hindered development of literacy in Chinese.…

Reports on a study involving a group of 10 U.S-raised adults who have managed to attain relatively high levels of heritage language (HL) literacy (in Spanish, Cantonese, and Japanese), defying the typical patterns of intergenerational language shift. In-depth retrospective interviews were used to explore the types of access to HL print and the HL…

Studies the ethnolinguistic vitality of a subset of the French language minority population of Ontario. Focuses on a large number of students, their parents, and their teachers from six elementary and secondary schools in Northeastern Ontario. Shows students' linguistic and cultural vitality is weakened by the dominant English-speaking social…

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)

Japanese immigrants opened a Saturday school in a small Northeastern town to teach Japanese to their children as a heritage language. Because of parents' limited time and resources, a Saturday school worked well. The school became a place to share culture as well as teach language. Background, curriculum, and factors contributing to success are…

Indigenous languages are powerful symbols of self-determination and sovereignty for tribal communities in the United States, and many community-based programs have been developed to support and maintain them. The successes of these programs, however, have been difficult to replicate at large research institutions. This article examines the issues…

Framed by the English language and positioned as a distinct subject, Ojibwe culture and language are often appreciated by students rather than taught for a deeper understanding or fluency, or used as the language of instruction in tribal schools. Ojibwe culture and language have been "added on" to existing school curriculum, an approach that…

In dual immersion classrooms, students from different language backgrounds are immersed in the minority language for large portions of the school day with the expectation that they will become equally proficient in their first language (L1) and in their second language (L2). Research on dual immersion indicates that students reach above-average…

Araki is one of around a hundred languages of the Republic of Vanuatu. It is a language spoken by the people of Araki, an islet situated near the south western part of Santo, in the north of Vanuatu. Linguistic statistics have shown a gradual decline in the number of speakers. This study presents evidence to show that Araki is a declining language…

Much Australian work on immigrant languages has revealed that the family is a crucial site of language maintenance (LM). The family remains for most immigrants and their offspring the main domain for community language (CL) use. At the same time, there is no doubt that positive language, education and migration policies strengthen the maintenance…

Economic factors that language policy makers must take into account include a recent trend toward financial globalisation. I first argue that, just as an earlier process of global integration ended in retreat, the current integrative process is not inexorable. Were it to intensify, however, it is likely that low-income countries will become more…

In the American southwest, Pueblo Indian tribes have managed to retain their languages and cultures far longer than many American Indian tribes who have suffered complete language loss as a result of historical oppression, displacement and annihilation. In more recent times, however, Pueblo Indian tribes have faced tremendous pressures to abandon…

In light of a growing body of research on language death, this paper examines the situation of Judeo-Arabic, an ethnolect of Jews from Arabic-speaking countries with various written and spoken forms. More specifically, the fate of the Iraqi variety of Judeo-Arabic is discussed, particularly in the context of Montreal, Canada. Educational…

As many linguists continue to work with and analyze First Nations/Native American languages, the consensus opinion usually direly predicts the loss of daily use for almost all of the extant Indigenous languages. Tremendous efforts are being expended for renewing, revitalizing, and restoring these languages to everyday use. The model upon which…