Suppressed Languages
We are all familiar with the dominance of English as a world (International) language. On the other side of the coin there are other languages that are actively suppressed, discouraged and prohibited. Within the British Isles, Gaelic and Welch and various regional dialects have been discouraged. This is similar to the position where Latin was the language of the Church and State and someone printing or distributing the Bible in English could be burnt at the stake.
What is the effect of this?
Frustration - Terrorism - Political turmoil?
"disencouraged - is picked up as wrong by the spell checker on Antimoon but is quite widely recognised on Google.
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"disencouraged - is picked up as wrong by the spell checker on Antimoon but is quite widely recognised on Google. >>
Recognised? All Google recognises is that a lot of people have shit English.
<<What is the effect of this?
Frustration - Terrorism - Political turmoil? >>
Only half the time. The rest of the time they happily assimilate into the dominant population and forget their language.
... and become lazy monoglots...
But minority languages with a literal tradition don't allow themselves to be wiped off that easily. Often times some people do re-learn it anyway.
Robin Michael wrote:
"disencouraged - is picked up as wrong by the spell checker on Antimoon but is quite widely recognised on Google.
Huh? Is there a spell checker facility on Antimoon? What are you exactly talking about?
<< printing or distributing the Bible in English could be burnt at the stake >>
Printing and distributing the Bible in vernacular is what started the trend of car salesmen (or chariot salesmen in days of old) turning into "pastors" or "preachers", with no knowledge whatsoever of the context of the writings therein. The Pandora box that Martin Luther opened, with notorious noxious effects in the good ole USofA.
If they'd have been burnt at the stake, it would have been rightly so.
I used to live in the part of Bristol where there are roads named after Tyndall (William Tyndale 1494 – 1536). The local church had a spot where two martyrs were burnt at the stake in Queen Mary's short reign. Before the glory days of fighting the Spanish.
I recently saw a program on BBC iplayer (Hearts of Oak) which mentioned a formative incident in which Hawkins companions were tortured and killed by the Spanish. This gave Drake and the others a motive other than money to attack and rob the Spanish.
African pirates use to raid Iceland which itself was raided by Viking slave trading criminals looking for Irish slaves.
<<But minority languages with a literal tradition don't allow themselves to be wiped off that easily. Often times some people do re-learn it anyway>>
That never happened once, except maybe Hebrew. ¡So boludo!
Well, people still are learning small languages like Manx (died once, re-learned as a second language) and Cornish. They remain small, but they are studied and spoken between activists. It never happened once for these threatened languages to become big again, except for Hebrew, that is true however.
Occitan for instance may become a dead languages one day, but people still know about the great culture it produced. So some re-learn that language anyway. But the new speakers are no native speaker anymore.
[轉]《廣東話難進廣州校園，誰來傳承廣東文化? 》
1. 廣州的母語 (廣東話) 面臨著生存的嚴重危機。
廣州的幼兒園強迫小朋友講普通話。小朋友先入為主，先學會普通話，自然就把普通話當成了他們的母語，對廣東話沒有了感情。
幼兒園強迫小朋友講普通話，中、小學強迫學生講普通話。衹有20年，就有6千多萬北方人湧入廣東省，使支持廣東話的人口比例越來越少。
2. 廣州的廣東文化誰來傳承?
記者瞭解到，雖然廣東話電視、廣播、公共標幟等廣泛存在。但中學、小學校園一直是以普通話為絕對主導，幾乎所有的中、小學校裏都可以見到類似：「請使用規範普通話」的標語。
3. 廣州的校園裏究竟容不容得廣東話棲身？
廣州市的華南師範大學文學院教授周國光認為：「學校是一個特殊的領域，在這個領域中還是應該提倡使用普通話，課間語言也不例外。廣東話在學校也可以推廣，但不是鼓勵在校內使用廣東話。可以，以 "興趣小組" 的形式教廣東話歌曲、廣東話戲曲等等，這些都衹能屬於興趣拓展範圍。」
4. 廣州學生困惑，課間不准說廣東話, 衹准說普通話。
廣州市先烈中路小學的一名廣州出生的二年級學生說：「上課肯定是說普通話，現在連課間也被要求用普通話聊天。」
廣鐵一小，五年級的小王則說：「雖然父母是河北人，但我在廣州出生長大，起碼應算是半個廣州人，雖然很想學會廣東話，但老師認為： "廣東話是方言"，沒必要花心思在那裏，把普通話學好就可以了。」
5. 廣州學生對廣東話的常識一頭霧水。
小珊在廣州大學附屬中學的初中部和高中部各派發了40份問卷，瞭解現在的中學生對廣東話的瞭解情況。「並非大多數中學生都會講廣東話」，問卷調查顯示，不少學生對廣東話的常識一頭霧水。比如說，很少人知道廣東話也有音標，一些俗語更是知之甚少。
At the orient country, in order to build a same body identity, and actively promote Mandarinization, and eager to harmonize the national language as Mandarin, the so-called dialects / local languages which pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary are definded as a non-standard and deletion, while there retain only the Mandarin pronunciation, its grammar and its vocabulary.
In past time, the Mandarinization be unable to stretch to the Southern Provinces that because the War of Warlords, Pacific War and Civil War from 1920s to 1950s, and continue to occur because of political movements from 1950s to 1980s.
After 1980s, the American open the market that increase a very great scale of population mobility, especially a large scale of Mandarin speaking people move to work in the factories and offices of Southern Provinces. The globalization is indirect the help in the Mandarinization in advance and clear the local cultures and native languages of Southern Provinces.
The authority to strengthen efforts to push the Mandarinization Policy, first of all in schools, government, public places and carried out locally, decreasing the influence of dialect / local languages. Coupled with the pressure of public opinion in Mandarin Newspapers, to implement the teaching of Mandarin in the southern region to replace the so-called local languages teaching in schools to accept being deprived of their "Right to Education in Native Language".
The greatest impact on public television, radio, film and sound media, the authority to impose only use Mandarin, dialect / local languages basically be disabled. Some cities in the Western dialect TV programmes be welcomed, but was swiftly followed by interesting means a very low Media Department who were blocked.
In Asia, printing and distributing the Bible in vernaculars started at 19 centuries, the Bible was translated into Chinese languages including Classical Chinese, Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Min, Hakka, Gan, etc. The Pandora box was closed by the language policy at 1950s.
the versions list:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_Bible_translations]
<<Within the British Isles, Gaelic and Welch and various regional dialects have been discouraged>>
In the past yes, but these languages now receive a lot of state funding. Irish and Welsh both enjoy official status.
"Occitan for instance may become a dead languages one day, but people still know about the great culture it produced."
Occitan culture never existed. It's an abstract notion to design the southern dialects of France. In the past, people of Toulouse or Avignon never felt "occitan". They felt subjects of the souvereign of Gascony, Toulouse comté...And i feel those new-occitaners a little bit superficial and ridiculous.