2. Language shift happens when communities who share a native
language abandon it and shift to speaking another one instead.
It can happen rapidly or slowly and may lead to language death.
4. -The order of domains in which language shift
occurs may differ for different individuals and
different groups, but gradually over time the
language of the wider society .
-migrants are virtually monolingual in their
mother tongue, their children are bilingual,
and their grandchildren are often monolingual
in the language of the ‘host’ country.displaces
the minority language mother tongue.
- Migrant minorities :
5. :- Non-migrant communities
Language shift is not always the result
of migration. For this community the
home is the one most under any family’s
control, language may be maintained in
more domains than just the home
Example 2
6. - Migrant majorities :
When language shift occurs, it is always shift towards the
language of the domain powerful group. A domain group
has no incentive to adopt the language of minority. The
domain language is associated with status, prestige, and
social success.
7. LANGUAGE DEATH AND
LANGUAGE LOSS
When all the people who speak a language
die, the language dies with them ..
8. Example of language loss:
Annie at 20 is a young speaker of Dyirbal, an Australian Aboriginal
language. She also speaks English which she learned at school.
There is no written Dyirbal material for her to read, and there are
fewer and fewer contexts in which she can appropriately hear and
speak the language. So she is steadily becoming less proficient in it.
She can understand the Dyirbal she hears used by older people in
her community, and she uses it to speak to her grandmother. But her
grandmother is scathing about her ability in Dyirbal, saying Annie
doesn’t speak the language properly.
9. -When a language dies gradually, as opposed to all its
speakers being wiped out by
a massacre or epidemic, the process is similar to that of
language shift.
-The functions of the language are taken over in one domain
after another by another language. As the domains in which
speakers use the language shrink, the speakers of
the dying language become gradually less proficient in it
-The language usually retreats till it is used only in the home,
and finally it is restricted to such personal activities as
counting, praying and dreaming.
10. Exercise 3 :
-what is the difference between
language shift and language death ?
11. Factors contributing to language shift are
economic, social and political factors ;
demographic factors..
The economic factor:
Obtaining work is the most obvious economic reason for
learning another language. In English-dominated
countries, for instance, people learn English in order to
get good jobs.
12. Social factor:
Language shift occurs when the community sees no
reason to take active steps to maintain their ethnic
language. When a community of speakers moving to a
region or country whose language is different from
theirs, there is a tendency to shift to the new
language. Every time an immigrant learns the native
language of the new country and passes it down to
children in place of the old country language.
13. Political factor:
A rapid shift occurs when people are anxious
to ‘get on’ in a society where knowledge of the
second language is a prerequisite for success.
14. Demographic factor:
Resistance to language shift tends to last longer in rural
than in urban areas because rural groups tend to be
isolated from the centres of political power for
longer. The rural people can meet most of their social
needs in the ethnic or minority language.
15. Nothing benefits a country more than to
treasure the language and cultures of its
various people because in doing so, it
fosters intergroup understanding and
realises greater dividends in the form of
originality, creativity and versatility.
16. How can a minority language maintain?
1- There are certain social factors which seem to retard wholesale
language shift for a minority language group, at least for a time.
Where language is considered an important symbol of a minority
group's identity. For example " the language is likely to be maintained
longer"
2- if families from a minority group live near each other and see each
other frequently, this also helps them maintain their language.
3- for those who emigrate is the degree and frequency of contact with
homeland.
18. Language revival is when people try to
make a language that is not spoken, or is
spoken very little, spoken more often again.
Hebrew language was revived in israel after
being effectively dead for nearly 1700 years.
19. -People who live with each other and see each
other, this don't help them maintain their
language ( )
Exercise :
