But don't Anonby's observations support in a sense the idea of prestige and 
language maintenance, though. It is probably not the prestige of the 
speakers, so much as it is the prestige of the languages themselves, in the 
larger cultural sense, that affect language maintenance. For example, in 
the American examples he mentions, it is probably the prestige of the 
dominant language, relative to that of the minority language, that leads to 
its being adopted by minority speakers. And it is the most educated 
speakers who (correctly) perceive that the dominant language is of greater 
prestige and use than is the minority language. Perhaps these observations 
support the idea of language hierarchy, where people learn languages up the 
hierarchy, and not down. It is those villagers most in touch with outside 
culture, who are most aware of this hierarchy. In Africa this hierarchy 
can include as many as 4 or more languages. For example, in Bauchi State, 
Nigeria, I have noted that the hierarchy can consist of English 
(international), Hausa, Jarawan Bantu, and Dot, with people learning second 
languages above them, but not below. Actually, there can be as many 6 
languages in this hierarchy, if one includes dialects (the Bauchi dialect 
of Hausa, ''Bausanci'', and the Bankalawa dialect of Bantu ''Bankalanci'').