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VM.BIU.AC.IL>My original question, posted on MULTI-L and repeated on LINGUIST, came from having read a news item about a relaxation of the Turkish ban on Kurdish. The ban has been described by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson in a posting on MULTI-L: a constitutional and penal code prohibition of the use of languages "which are not official first languages in states recognized by the Turkish state." They report arrests of people breaking this ban, but the cases have not been decided. In the meantime, there have been newspaper reports, as I said, of relaxation of the ban on speaking Kurdish. Other similar political and official bans (outside of school contexts) have been reported: Ainu (perhaps), Berber (perhaps), Chinese characters in Indonesia (also in Tahiti), Chinese dialects in Singapore, English signs in Quebec, Esperanto in Iraq, various languages in Ethiopia, Faroese in the Faroese Islands, Hebrew teaching in the Soviet Union, Japanese movies and songs in Korea, Scots Gaelic after Culloden, Taiwanese in Taiwan after Nationalist control (reported to be unsuccessful). There have also been also reports of bans of various kinds and levels (some legally imposed and some not) on the use of various languages in educational settings: American Indian Languages in Federal and state schools, American Sign Language and other Sign Languages in many systems, Basque in Franco Spain, Breton, and I assume Occitan in French schools, Cajun English (and later Cajun French) in Louisiana, French and German (at different times) in Alsace, Irish under British rule, Welsh in the nineteenth century, Spanish in the Southwestern US. Three broad types of case have emerged in the correspondence: 1. The first is the prejudice shown in an educational system towards a non-standard or otherwise disfavored variety. I think it is reasonable to include the Sign Language cases here. This kind of policy is usually associated with a (misguided) desire to improve the lot of minority students by having them use the standard or otherwise desired variety. Replacive language teaching, well-meaning though it may be, is a common method of linguicide. In practice, as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas documents in her book BILINGUALISM OR NOT (Multilingual Matters 1981), these policies were once enforced with physical violence (there are graphic descriptions in the letters), replaced now more generally by "symbolic or structural violence." 2. The second are cases of political suppression of minority languages: this may include a ban on a language in schools, in media, and even (seemingly rarer), on any use of the language. It is likely to be in the form of a requirement of use one or more named languages only, implicitly barring the use of others. There is wide range of treatments possible, ranging from legal penalties to malign neglect. The Kurdish case fits here clearly. The Official English movement is an attempt to go this way. There do not seem to be many formal and legal bans on specific languages still in effect (most reports were of earlier bans). Most arose from attempts to encourage national standard languages, suppress minorities, deny former political and linguistic associations. Some arose out of attempts to maintain another language. 3. The third type then are the attempts at language maintenance. The case of French in Quebec is of this last type; it is an attempt to slow down or reverse the shift from French to English that was starting to occur in the Province. Thus, its motivation is language maintenance rather than shift, or even reversing shift. But of course, from the point of view of speakers of other languages in Quebec, it is potentially a threat to maintenance. The Official English movement is sometimes presented in this way: a fear that other languages might somehow weaken the grasp of English. The correspondents found this the most challenging question: is the desire to maintain a threatened language justification for banning the source of the threat? Overall, the main damage of linguicide appears to be done not by specific laws banning a language, but by the existence of instrumental and economic incentives to learn a standard language, backed by an educational policy that suggests that this can be done by giving up on any other language. This last suggests the most useful steps that linguists can take: 1. publicising findings of research that show that bilingualism is harmful neither to a society nor to an individual; 2. supporting additive language teaching and opposing replacive language teaching; 3. continuing to express respect for the value of all languages as records of their cultures and methods of maintaining group identity; 4. supporting a double set of linguistic rights - the right to learn the standard language, and the right to maintain the home or community or ethnic language. I have sorted the postings to date (10 May 1991) into seven files, which are available from the LINGUIST archive: LGBAN-AMERIND American Indian languages LGBAN-BASQUE Basque in Franco Spain and German in South Tyrol LGBAN-BRETON Breton in France and French naming policy LGBAN-FLEMISH Flemish in Belgium and Netherlands LGBAN-KURDISH Turkish ban on Kurdish LGBAN-QUEBEC1 French-only laws in Quebec LGBAN-QUEBEC2 " LGBAN-QUEBEC3 " LGBAN-SIGN Sign languages LGBAN-TAIWAN Taiwanese in Taiwan LGBAN-OTHERLGS Ainu, Alsace, Australian Aboriginal, Berber, Cajun English, Chinese, Esperanto, Ethiopian languages, Faroese, German, Hebrew, Icelandic names, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Puerto Rico, Scots Gaelic, Sorbian, Spanish, Turkish, Welsh LGBAN-GENERAL General comments on banned languages To get any of the above files, send the message: get <file-name> (e.g. get lgban-sign) to: listservMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
ALF.LET.UVA.NL>What a pity. Glancing through Vallduvi's contribution on the legal status of Catalan I thought I saw a reference to special funds being available to promote love-making in Catalan! A pity that on reading it properly, it turned out to be movie-making in Catalan. Maybe a useful pointer for the Quebecois! Norval Smith [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 230]Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue