Posted: Feb 10, 2012 12:18 am
Scot Dutchy wrote:Saim wrote:And Wales, the Basque Country and the Catalan Countries show that it does work. There is no way that endangered languages are "static". You can make whatever value judgements that you want about endangered languages, but desist with the factual errors. In many ways, endangered languages evolve much faster than stable ones because they adopt features of the dominant language. The Neo-Irish of Dublin and Belfast is idiomatically (i.e. the way things are phrased) quite different to the traditional Irish dialects of the Gaeltacht, AFAIK.
"It is a waste of time and money." Not to many members of the peoples associated with those endangered languages. Once again:
Who are you to tell them that their identity is wrong?
When is Australia going force the Aboriginal landguage on the other Australians?
There is no "Aboriginal language", there are dozens of them, and there were hundreds before European colonization. Unfortunately, 1) hardly any non-indigenous Australians consider an indigenous language to form part of their identity, 2) there is no single indigenous language that could be promoted throughout Australia, 3) Aboriginal Australian languages have always had less speakers than the Celtic languages and are today much less healthy outside of remote communities. I would certainly promote Aboriginal language education, but this would probably work much better among English-speaking Aborigines (about 75% of the Aboriginal population) than among non-indigenous Australians.
It is not working in Wales. The percentage who use it as their first language has gone down. The only thing that has gone up is the number of people that can read Welsh roadsigns. A great success!
It is so working. 25% of Welsh students study through Welsh which pretty much always produces proficient speakers. That's in comparison to only 20% of the total population that can use it. In Wales, Catalonia and the Basque Country younger people are more proficient in the language than the middle-aged, and are more literate in the language than old people.
It is a flop in Ireland. Have you ever lived there or travlled around? People outside the Irish language areas do not use it. That is less than 1%! Why waste public money. If people want to learn these dying languages let them pay for it themselves.
Actual linguists prefer to use the term "endangered language". There are plenty of second-language Irish speakers in urban areas, and plenty of new fluent speakers being produced by Irish immersion schools. With enough proficient students at a certain point Irish will reach critical mass and become a major community language outside of the Gaeltacht.