Study on contrastive outcomes?

[Nicholas Ostler]

On 07/01/2013 20:43, Mike Cahill wrote:
> Does anyone know of a study of the sociolinguistic situation of two different languages, one viable and the other endangered, where the two language situations have nearly identical external pressures on both speech communities, yet their language viability outcomes are quite different? The languages would probably be in the same geographical area. I've got a candidate case, and was wondering how unique this might be in the literature.
>
> Mike Cahill
An immediate thought is the contrasting fates of Dutch in Indonesia, and 
English in India (or indeed in Malaysia and Brunei). I pay some 
attention to this competitive experiment in "Empires of the Word". Note 
that the languages were original neighbours in Europe, and the durations 
of the Dutch and British empires in the Indian Ocean were almost equal too.

-- 
Nicholas Ostler

nicholas at ostler.net
+44 (0)1225-852865, (0)7720-889319

Chairman: Foundation for Endangered Languages
www.ogmios.org

Author: Empires of the Word (2005),
Ad Infinitum (2007), The Last Lingua Franca (2010)
www.nicholasostler.com