Language acquisition (Second or first)

[aubrey at pigeonpostbox.co.uk]

Dear Vince,

Seconding what Ginny said, from my small experience of efforts to 
preserve all three Celtic languages stjll living in the British Isles, 
it seems to me that the critical objective is to ensure that they pass 
the 'Courting Test' . I mean by this that the minority language is the 
instinctive language of choice for chatting other people up, proposing 
marriage, and so on. The emotional signal is then as strong as can be.  
As long as this happens, the language has some chance of survival for 
another generation.

Against the enormous cultural pressures of the majority language, it 
seems to me that everything should be done to raise the status of the 
minority language to one of full equivalence. One way is by its use as 
the sole-language in education, ideally from primary onwards, but 
otherwise for as long as possible. Even if parents go out of  their way 
to minimise children's exposure to the majority language, children 
still learn it. I can, if you wish, put you in touch with a young adult 
who has been through this slightly unusual and rather extreme 
experience and is now an adult campaigner for G, the minority language 
concerned. The only unusual feature of the English of this particular 
L1 speaker of G, who only needed to use English from the age of eleven, 
is that the accentual traces of G are very noticeably light. This 
hardly seems like a disadvantage.

For the sake of the Courting Test, there are other key issues such as 
the use of the minority language on public display and in the media, by 
the movers and shakers of the community in public, by the recognition 
of the language in official contexts, but these I imagine are beyond 
your control.

Good luck

Aubrey Nunes.