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At the end of November last, I wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid438B755C.6060206@chibcha.demon.co.uk" type="cite">It
is sometimes claimed that there is a critical minimum proportion of
speakers of
a given language in a multilingual community for that language to
continue in everyday use. Such a claim makes
sense in a context where there is a background metropolitan language
(typically English, but it could as easily be Portuguese, Russian,
Spanish or Chinese) that is under no threat, and spoken by numbers
approaching 100% . The other, less widely spoken, language can only
survive in stable bilingualism with this background language if there
is a fair presumption, within a given community, that enough listeners
are there to understand it. <br>
<br>
The idea, then, is that there is a kind of tipping point, or a
threshold of the slippery slope, perhaps as high as 70%; if the
lesser-speaking community dips below this proportion, it will tend to
diminish further, until (without active policy measures) it might die
out altogether. But above this proportion, its numbers can vary up and
down with no long-term effect or trend visible. <br>
<br>
Is there a percentage figure one could give, and if so is there any
research that bears directly on this point? <br>
</blockquote>
Here are the answers to my question, as offered by FEL-listers and
lgpolicy-listers.<br>
<br>
A. In general, there was scepticism from linguists as to any percentage
boundary.<br>
<br>
Hartmut Haberland <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:hartmut@ruc.dk"><hartmut@ruc.dk></a> wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid1133249115.438c025bbf0b5@webmail.ruc.dk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I come immediately to think of Srivastava's matrix of +/-power vs-. +/- numbers,
which allows (without quantification) for a minority language vto survive, as
long as it has prestige and/or is associated with power. One might as well ask:
how few speakers can a dominant language have before it loses its grip on a
community? (See references below.)
One also would have to distinguish between mother tongue speakers and users.
Urdu, as far as I understand, is a minority language in Pakistan as far as
native speakers are concerned, but not as far as second language speakers (or
simply users) are concerned. Practically nobody speaks French (nor German) as
their mother tongue in Luxemburg, but both languages have a very firmly
entrenched position in society.
</pre>
</blockquote>
Jean Aitchison wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid20051129102038.C7E62226D5@webmail219.herald.ox.ac.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">... my memory of discussions about this point is that what matters
is not so much percentages and proportions, but the FUNCTION of the remaining
uses of a declining language. IF a language is used only at home, then it might
die. IF it has at least one `official' use (education, etc) or `public' use (at
a market place, etc) then it has some hope of surviving.</pre>
</blockquote>
E.Williams wrote (with many - excised - caveats):
<blockquote cite="mid438C2FA0.9060603@bangor.ac.uk" type="cite">I'd be
inclined to go back a few years to the social psychology stuff &
the concept of "ethnolinguistic vitality" rather than absolute numbers
or percentages. <br>
(I'm sending a list of some older seminal papers in this area)<br>
Density of personal networks & 'awareness of difference' between
groups (even a degree of antagonism?) seems to be crucial in language
maintenance. <br>
Examples include the Lozi in Zambia, and the Welsh in Caernarfon (where
there is that rare phenomenon in Wales, a large Welsh speaking council
estate.) There are of course many other similar cases. <br>
</blockquote>
Jane Freeland wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid004c01c5f4e6$75d18d10$a920e1d4@DGQ9ZX1J"
type="cite">My own feeling on this is that it doesn't work in simple
percentages of speakers. Indeed, the criteria developed for judging
language vitality by the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered
Languages, of the UNESCO Intangible Heritage Unit, specifically warns
against using any single measure, but that we should attend to a
spectrum of them, and that in different communities different criteria
will carry more or less weight. <br>
... Another aspect of the problem, which we noted in our compilation,
is that in many multilingual communities, the threat to a small
language does not necessarily come from the mainstream language, but
from another, stronger, indigenous language. This is certainly the
case with the Mayangna of Nicaragua, among whom Elena and I are
currently working, who are shifting to Miskitu at an alarming rate.
Indeed, I'm about to go back to Nicaragua for stage 2 of a pilot
project which looks at popular discourse on language and languages, to
try to get at the sociolinguistic/power issues underlying this. As
Elena said in her paper at the Barcelona FEL, on paper the
circumstances for maintaining this language seem highly propitious,
but... <br>
<br>
Nancy Dorian suggests, in her paper in Whaley and Grenoble (1998), and
elsewhere, that languages spoken by very small numbers of people can
survive provided that they have a clear social function within the
spectrum of languages in the context, and suggests that we should focus
more research on what constitutes 'success' in often unpropitious
circumstances. </blockquote>
Tony Woodbury wrote:
<blockquote cite="midp0623090fbfb22fb09c01@%5B128.62.92.243%5D"
type="cite">There are cases where only two speakers remain in a
community and they speak with each other. Such was the case in Sirenik
with Sirenikski Siberian Yupik. But there are also cases where two
speakers remain, but they haven't spoken to each other in the ancestral
language in years--I think Leanne Hinton has described such cases in
California. Therefore, there can be no threshhold in PRINCIPLE.
Conceivably, the two Sirenikski ladies would have CONTINUED
indefinitely had they not died. <br>
<br>
On the other hand, we've seen cases of "tip" occurring in a generation,
and that I've seen myself in Chevak. When I got there in '78 everyone
spoke Cup'ik; now, people under 30 do not speak Cup'ik. So even 100%
can fail to offer a toehold. ...
</blockquote>
<blockquote cite="midp06230902bfb282a734f7@%5B128.62.92.243%5D"
type="cite">for all I know, there are local generalizations to be made
(e.g., what might hold for Latvian might also hold for Lithuanian and
Estonian); although even so, things can go differently despite all
other things seeming to be equal: There is a famous case of two
villages on opposite sides of the Kuskokwim River in Alaska, one of
which went from Yup'ik to English in a generation, while the other hung
proudly on to Yup'ik. The villages were of the same size and practiced
the same religion (Russian Orthodox). Further analysis showed that the
villages simply opted for different survival strategies--one took up
overland and river trade with (somewhat) distant whites; the other
opted for river and back-country fishing, hunting, and trapping. So
really it was a matter of overall worldview. (I think you can guess
which one retained Yup'ik.) <br>
<br>
Statistically speaking, you don't need thresholds to prove a point--I
should think that TRENDS toward loss would also be convincing. <br>
<br>
</blockquote>
Abderrahman El Aissati wrote:
<blockquote cite="midKLEIKAGEHNMOJHMIGKAKKEBJCAAA.aissati@uvt.nl"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">... there are a few known models that help predict language shift (the
'generations' model (Gonzo and Saltarelli), the code-switching model
(Meyers-Scotton), etc.) but none can give the exact amoount of speakers
needed to maintain a language. I think it is more appropriate to quantify in
terms of functions of the language (hence the idea of a parametric model):
if a language serves religious purposes, it takes one very religious person
to use it (Classical Arabic and Latin), if a language symbolises a break
away from traditional patterns/style of life, it needs two people to speak
it (examples of colleagues in Morocco who use French)...
Now these lges have a metropolitan backing, but the real issue is that they
have/seerve important functions. If you can find a minority lge that can
serve a high (symolic or otherwise) value, then you can predict that the
community which uses it will continue using it (or probably raise its status
like Hebrew) as long as those functions are needed! If this sounds kind of
circular, then I'm afraid this is the nature of language and use...</pre>
</blockquote>
mark abley wrote:
<blockquote cite="midBAY103-F34E7D00B26836BF40AF09EA94D0@phx.gbl"
type="cite">Fascinating question. It neatly sums up why speakers of
Welsh in northwest Wales are right to be wary. I'm always wary of
precise figures because of the subtle differences between individual
cases, but 70 per cent seems a reasonable enough guess to me. Three
quick points: <br>
1. I think this rule tends to be more applicable to bilingual
communities than truly multilingual ones. Much of India and some parts
of Africa don't seem to fit the rule too well -- i.e., the "background
metropolitan language" perhaps has less weight when several other
languages are in use, not just one. <br>
2. In rare cases a minority language may be able to gain in strength so
as to reach a point where 70 per cent (or some such figure) is not so
much "maintained" as "achieved". Latvia springs to mind. I wonder if
East Timor (Tetum) may prove to be another. <br>
3. An area for further research -- by sociolinguists, not by me! --
would take off from this perceived threshold. Where a language is
spoken across a fairly wide area, or in many communities, obviously the
70 per cent (or whatever) figure applies to each community, not to an
entire language -- e.g., Inuktitut remains strong in the Canadian
Arctic even though there are places in the Western Arctic where it has
dipped well below 70 per cent and is weakening fast. But what happens
when some communities abandon their ancestral language, while others
strongly maintain it? For a language to remain vibrant, is there
likewise a minimum percentage of communities (not just of individuals
within a single community) that need to maintain it? <br>
</blockquote>
P-J Ezeh wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid20051203130456.76778.qmail@web33313.mail.mud.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">...If my own experience among the Orring of southeastern
Nigeria (language: Korring) is anything to go by, I
will say that the only factors that may lead to
glotticide are economic and political, especially the
later. There are recent examples locally here and
farther afield, for example under the erstwhile Soviet
Union, where minority laguages were threatened
directly by political policies. In the Nigerian case
there wasn't a direct political threat but the
minority speakers reached a point where they began to
see their distinct linguistic identity as a liability
in the new political order that destroyed their
original social structure and merged them with a
numerically superior people with a different language.
This has been the subject of at least two conference
papers that I have had the honour to give, the last
being at that of the last Pan-African Anthropoloigal
Association in Yaounde. Perhaps what is even more
interesting is that, contra the popular assumptions,
the threat comes from not the culture of an external
world political power but a local rival group who for
a complex configuration arising from British
colonization has assummed some advantageous position.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
B. Sympathy for the idea, such as it was came from those campaigning
for small languages, usually in a European context.<br>
<br>
Giorgio Cadorini wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid4EF23249-60A9-11DA-B00C-000A9591C51E@cadorini.org"
type="cite">My personally – not proved – impression is that probably a
critical percentage will exist, but it will change following: <br>
--- the density of the speakers in the larger language community (if
they are 15%, but living and working one next to the other, the
language could be not in danger at all – maybe it was the case of Jews
in Eastern Europe until XXth century); <br>
--- the differences in the way of living: nomad Romanis in settled
Europe preserve their language until XXth century. <br>
Then also speakers forming a high percentage could lose their language
very quickly because of mass change.
</blockquote>
Andrejs Veisbergs <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:anveis@lanet.lv"><anveis@lanet.lv></a> wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid1133254744.438c185879f69@webmail.lanet.lv"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">this is an interesting issue, sometimes superficially discussed also in Latvia.
The general idea here is that it is somewhere between 50% and 75%. But of
course there are no studies, it is just a psychological issue.
In Latvian case the idea is linked also with the pre 2world war situation with
its 75% Latvian majority. This is then taken as a normal situation towards
which one should aspire. 50% was the result of the soviet policies (Latvian
speakers sank to 52%) and Latvian felt that if it goes below, it would mean
Latvians cease to be majority / titular nation which theoretically under the
soviets could lead to.... noone knows really what. I would say a purely
psychological issue, but then psychological factors are sociolinguistically
very important. One shouldalso take into account the levelof language
development, city/country distribution, mobility, inertness, etc. But I would
feel!!! that 70% is about the tipping point in the long term.
</pre>
</blockquote>
Hassan Ouzzate wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAVyh7q4AHxBGXOkYU%0D%0A%09j70W2sKAAAAQAAAA%2FGlUEPKEcEWd9cTGMsAP8AEAAAAA@menara.ma"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">From my experience of language situation in Agadir, your figure does not
seem at all unrealistic. I would tend to confirm your description. </pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
C. And there was some suggestion for refinement:<br>
Cunliffe D J (Comp) wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid0BA7EE4D4646E0409D458D347C508B78015EC4FB@MAILSERV1.uni.glam.ac.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">The below is a quotation from "Spreading the word, the Welsh language
2001" by J Aitchison and H Carter which looks at the results of the 2001
census in Wales (page 134/5). It is talking about the Welsh speaking
heartland.
"These language bases act therefore as a core reserve sending out pulses
of speakers which keep the language alive over a broader territory. This
condition assumes that the core, if not monolingual, returns proportions
of speakers well over 70 per cent, and preferably over 80. A condition
where those proportions are substantially lowered, even though there is
a wider spread bilingualism with proportions nearer 50 per cent, can be
interpreted as no more than a stage in language death. Without the
resource of first language speakers brought up in the minority language
in a well-delineated heartland, then gradual decline and elimination is
certain."
What I thought was interesting was the idea that it might not be
necessary to have this 70% threshold across the whole region/country, if
a heartland exists.</pre>
</blockquote>
Emily McEwan-Fujita wrote:
<blockquote
cite="midPine.GSO.4.58.0511290836580.20911@ccat.sas.upenn.edu"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Dear Nicholas,
... the phrase 'linguistic tip' was coined by Nancy Dorian in her 1981
book _Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect_: "In
terms of possible routes toward language death it would seem that a
language which has been demographically highly stable for several
centuries may experience a sudden 'tip' after which the demographic tide
flows strongly in favor of some other language." (p. 51)
There _is_ a slightly different kind of claim floating around that is
based not on percentages, but on actual numbers of speakers. This claim,
frequently repeated by linguists and the media, is that a language needs
100,000 speakers to survive. This claim originated as a series of cautious
speculations on the part of the linguist Michael Krauss, and is not a
scientific theory. I trace the origin and transformation of this claim,
and its application to Scottish Gaelic by British journalists, in my
article titled "'Gaelic Doomed as Speakers Die Out'? The Public Discouse
of Gaelic Language Death in Scotland." It is forthcoming next year in
_Leasachadh na Gaidhlig: Revitalising Gaelic in Contemporary Scotland_,
Wilson McLeod, ed., Dunedin Academic Press (Edinburgh). I'd be happy to
send you a copy via e-mail.
Based on my analysis of this "100,000 speakers" claim, I would tend to
take with a grain of salt any claims of an actual percentage of speakers
within a community needed to maintain a language as a means of everyday
use. Not least because journalists' favorite way to use the 100,000
speakers claim in Scotland is as "scientific proof" of the supposedly
imminent (or even completed) death of Scottish Gaelic, and as an argument
against public funding for Gaelic revitalization efforts. The best suggestion I received for the origin of the 70% figure put it
down to simple arithmetic:
</pre>
</blockquote>
D. Here is the one suggestion of where the 70% figure came from,
putting it down to simple arithmetic:<br>
<br>
Wilson McLeod wrote:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid20051129165108.pyvixtbc2yogg88s@www.staffmail.ed.ac.uk"
type="cite">This is not entirely responsive to this query, but my
understanding of the 70% threshold (as explained by Kenneth MacKinnon)
is a logical one: that 70x70 =49. If only 70% or lower of a given
community know Xish, then the chances of any two people in that
community who are unfamiliar with each other will each know Xish is
less than 50%. This means that it is more likely than not that they
will simply use Yish. <br>
<br>
This is obviously very far from an iron-clad rule, let alone an
observed trigger of language shift in real situations, but it does
provide a logical explanation for choosing this specific 70% threshold.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
E. One offered alternative, non-quantitative criteria:<br>
<br>
Jane Simpson wrote:
<blockquote
cite="midPine.GSO.4.58.0511291056180.21913@extro.ucc.usyd.edu.au"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Peter Sutton has claimed long-term stability for very small communities in
Cape York with limited contact with colonisers. I speculate that, in the
colonial language situation, it helps to have distributed communities -
i.e. if you live in a small community but can frequently visit a
neighbouring community and speak the same language, this is a confirmation
of the usefulness of your language, and an incentive to keep speaking it.
</pre>
</blockquote>
E. There was one socio-caveat<br>
<br>
Adrienne Redd wrote:<br>
<font color="#000080" face="Arial">this term the "tipping point" is a
concept well known to (at least American) sociologists and is used with
regard to (usually black-white) racial mix. The idea is that blacks may
be comfortable with up to 80% whites but that whites may only be
comfortable with up to 10% blacks and after that point "white flight"
takes place and whites may flee a given neighborhood. This is a highly
charged term and no longer used by sociologists, so be aware of its
other connotation.<br>
</font><br>
F. And there does seem to be some bibliography on it<br>
Angela Kluge wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid002501c5f49a$f12ff4c0$5703a8c0@CSDPAPUA.SIL"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Grimes, Joseph E. 1986. Area norms of language size. In: Elson, Benjamin
F. (ed.). 1986. Language in global perspective: Papers in honor of the
50th anniversary of Summer Institute of Linguistics 1935-1985. Dallas, TX:
Summer Institute of Linguistics, 5-19.
</pre>
</blockquote>
(Thanks to Angela, I now have a pdf of it, and could send it to you.)<br>
<pre wrap="">Coulmas, ed. 1984: Linguistic minorities and literacy: Language policy issues in
developing countries. (esp. article by Srivastava, quote by Hartmut Haberland above. He
quoted the paper (and reproduced the Srivastava's diagram, which he says is the really
interesting thing) in his paper in:
A language policy for the European Community : prospects and quandaries / edited
by Florian Coulmas. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. (Contributions to the
sociology of language: 61))</pre>
Williams' references on Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Group Identity
<blockquote type="cite">Clement, R., (1980), 'Ethnicity, Contact and
Communicative Competence in a second language' in 'Giles, H et al (eds)
Language: social psychological perpectives, Oxford, 1980 <br>
Giles, H., Bourhis R.Y., & Taylor, D., 1977, 'Towards a Theory of
Language in Ethnic Group Relations' in Giles, H., et al (eds) Language,
Ethicity and Intergroup Relations<br>
Giles, H., & Byrne, J.L., 1982, 'An Intergroup Approach to Second
Language Acquisition' in JMMD 3,1 <br>
Giles, H., Rosenthal, D., & Young, L., 1985, 'Perceived
Ethnolinguistic Vitality: the Anglo- and Greek- Australian Setting'
inJMMD 6,3/4 <br>
Johnson, P., Giles, H., & Bourhis, R.Y., 1983, 'The Viability
of <br>
Ethnolinguistic Vitality: A Reply' in JMMD 4,4 <br>
JMMD, Vol 3, No 3, 1982: Special Issue on Language and Ethnicity <br>
Labrie, N. & Clement, R., 1986, 'Ethnolinguistic Vitality,
Self-Confidence and Second Language proficiency: an Investigation' in
JMMD 7,4 <br>
Saint-Blancat, C., 1984, The Effect of Minority Group Vitality Upon its
Sociopsychological Behaviour and Strategies in JMMD 5,6 <br>
Smolicz, J.J., 1983, 'Modification and Maintenance: Language among
School-children of Italian background in South Australia' in JMMD 4,5 <br>
Taylor, D.M., (1980) 'Ethnicity and Language: A social psychological
perspective' in Giles, H, Robinson, W.P. & Smith, P.H. (eds)
Language: Social Psychological Perspectives, Oxford <br>
Ward, C., & Hewston, M., 1985, 'Ethnicity, Language and Intergroup
relations in Malaysia and Singapore: A Social Psychological Analysis'
in JMMD 6, 3/4 <br>
</blockquote>
Aurolyn Luykx wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid20051129234626.50047.qmail@web31807.mail.mud.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">There was a panel on "tip" at the AAA last year, though I think it must have been in San Francisco, because I went to Atlanta and didn't see it. If you can get hold of the conference program or the book of abstracts, those would list who the presenters were.</pre>
</blockquote>
Unfortunately, this seems to be beyond the event horizon of
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/index.htm">http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/index.htm</a><br>
<br>
Adrienne Redd wrote:<br>
<font color="#000080" face="Arial"><br>
Leisy Wyman, author of (2004) Language Shift, Youth Culture, and
Ideology - a Yup'ik example (Unpublished dissertation) examined <em>just
this question</em> in following two cohorts of Yup'ik Eskimo youths
over five (!) years while she lived and taught in a Yup'ik village in
Alaska. Leisy's email address is </font><a href="mailto:Leisy@aol.com"><font
color="#000080" face="Arial">Leisy@aol.com</font></a><font
color="#000080" face="Arial">. I believe she lives on the West Coast
of the U.S., so she will be nine hours earlier than you are. </font>
<p>Thanks to all of the 25 who responded. I have endeavoured to include
all the substantive points they made, but many more wrote saying how
interesting they found the issue. I hope they had the patience to read
this far.<br>
</p>
<p>Nicholas Ostler<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Foundation for Endangered Languages
Registered Charity: England and Wales 1070616
172 Bailbrook Lane, Bath BA1 7AA, England
+44-1225-852865 <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:nostler@chibcha.demon.co.uk">nostler@chibcha.demon.co.uk</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ogmios.org">http://www.ogmios.org</a>
</pre>
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