LL-L "Resources" 2005.11.13 (01) [E]

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 13 November 2005 * Volume 01
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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L "Resources"

1. Scotland in Antwerp

In the printed edition of De Standaard of Nov 12 an exhibition about
Scotland in Antwerp is announced.
Vocabulary loaned from Dutch: "mutch" (Dutch; muts), "kittlin" (Dutch:
kietelen)

I scanned the article and leave it for a few days on URL (552 kb):
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/DS1211SL.jpg
copyrights may apply.

2. Vocabulary spread through the Hanze.

van der Sijs wrote about it in "Onze Taal", November 2005, p. 310-311.

I scanned the 2 pages and leave them for a few days on URL (866kb + 876kb):
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/hanze1.jpg
http://www.euro-support.be/temp/hanze2.jpg
copyrights may apply.

Regards,
Roger

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2005.11.11 (01) [D/E]


Ron wrote:
"The Modern Language Association (MLA) has made a nifty resource available 
on the basis of census data."

The map was a worthwhile endeavour but it posed more questions than it 
answered. Basic human geography dictates that most speakers of most 
languages in the United States will be clustered numerically in cities, as 
the US is a urbanised society. Therefore the map only shows the extent to 
which some cities have more speakers of one language than another and most 
updates are essentially the same (i.e.m indistinguishable from a basic 
population density map).

For me, a better use of the data would be to produce maps based on the 
languages and their speakers as a proportion of counties and statistical 
local areas. Furthermore, the list of languages is hardly exhaustive. I 
looked in vain for Irish and Welsh, for instance.

But a good effort nonetheless.

Go raibh maith agat,

Criostóir.

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Language varieties

I agree, Críostóir, and alluded to it, also to the absence of languages I 
would have expected to see listed (such as Punjabi, which I find to be far 
more widely used than Hindi, Urdu and Gujarathi).  We have to realize that 
such a resource can only be as representative as the census data are, and 
census data rely on questions.  If Punjabi, Welsh, Irish and Low Saxon are 
not asked for, people will probably check the "other" box.  Amharic and 
Tigrinya are wide spoken here (and you see many brochures printed in them) 
but seem to be lumped in with "African languages," so this is pretty much 
useless to someone who wishes to do research or plan a language-specific 
outreach campaign.

Fair enough, if a county contains a large city, the entire county will show 
up with a given level of concentration on the MLA maps.  But--not going into 
minute detail--this is not altogether inaccurate either, since in-city 
housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable to the average household and 
people move farther and farther out into the "boondocks."

You are right in saying that diversity shows up mostly in large cities. 
This consistent with reality.  However, you can go by counties, and the 
majority of counties are rural or semi-rural.  You can look that up in other 
statistical publications.  For instance, at the U.S. Census Bureau "Quick 
Facts" site (http://www.mpl.org/Files/Great/golink.cfm?ID=1578) you can find 
numerous data by states and their main cities. You can go by state and then 
input names of counties and cities  (which just showed me that Oakland, CA, 
does indeed have slightly more African-Americans than European-Americans --  
no wonder someone, obviously not the most enlightened person, recently said 
to me, "So you chose to live in the ghetto" and then added the advice not 
admit it freely ...).  Immigration statistics by counties (including general 
language categories) can be found here: 
http://www.gcir.org/about_immigration/us_counties.htm .  Furthermore, here 
you can identify which counties are urban and which are rural: 
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/ruralmapmachine/ .  What this means is that the 
MLA maps do not provide all the answers, that further research is required. 
However, as you said, and I agree with you, it's a start.

Some languages do indeed "prefer" rural settings.  Here in Washington State, 
there are, for instance, some of the northern counties in which Dutch, 
Frisian and apparently Netherlands Low Saxon are used, also Mennonite Low 
Saxon (though apparently it's hard to "break into" their quiet little 
enclaves).  Similarly, Low Saxon from Germany survives mostly in some rural 
counties of Midwestern states (Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, 
Kansas, etc.)  Scandinavian languages, Estonian and Finnish are being 
maintained not only in cities but also in mostly rural counties, primarily 
of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, (Southern) California 
and Arizona.  Also, Spanish, while tending to have high numbers in cities, 
may even be predominant in some rural counties, if for no other reason than 
high concentrations of Spanish-speaking farmworkers.  I have been to 
Californian small inland towns ("villages" in European contexts, this word 
not normally being used in US contexts) in which truly every person I saw in 
streets and shops was "Hispanic," in this case Mexican, perhaps some of them 
Central American, and almost all the billboards were in Spanish.

Another complicating factor is that participation in the US census is 
voluntary and that people with little or no English proficiency are less 
likely to agree to participate.

If the MLA map utility could be developed to include more language data this 
would solve many remaining problems, since the rest can be deduced from 
other sources.  But, as I said, the MLA (which is known for it's excellent 
resource creation going back way before the PC age) can only present the 
data it has at its disposal.  The onus is apparently on our Federal 
Government and our Census Bureau.  People need to be lobbying for more 
detailed data collection.  Categories like "African languages," "Other 
Native American languages" and "Scandinavian" simply won't do.  But, of 
course, you will need to convince them of the utility of such detailed data, 
and, as far as I can see, the only way of doing this is to say that it is 
important to business development (ethno- and lingo-specific planning and 
targeting) and health care (including public health research and outreach). 
This would probably get their attention.  "Interesting for academic 
research" wouldn't feel the least bit enticing to them.

Wouldn't it be great to have such (improved) maps for the entire world?  I'm 
afraid we're a long way away from that.  Remember the controversy about the 
Scottish census not including questions about Scots?  Many countries, 
including some European Union members, also China, won't even acknowledge 
that certain languages are being used there, or they label them wrongly to 
suit their particular politically motivated and mythologically rooted 
wishful thinking.  Furthermore, collecting such data is costly, and most 
linguistically very diverse countries (e.g., Papua-New Guinea) don't have 
the resources.  The effort would best be in the hands of a world-wide 
organization, preferably not a missionary organization but a "neutral" one 
(if there is such a thing), probably a diverse group of collaborators.

Thanks for sharing your reaction, Críostóir!

Reinhard/Ron 

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