[Corpora-List] Re: Minor(ity) Language

[Somers, Harold]

> > On 9 Mar 2006, at 13:11, Somers, Harold wrote:
> >> Well there ARE a lot of minority languages in London. We 
> use the term 
> >> "ethnic minority" so why shouldn't the language(s) that 
> they speak be 
> >> "minority language(s)"?
> 
> Actually, there *is* a possible reason for not using the word 
> "minority" in relation to either the people group or the 
> language.  In the case of Urdu, Arabic, Mandarin, etc. as 
> spoken in London, these are certainly minority languages 
> within the context of the UK, but not within a global context. 

But by the same token, Muslims and Chinese are both ethnic minorities in
the UK, but the term would not be appropriate to describe the situation
world-wide. By your argument, we should not talk about *ethnic*
minorities either.

> However, in the case of Gaelic, Cornish, etc., these are 
> likewise minority languages within the UK, but also minority 
> languages within a global context
> - there is no political entity in which they constitute a 
> dominant language.
> 
> The distinction is an important and useful one, and so it may 
> be better to refer to the first group by a separate term 
> (such as "immigrant languages", perhaps).
> 

The problem with this is that we may also be interested in languages
spoken by groups who are not "immigrants". Again this is a term that we
bandy around, but which has a very specific legal definition: immigrants
for example are not the same as refugees or asylum seekers. Besides
these groups, there are also cultural groups with their own languages
(e.g. Yiddish and Romany speakers), or indeed groups who might at one
time have been immigrants, but have been in the country for several
generations, yet retain their link to their original culture through
their language. 

All very complex.