ELL: old traditions vs. modern life in linguistic minorities

[Gerd Jendraschek]

One additional thought on the debate about old speakers vs. young learners.

> Once again this raises the question of language and identity and langauge
> and culture, as well as potential splits between enthusiasts. Younger
> campaigners are more willing to divorce the language from the traditional
> culture that older native speakers identify with and regret the passing
of:
> some younger people experienced the traditional culture as repressive, so
it
> may not be good PR to link language to old culture too much!
>

Why should it be "either-or"?? I would rather say that culture must embrace
both directions, the past AND the future. If you want to see a good example
of how a revitalization movement links language to both old and new culture,
take a look at Basque television. You have many reports on traditional
sports, festivities, food, singing etc. On the same channel, you have a lot
of programming for children (quite untraditional comic strips) as well as
dubbed US films and series. Of course only few linguistic minorities can
afford TV in their language, but whatever the strategy of language spread
may be, the principle should be the same. The important point is not to be
traditional vs.modern, but to be attractive. It is not a particularity of
linguistic minorities that old and young members do not share the same
interests. But whereas this is not a big tragedy in stable communities, it
is problematic in the case of endangered languages. This is particularly
visible in the Occitan area: a newspaper article on Occitan in schools was
entitled 'En Languedoc-Roussillon, de l'occitan "naturel" à l'occitan
"chimique"'. The old speak a local variety whereas the young learn a
semi-standardized 'chemical' form, and moreover, even if they both speak the
same language, there is not much they can talk about with each other because
they don't have the same cultural background any more.

However, the debate on whether language preservation should give a priority
to traditional or modern culture depends a lot on the economic structure of
the community. In Manx, there seems to be a lot of financial terminology
(maybe someone on the list can say more about this case), as financial
services are a major source of income. Nomadic tribes in the rain forest
however would have no need for a glossary on financial services.

Best wishes

Gerd Jendraschek


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