maintaining languages and its problems

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I know the case of Ireland quite well. Yes, the education program is not effective if you measure the outcome for the lots of money which has being spent on the teaching of Irish. But I do not think that Irish is a case of total failure. The success of Hebrew is the result of some favourable factors having met together.
 
Due to education, the Irish language is far from being forgotten in societal mind. And, as 
I have said, some people do have enough skills to converse with you in Irish throughout the country. Since a few decades, the prestige of Irish has continually risen outside the Gaeltacht. Today, people with fluent Irish have the respect from others because this is considered as one sign of well-educated people. Indeed, the percentage of fluent Irish speakers is highest among well-educated people beside native speakers from the Gaeltacht. This is one reason that more and more Irish-medium schools have been opened. Furthermore, the Irish language movement has well an enduring tradition reaching back to the founding of the Gaelic League.
 
If you address people in Irish in Ireland, most people with sufficient skills will engage with you talking in Irish. I have remarked that many Irish speakers are quite shy to start in Irish having the fear that their skills are not that good in front of the other persons.  The case of Irish is a mixing of successes and failures. 
 
If not both parents have reasonable Irish, it is possible to bring children in touch with Irish early by giving them children books in Irish, for example. Some potential of parents to pass Irish on to children is well existing. Reports show that some Irish person begin to use Irish regularly on marriage. What Ireland needs are higher percentages of people who make use of their skills regularly like in Wales where most people with skills in Welsh practice the language regularly.
 
I am convinced that effective and suitable language education for continuing years will almost always have some results if there are no strong stigmas. If the number of people who have reasonable skills is rising in the run of years, dedicated speakers will have more opportunities to use their skills. Unless the addressed person is hostile towards the language, he or she will probably use the task language on being addressed in it.  
 
The various areas on earth have, of course, their own problems. In Europe, the indigenous population are not a small minority as are the Native Americans or Australian Aborigines. Therefore mandatory education all over the traditional areas of regional languages is suitable in Europe. In Europe, there are no totalitarian regimes apart from Belarus which shares some features of totalitarian regimes. Furthermore there is plenty of teaching material for all European languages available. In industrialized countries, neoliberal utilitaristic thinking of some people is the main problem.
 
In Northern America and Australia, mandatory education of indigenous languages is suitable in those areas where there are living many indigenous people. Otherwhere, every pupil ought to have access to the local indigenous language. All measures ought, of course, to be arranged together with the task indigenous peoples. In Australian papers concerning Aboriginal language among non-indigenous pupils, I am missing statements about using the skills. The main purpose to learn other languages is to share cultural life, read traditional texts in the original language or simply to speak it with indigenous people and not to foster understanding of cultures.. In areas of quite strong languages, this is probably no problem. In the case of weaker languages, contacts between speakers must be fostered in order to spread the usage.
 
In Middle America, most people have some indigenous ancients. Therefore like the statement of Mexico city´s mayor who has said:"Saving Nahuatl is concerns the whole society and not only a segment of the population." In 2008, he has announced to establish mandatory teaching of Nahuatl in all schools of Mexico city. 
 
In Southern America, the situation is similar to that of Northern America in areas outside the Andes. Within the Andes States, indigenous peoples and cultures are still so much present that mandatory bicultural education would be suitable all over the country in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay.
 
Some indigenous languages face indeed the problem of few written texts and teaching material. In Australia, language centres are working on solving this problem. 
 
I think that work to convince numerous people from the majorial population is necessary, too. One argument could be that the indigenous linguistic heritage is also of worth for mainstream citizens as unique part of their living area. Some support from mainstream citizens will ease to achieve goals.
 
Yes, I have a very idealistic and also romantic image of languages. Without linguistic and cultural diversity, earth would be a boring place. I would call myself an identist. For 
different languages and cultures are as important as lingua francas to foster links and contacts between people. With only one language, cultural work would be so boring. I am very opposed to pure utilitaristic thinking.

I am strongly in favour to aim at trilingual citizens, namely skills in the indigenous or regional language, the lingua franca of the state and an international language like English. This is the suitable answer to the challenges of modern world.


Alexander Dietz