[Endangered-languages-l] Prehistory of language revitalization?

[Dave Sayers]

Hi Jussi,

I started a discussion this summer over on the lgpolicy list 
(https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list) about the prehistory of 
language policy more broadly. I got a lot of interesting responses. The only one that 
might relate to language revitalisation in some sense was King Alfred of Wessex’s 
literacy programme of 878-92 AD, setting up schools, and translating from Latin to 
Old English a series of books he deemed “most necessary for all men to know”, as he 
put it in the preface letter. (In C9, English was a vernacular language, widely used 
for administration but not highly regarded.) This could be interpreted as an attempt 
to bolster the status of English, to revitalise it in that sense. King Alfred's 
literacy and translation policy was described in a recent BBC documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snU5LvSbSKU

It's discussed from 43m 35s, to the end of the programme.

I would say that the 'modern' tradition of language revitalisation has a longer 
history than just the 19th century though. From my own research I know that the 
reconstruction of the Cornish language began in the early 18th or even late 17th 
century, by amateur philologists concerned about the disappearance of the language. I 
discuss this in a co-authored article coming out next year (which I'll send you if 
you like). And I don't think this is a particularly unusual case.

You may like to re-ask your question on the lgpolicy list too!

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, UK
dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers



On 18/11/2014 11:11, Ylikoski Jussi wrote:
> Dear colleagues,
>
>
> According to the received view, the history of modern language revitalization seems
> to begin from the Hebrew and Gaelic revivals in the 19th century. The motives and
> impact factors of people such as Pāṇini, Gutenberg and Herder aside, and disregarding
> the rise of European nation states and their national languages, I would be
> interested to know whether there have been less known – and presumably less
> successful – early ("pre-Hebraic" and "pre-Gaelic") collective efforts that could be
> characterized as language revitalization in a sense of consciously and systematically
> trying to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one.
> Anywhere in the world?
>
>
> Needless to say, I would be grateful for any references to published work on this issue.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> Jussi
>
>
>
> http://ansatte.uit.no/jussi.ylikoski/
>
>
>
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