Linguapax speakers urge protection for minority languages (fwd)

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Linguapax speakers urge protection for minority languages
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040427wob2.htm

Cristoph Mark Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Languages of minority political and cultural groups must be protected to
avoid being lost in favor of more dominant languages, Felix Marti
warned at the inaugural Linguapax Asia conference, held in Tokyo on
April 17.

"A lot of the problems in our world are provoked by the lack of
attention to cultural and political minorities. If you protect
linguistic minorities all over the world, you work for peace," said
Marti, Linguapax Institute President and human rights activist.

Governments, multinational corporations and the mass media are among the
agents of globalization that promote the move toward dominant languages
and away from minority languages, he said.

The daylong conference was held at United Nations University in Tokyo,
and covered a range of issues, from the perseverance and decline of
Slovene linguistic communities in Italy, Austria and Hungary, to the
struggle to offer bilingual education for children in California and
Arizona in the face of public opposition.

Lectures were presented by experts from Japan, Austria, Hungary and the
United States, and were given in English, Japanese and German. The
proceedings were moderated by two of the organizers, Frances
Fister-Stoga and Jelisava Sethna.

"A lot of linguistic communities have decided to maintain their
linguistic identity. That has been a change in the last 20 years,
probably because a lot of communities until now were declining
linguistic communities," Marti said. "Simultaneously, we observe some
linguistic communities that are losing their linguistic practices and
are now changing into 'important' languages."

Many minority languages and cultures exist in Europe, and to protect
them, an independent union called the Federal Union of European
Nationalities was established, according to Kolomon Brenner, Assistant
Professor of Eotvos-Lorand University in Budhapest.

In Thailand, according to Donald Smith, linguistics expert and professor
at Notre Dame Seishin University, many areas of the country have
several levels of language, with locals speaking their local and
regional languages, as well as standard Thai, among others. About 80
different languages are spoken in Thailand.

"Today, the 80 languages...are all vital, and there is apparently no
danger of language extinction, there is no phenomena of language death
in Thailand," Smith explained. "People are multilingual--not
bilingual--often trilingual and quadrilingual. They just speak whatever
language is appropriate wherever they are."

Another example of language that could be said to be thriving is that of
Palau. The island nation was colonized by Spain, Japan and eventually
the United States, which took the country as a protectorate following
World War II. Over the years, according to Yoko Okayama, associate
professor at Ibaraki University, English began to virtually wipe out
the local language, with children learning less and less Palau as they
went through school.

To avoid the complete attrition of their native language, the tiny South
Pacific nation has made Palau a part of the educational curriculum,
spending a portion of each day teaching children to speak, read and
write it. In many cases, parents end up learning new words from their
children, Okayama said.

Still, many of the world's minority languages face decay and potential
extinction.

In Italy, Slovene is facing extinction in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia
region. Slovene speakers are a minority within the Friulian-speaking
community, itself a minority Italian dialect. While use of the Friulian
dialect actually expanded during the 20th century, Slovene in the area
has been abandoned as a language, and most of its native speakers can
no longer speak the language, said Shinji Yamamoto, senior lecturer of
Italian Linguistics at Tokyo University.

In the United States, bilingual education is facing a less natural, more
oppressive problem on a number of fronts, according to Melvin Andrade,
English professor at Sophia Junior College, and Cary Duval, associate
professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Bunkyo University.

In California, despite an extremely large number of residents who speak
a language other than English at home, there is much opposition to
bilingual education. Previously, children were expected to spend about
four years in English as a second language (ESL) classes so they could
obtain functional fluency, from which point they would enter regular
classes.

"The hope is that once ELL (ESL) students are fairly proficient in
English, they can continue their education in classes with their
English-speaking peers. This is nothing about preserving heritage
languages though--it's to get them to use English," Andrade pointed
out.

However, as a backlash against a wave of immigration--particularly from
south of the border--a successful ballot initiative put forward by
anti-bilingual millionaire Ron Unz introduced a "sheltered English" ESL
program, which reduced special instruction to one year, only allowing
English to be used in classes, Andrade said.

California, though, has a legal loophole, making it possible for local
governments to provide such families and children with information in
their primary language, and to offer linguistic assistance, thereby
helping the students to participate in their own education, Duval
stressed.

However, he pointed out that Arizona has done away with any loopholes
that would allow for such education, which is greatly affecting the
Navajo tribes in the area. Many Native American languages have already
become extinct. The Navajo nation is 250,000 strong, and if their
language cannot survive, none of the other Native American languages
have a chance, Duval warned.

There is opposition--again an Unz-backed initiative--to Navajo bilingual
education. The initiative aims to make English the only language to be
used in an official capacity, such as teaching.

In some cases, teachers have been sued for using languages other than
English in their instruction.

Although greater language maintenance and signs of revival have been
seen in recent years, there is clearly an uphill battle to be fought to
preserve the world's linguistic heritage and protect the rights of
frequently displaced minorities.