2nd language attrition - Shades of gray and other matters

[Stan-Sandy Anonby]

Thanks, that's very interesting. I wonder if traditional and rural lifestyle have a lot to do with language maintenance. In areas with very high rates of urbanization and modernization, prolongued group bilingualism might be much more difficult to achieve.

Stan

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 14:15:05 -0400 (EDT)
 "Harold F. Schiffman" <haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
> Stan:
>
> You ask: "What communities today have all been bilingual for hundreds of
> years?"
>
> Try India, for starters. There are many examples of small (by European
> standards) language groups, such as the Tulus, a Dravidian language based
> around Mangalore in Karnataka State, who use Kannada for literacy, and
> have for a very long time, without giving up Tulu as a home language.
> I'm not sure what the population figures for Tulu are, but the last I saw
> statistics, it was something like 1 million and that was in the 1961
> Census. After that census, India stopped looking at "small" languages
> and/or listing the figures for these, so the figure has certainly
> increased since then.
>
> India in general is tolerant of multilingualism that is long-term and
> traditional, and especially if there is specialization of labor, such that
> a particular group  (e.g. weavers) doesn't intrude on the economic turf of
> another group. But more recent (im)migration e.g. into cities of groups
> that were not present earlier gets less tolerance, especially if they
> compete for jobs thought to be the domain of older groups.
>
> Hal Schiffman
>
>
>
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Stan-Sandy Anonby wrote:
>
> > Hi Aurolyn,
> >
> > There are many examples of bilingual communities enduring a few decades.
> > I wouldn't call them anomalies, nor call them stable. But what I'd
> > really like to see is people who use their L1 in the home and the L2
> > with outsiders for many generations. What communities today have all
> > been bilingual for hundreds of years?
> >
> > Stan
> >
> > On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 15:01:00 -0700 (PDT)
> >  Aurolyn Luykx <aurolynluykx at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Hi al,
> > >
> > > Stan wrote:
> > >  >From my perspective in Brazil, I think economics
> > > > has much more to do with L1 loss than politics does.
> > >
> > >
> > > That's pretty much what I meant -- politic-economic
> > > reasons. My point to Hamo was just that it DOESN'T
> > > happen for reasons inherent to language learning per
> > > se.
> > >
> > > > It is possible for individuals to retain two
> > > > languages, but this usually doesn't last more than a
> > > > few decades. Most communities don't feel it's worth
> > > > their effort for everyone to speak both languages.
> > >
> > > I don't think "communities" (or even individuals) make
> > > their language choices on that sort of conscious,
> > > cost-benefit basis. If people are socialized to learn
> > > two languages, and have contexts in which their two
> > > languages are used, they'll use them. This describes a
> > > lot of communities in which people learn one language
> > > at home for "domestic" use, but learn another as a lg.
> > > of wider communication. Such situations may not
> > > constitute a majority, world-wide, but there are
> > > certainly enough of them (and enough that endure for
> > > more than a few decades) that they can't be dismissed
> > > as mere anomalies.
> > > Aurolyn
> > >
> > >
> > >
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>