Endangered languages

[Claire Bowern]

A quick comment re multilingualism and stability: Pretty much all the 
stable multilingual communities in the world have a couple of 
characteristics. There has to be a certain proportion of the population 
who are multilingual, and it's always much higher than the proportion of 
the US who are multilingual. Secondly, there have to be established 
domains for each language. The US has neither at a national level 
(although plenty of examples of both at the local level).
Claire

> "unstable?" Who is to say that North America won't become like other
> parts of the world with long histories of stable multilingualism?
>