National Languages

& Language Planning

 • National Languages & Language Planning
• National & Official Languages
• Official Status & Minority Languages
• A Price a National Language
• Planning For a National Official Language Form, Fuctions
& Attitudes
• TANZANIA

Selecting a Code

Contents
• Codifying & Elaborating Swahili
• Attitudes to Swahili
• Developing a Standard Variety in Norway
• Selecting a Code
• Codification and Elaboration
• The Linguist’s Role in Language Planning
• Codification of Orthography
• Developing Vocabulary
• Acquisition Planning
• Conclusion
National Languages
& Language
Planning

• Paraguay is the only Latin American nation with a

distinctive national language – Guaraní

• Spanish > used in formal contexts, for

administration, a great deal of education and legal

businessused in formal contexts, for administration,

a great deal of education and legal business

• Guaraní > language of solidarity, the language of

love, humour and poetry.

 • Guaraní was declared the ‘national’ language

• Spanish was an ‘official’ language of Paraguay

• Sociolinguistics :

# A national language is the language of a

National & political, cultural and social unit. It is generally

Official developed and used as a symbol of national

Languages unity. Its functions are to identify the nation and

unite its people

# An official language is simply a language

which may be used for government business. Its
function is primarily utilitarian rather than
symbolic
 • English is an official language
Official
because of its colonial history, as
Status &
Minority well as its value as a world

Languages language and international lingua

franca
 • national language :

A Price a # as lingua franca and official

National language
Language # serves a symbolic unifying
function for a nation
Planning For a National Official Language Form, Fuctions & Attitudes

1) Selection
2) Codification
3) Elaboration
4) Securing its acceptance
 The first President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, chose
Swahili, a language of the Bantu language family, which
was widely used throughout the country as a lingua franca
in many contexts.
TANZANIA Because :
• Swahili was already the medium of primary education,
Selecting a for instance, and so all Tanzanians learned the language
at school
Code • Swahili identified as an African language
• Swahili had served as the lingua franca of the anti-
colonial political movement for independence.
Codifying & Elaborating Swahili

Tanzanian independence in 1961,

The process of standardising
Swahili was used in more and more
Swahili was begun by the British
contexts for education,
administration well before
administration, politics and law. Its
independence. In the 1920s, a
vocabulary was expanded to meet
southern variety of Swahili, used in
the demands of new contexts by
Zanzibar, was selected as the basis
borrowing freely from Arabic and
for the standard.
English as appropriate.
 Attitudes to Swahili

• People have often seen the success of Swahili as the national language in Tanzania as due to its
‘neutral’ status – it is not identified with a particular tribe. But its widespread acceptance was
also due to the fact that Tanzanians developed a strong loyalty towards the language which
united them in working towards uhuru (‘freedom’) and It provides an economical solution to
the problem of which language to use for local administration and primary education
Developing a Standard Variety
in Norway
Upper-class people spoke Danish
with Norwegian pronunciation in
In 1814, Norway became
formal situations, and a
independent after being ruled by
compromise between that and
Denmark for four centuries
local Norwegian dialects in
informal contexts.

Lower-class and rural people

used Norwegian dialects, with
Danish infl uence evident in the
speech of townspeople
 Selecting a Code

• Essentially the Norwegian government had the choice of developing a national language
from standard Danish or from local Norwegian dialects. While Danish offered all the
advantages of being codified in dictionaries and grammars but Standard Danish was not
used widely for informal interaction, especially in rural areas, and people’s attitudes
towards the language were generally at least ambivalent, if not hostile.
 • The Nynorsk solution, which involved
amalgamating features from several

Codificatio dialects, is the most intriguing from a

n and
linguistic point of view

• Rural dialect resources also solved the

Elaboratio
n
problem of functional elaboration, or
extending the use of Norwegian into
domains where Danish had previously
been the only appropriate code
 Acceptance

• Aasen in 1885 succeeded to persuade influential public figures to

endorse and to use the new variety in public contexts so that,
many people use both Bokmål and Nynorsk depending on the
context.
 individuals have often had an enormous
influence on language planning, and especially on
the standardization or codification of a particular
variety.
• Samuel Johnson’s 40,000-word dictionary was a

The landmark in the codification of English

• Ivar Aasen in Norway created a composite variety
Linguist’s of Norwegian (Landsmål/Nynorsk) from a range of
Role in dialects
• Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in Israel was the most infl
Language uential proponent of the vernacularisation of
Planning Hebrew
• Francis Mihalic wrote the first authoritative
grammar and dictionary of Tok Pisin in the 1950s
• Harry Orsman in New Zealand completed the first
dictionary of New Zealand English on historical
principles in 1997
 • The Welsh government’s offi cial
support for Welsh revitalization is

Codificatio evident in the steady replacement of

n of anglicized spellings by Welsh names. So

Orthograp Llanelli has replaced Llanelly ,

respecting the fact that y is pronounced
hy differently in Welsh. And more radically
English forms of place names, such as
Swansea , are being replaced by Welsh
forms, such as Abertawe
1st Example :

• In New Zealand, the Maori Language Act of 1987 established the Maori Language Commission

to advise on the development of Maori as an offi cial language of New Zealand. On the long

vowel issue it has come down in favour of the systematic use of the macron, describing it as

simpler, easier to read, more economical and less likely to result in ambiguity

Photo by Chappell & Co. / Public domain

2nd Example

Photo by Chappell & Co. / Public domain

 The problem is often faced with the
dilemma of which of these options to
recommend:
Developin 1. a word borrowed from English
g 2. an equivalent Maori word which is
Vocabular perhaps not well known or with a
y slightly different meaning which could
be adapted

3. a word newly created from Maori

resources.
 Acceptance

1) Getting a separate TV Channel was a major triumph for Welsh language

activists. This contributed greatly to the status of Welsh as a language to be
taken seriously.

2) Radio Vanuatu, a crucial means of inter-island communication, uses mainly

Bislama, the national language. This enhances its status and inevitably
contributes to the process of standardisation.
 • sociolinguists may also make a contribution
to organised efforts to spread a linguistic
variety by increasing the number of its
users. It is called acquisition planning

Acquisitio • Language planners may be asked to advise

n Planning about a range of issues such as who should

be the target of the language promotion
efforts, the most effective language
teaching methods in particular contexts,
what materials should be used, and how
the programmes should be evaluated
 • Language planning is defined
most simply as deliberate
language change. This covers a
wide variety of activities including
Conclusion the introduction of new labels for
fruit, the reform of spelling
systems and the provision of
advice on non-sexist terminology
such as Ms and chairperson
“ THANK YOU "
First Group