LING 115gw Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Indigenous Languages Of The Americas, Language Death, Language Shift
Document Summary
Language maintenance, shift, and loss in minority groups. Language shift: when a community transitions from one language to another. (1) occurs amongst immigrant communities. When people migrate to other countries and find themselves surrounded by a new language, their heritage language often phases out. Born in one country and spends childhood there. May not feel at home in either country. Generation 2 - bilingual in hl and lml. Generation 3 - dominant in the lml, weak in the hl (2) occurs amongst linguistic minorities located in multi-ethnic countries with a single, dominant language. When a smaller group lives next to a larger group. When there is an imbalance in population-size and socio-economic power between larger and smaller groups. Often happens through different domains i. e. school, the workplace, etc. Examples (1) oberwart: transition from hungarian --> german. Government enforces german as the standard language and bans. All jobs suddenly require german, german becomes language of success, taught in schools.
