Language maintenance and 

shift.
OCTOBER 18, 2015   / LEAVE A COMMENT

1.   Define language shift and language death/loss?

Language shift is the process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to
speaking another language.  It is also known as language transfer and language
replacement.

Language death or loss is the end or extinction of a language.  It is also called language
extinction in which the last native speaker has died.

2.  What are the factors contributing to language shift? 

Factors contributing to language shift are economic, social and political factors;
demographic factors; and attitudes and values.

The economic factor:

Obtaining work is the most obvious economic reason for learning another language.  In
English-dominated countries, for instance, people learn English in order to get good jobs. 
This results in bilingualism.  The high demand from industries for employees with fluent
English has successfully encouraged job seekers to equip themselves with English.  In
fact, being competent in English leads to well-paid jobs.
Social factor:
Language shift occurs when the community sees no reason to take active steps to
maintain their ethnic language.  When a community  of speakers moving to a region or
country whose language is different from theirs, there is a tendency to shift to the new
language.  Every time an immigrant learns the native language of the new country and
passes it down to children in place of the old country language.  For example, when a
migrant minority group moves to a predominately monolingual society dominated by one
majority group language in all the major institutional domains – school, TV, radio,
newspaper, government administration, courts, work – language shift will be unavoidable
unless the community takes active steps to prevent it.  
 Political factor:
A rapid shift occurs when people are anxious to ‘get on’ in a society where knowledge of
the second language is a prerequisite for success.
Demographic factor:
Resistance to language shift tends to last longer in rural than in urban areas because rural
groups tend to be isolated from the centres of political power for longer.  The rural people
can meet most of their social needs in the ethnic or minority language.  For example,
Ukrainians in Canada who live out of town on farms have maintained their ethnic
language better than those in the towns because of their relative social isolation.
Attitudes and values:  Language shift tends to be slower among communities where the
minority language is highly valued.  When the minority group support the use of the
minority language in a variety of domains, it helps them to resist the pressure from the
majority group to switch to the majority group language.
3.  How can a minority language be maintained? 
If the minority language is considered an important symbol of a minority group’s
identity, the language is likely to be maintained longer.  For example, Polish people have
regarded language as very important for preserving their identity in the many countries
they have migrat v ed to, and they have consequently maintained Polish for three to four
generations.  The language also can be maintained if families from a minority group live
near each other and see each other frequently or if they have a frequent contact with their
homeland.

4.  What is language revival and how is a language revived? 

Language revival is when people try to make a language that is not spoken or is spoken
very little, spoken more often again.  While language death is what happens when a
language is not used by the people who spoke it before.  Thus, language revival wants to
save a language that is dead or endangered.

The language can be revived through television channel or bilingual education program. 
The bilingual education programmes start from preschool to tertiary level.  An effective
bilingual schooling has generally involved a process known as ‘immersion’.  Children are
immersed in the language and it is used to teach them science, maths and social studies,
for instance.  They are not ‘taught’ the language.  It is used as a medium of instruction to
teach them the normal school curriculum.