Is It Possible to Revitalize a Dying Language? An Examination of Attempts to Halt the Decline of Irish
This paper evaluates the attempts to revitalize the indigenous language of Ireland. It examines how the number of native Irish speakers declined under British rule, and how this trend continued even after independence, when Irish was declared the country’s official language. Successive Irish governments have used two main strategies to reverse language shift. The first was to protect the small Irish speaking areas in the west of the country, the Gaeltacht. The second was to rely on schools elsewhere to produce new generations of fluent Irish speakers. By the 1970s it was apparent that neither policy was working. However since then, somewhat improbably, an increasing number of people have begun to use Irish, both inside and outside the Gaeltacht. This paper examines whether this revival constitutes reverse language shift. In particular, it asks to what extent Irish is now being passed on as a mother tongue to a new generation of children.
Language endangerment and language revitalization
In almost every part of the world, minority languages are threatened with extinction. At the same time, dedicated efforts are being made to document endangered languages, to maintain them, and even to revive once-extinct languages. The present volume examines a wide range of issues that concern language endangerment and language revitalization. Among other things, it is shown that languages may be endangered to different degrees, endangerment situations in selected areas of the world are surveyed and definitions of language death and types of language death presented. The book also examines causes of language endangerment, speech behaviour in a language endangerment situation, structural changes in endangered languages, as well as types of speakers encountered in a language endangerment situation. In addition, methods of documentation and of training for linguists are proposed which will enable scholars to play an active role in the documentation of endangered languages and in language revitalization. The book presents a comprehensive overview of the field. It is clearly written and contains ample references to the relevant literature, thus providing useful guidance for further research. The author often draws on his own experience of documenting endangered languages and of language revival activities in Australia. The volume is of interest to a wide readership, including linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and educators.
Spin label motion in fatty acids.
Spin labels dissolved in highly purified fatty acid systems exhibit nearly identical tumbling rates in liquid and solid phases. Even though the spin labels do not have the same molecular geometry as the lipid matrix the melting point of the matrix can be inferred by measurements of the temperature dependency of molecular motion.