[Foundation-l] A simple question on languages.

Tue Jan 29 10:35:56 UTC 2008

On 29/01/2008, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> To some extent. However, long-term maintenance of bilingualism at all
> levels of a society is rare, and in those situations where it can be
> found, one language can still be said to be "dying", for example Welsh
> and English.

I'd certainly disagree in the case of Welsh. The official promotion of
it in schools means a generation of Welsh kids is growing up speaking
it as well as they do English.

> The idea is that for a language to be "healthy", it will
> need to have a large portion of functionally monolingual people. This
> has not been proven definitively, but there is much literature on the
> subject. Many linguists today believe that when everyone is fully
> bilingual in a vehicular language (dominant language), the smaller
> language is doomed.

- d.