MEd Can Quang
PhD Comprehensive Examination
1. The importance of language
Languages have been existing, and evolving together with the development and changes in human society (Baker & Jones, 1998). Languages are means of improving their lives in terms of political, social, cultural, and economic aspects. Language is obviously an indispensable tool of human beings. Not only is it a means of communicating thoughts and feelings, accumulating experience, and knowledge but it frames friendships, cultural ties, and economic relationships of communities, nations, or even human beings as well (Baker, 2008; Bokhorst-Heng, 1999; Fishman, 1994).
For the linguist Joshua Fishman, language is not only a vehicle for the expression of thoughts, perceptions, sentiments, and values characteristic of a community; it also represents a fundamental expression of social identity. He confirmed at the first stabilizing indigenous languages symposium on November 16, 1994 at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona focusing on creating an agenda for reversing language shift:
“All the ones who loved them spoke the language to them when they were children… All the endearments, all the nurturing, that is kinship, is tied into a living organism of a community by people who know each other, and they know they belong together… We are tied to each other through the language. That precious sense of community is not a thing to lose just as is the sense of holiness.”
In short, language retention helps maintain feelings of cultural kinship. Actually, while using the language to gain good education, and knowledge to get good jobs for better lives, the speakers expose their social identities. As we knew, the language we speak is part of who we are. It gives us a powerful sense of belonging with those who speak like us, and an equally powerful sense of difference from those who don't. When someone attacks our language -- or even just our accent -- we feel that we are being attacked. And we respond accordingly. Discriminate against a language, meaning you discriminate against its speakers; disrespect my language, meaning you disrespect me (Garrett, 2005).
Language, of course, enables the speakers to access experience and knowledge, and in our world today knowledge is one of the key factors in competitiveness and success. Minds and knowledge are what create the growth and prosperity for individual, community, and even human beings. In an advanced industrial society, in an increasingly interdependent world, the knowledge of other languages becomes indispensable. The inventions of the technology and the Internet more and more advanced have visibly changed our lives. For the last few years, millions of people across the world, who share common interests, are able to communicate with each other and exchange ideas. Not only are they able to do this due to the various technological advances, but also because they share a common language – global language – English language. Whether the ambitious dream, to make an archive of all human knowledge and to make the archive available to everyone on the globe, comes true or not (Internet archive, 2004). Nowadays, there are huge knowledge, information and resources available in the Internet and ready for people to use.
2. Language change
2.1. Internal changes
In the process of developing human society, languages have always been evolving and changing to gain their distinctive status and powers. They change, first of all, for internal reason. The speakers, human beings are creative and innovative. They unconsciously change in their speech. New words and expression are invented. Words change the meanings or gain the new meanings and lose the old ones. The pronunciation of different sounds gradually changes. Example, in medieval English, the “k” was pronounced in words such as ‘knight, knave, knock, know, knell’. It is now silent; Middle English, the word ‘nice’ meant “foolish, stupid”, but since 19th century, ‘nice’ means “pleasant, agreeable” (Baker & Jones, 1998). In Cham language, there were final sounds ‘băk’, ‘bbăk’, ‘thăk praung’, ‘phăk’, ‘nhưk’, ‘dăk’ and ‘mưk mưtai’ which are not using anymore; ‘bblang machuw’ has new meaning of “prosperous, thriving” instead of old meaning of “stunted, dwarfed” (Quang, 2008). This kind of changes may occur over decades or over century.
2.2. Linguistic interactions
Another main reason for language change is lingustic contacts and interactions among different languages. Languages change when facing a new environment, new political condition or resident status, or new immigrants in a place where there is strong contact with other languages. Their mother languages are not sufficient or fail to satisfy the educational, political, employment demands and communicative needs of the society in which they are placed, these involved people need another language to function effectively and their first languages are commonly endangered of being replaced by the second language (Jessner, 2008)(e.g., Vietnamese, Chinese, Latinos, and non English native speakers in the United States are required to learn English and often end up losing their mother languages, by the third generation). Some linguists call them circumstantial bilinguals, who were, in reality, forced to learn a dominant language to survive. In order to participate economically and politically in the society, they must acquire some degree of proficiency in the dominant language, e.g., English in the US, and Vietnamese in Vietnam. Thus circumstantial bilinguals are in a position of adding a societal language as a second language which will unavoidably replace their first language, e.g., Vietnamese, Chinese and Latinos in the United States; and Cham, Ede, Bhanar, and other ethnic minorities in Vietnam (Quang, 2005).
As in the case of the Cham, the Cham language has gradually been replaced by the Viet language, which is overwhelming in their daily lives (Trai, 2008). The young learner will enter a functional stage of learning after about two years of being in mainstream education. This means that he/she will attain basically fluency level needed to function in second language in all aspects of life. At this stage, he/she will begin to avoid using his/her native language. The more he/she uses dominant language, and gaining higher competence level and usage confidence, the less chance he/she uses his/her first language. The language borrowing, and language switching will happen more and more often and end up with language shift. As a result, the risk of loss mother tongue is inevitable and the numbers of dominant language speakers grow bigger and bigger (Heller, 2008) . Typically, the third generation immigrants in the US become monolingual English speakers as ‘three generation shift’ model (Baker, 2006). Luckily, Cham community, since 1832, have still kept their mother language alive and bilingual status.
2.3. Linguistic extinction
Have a look at the whole worlds’ languages to know distinction of their status and power and how a language dies or goes extinct. While some few languages are on the rise of their dominance, status and power in relationships with others (Baker, 2006), many other languages, 90% of worlds’ languages – about 6200, go extinct. As definition of some linguists, it means that the ethnic group who used to speak these languages now no longer uses their mother tongues, as their principal languages. Many kinds of pressures come together to put on smaller languages, such as economic pressures, affect of globalization, government policies that may favor certain official languages and actively or at least implicitly oppress smaller languages. Moreover, when the number of speakers may drop under a few hundreds or thousands, and living separately, the pressure to shift from their native mother tongue to a more dominant language is greater enormous. Even younger generation in the community perceives the social and economic advantages of speaking the more dominant language and voluntarily starts to become bilingual (Reagain, 2008). By that moment, the next generation has a weaker grasp of its mother tongue. Generally, about third generation, minority language speakers can no longer speak to or understand their grandparents and great-grandparents. So the shift from one language to a larger, dominant language can happen quite rapidly (Fishman, 1994).
For this main reason and some other reasons, languages nowadays are dying at an extremely rapid rate. About half of world’s languages have fewer than 10,000 speakers (Ethnologue, 2009). Some think about 90% of world’s languages are listed as “endangered” or “threatened” could be death within 21st century. The destructive power seems stronger than a tsunami. Urgently is required language planning measure to maintain linguistic diversity (Grenoble & Whaley, 1998), as it is ecology of languages (Muhlhausler, 2002; Baker, 2006).
3. The picture of worlds’ languages
In the age of globalization nobody can deny that the knowledge of the English language is one of so indispensable tools to succeed individually, regionally, and globally. It is one of the international languages, a tool of communication in hi-tech devices among countries, cultural groups, various companies and organizations, communities and friends. Among more than 6,909 of the words’ languages grouped in 132 language families, with one to 1268 branches (Lewis, 2009), there has been few languages gain that priority status in terms of dominance , power, and domain. Over the centuries, only few languages of dominant societies have served as auxiliary languages, sometimes gaining the international level, and have been used in recent times in many parts of the world. Currently, we can see from the underlying data in 2007 (Harmon and Loh, 2010), chart 1, which showed the globally dominant languages. About only 25 languages are spoken by 50 percent of the world’s population of about 3.4 billion as mother or first language. Therefore half the world population speaks one of the remaining 5,975 languages (Lewis, 2009). The languages on top are Mandarin, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, French, and so on.
Together with around 200 official languages of the nations have been taught in schools. It also means that most of the rest of the words’ languages have been used only in community, at homes. The speakers of these less dominant languages need to acquire national language and international language if they want to be successful in their lives (Cummins et al, 1994). For example, in my case of Cham ethnic minority, I knew Cham as my first language. I had to go to schools for my education and job with Vietnamese. Hoping to get a better education and career, I had to learn English and got a scholarship to study in the United States of America. International language (English) helped me have a better future than knowing only my community language (Cham) or with my national language (Vietnamese). As my experience and other minority students from other countries who have studied in the United States of America, the opportunity and challenge have grow bigger and bigger when you know more dominant and powerful languages.
3.1. The English spreads
By the year 2000 it is estimated that over one billion people will be learning English. Huge waves of individuals rushing to pay high tuition for English courses in developing countries because English is language of success, the main language of books, newspaper, airports and air-traffic control, international business and academic conferences, science technology, diplomacy, sport, international competitions, pop music and advertising (Garrett, 2005b, Ho, & Alsagoff, 1998)). English is also used for more purposes than ever before. Everywhere it is at the leading edge of technological and scientific development, new thinking in economics and management, new literatures and entertainment genres. These have given rise to new vocabularies, grammatical forms and ways of speaking and writing. Nowhere is the effect of this expansion of English into new domains seen more clearly than in communication on Internet and the development of ‘net English’ (Graddol, 1997).
3.2. Languages in the Internet
Moreover, we are entering a new world are of the Internet and related information technology, which may upset the traditional patterns of communication. We have entered a period in which language and communication will play a more central role than ever before in economic, political and cultural life. The periods that the relationship and contact among individual are broaden up unlimited spaces and forms through information technology. We can see some unprecedented examples right at the moment in history that a global language has just emerged. Such as two incredible events; The first is the exploitation of the Internet and mobile technology in the US presidential campaign, which were thoroughly operated for the first time to help candidate Barack Obama race through the primaries and into the White House in 2008 (Discovery news, 2010); The second is the Tunisian Revolution or Jasmine revolution, which is a movement unified hundred thousands of individuals in movements for change in government, potentially spread through several countries including Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen, Gabon, Iran, Morocco and Kazakhstan, even to China (Sun Maker, 2011). The demonstrations of Tunisia were triggered by decades of unemployment, human rights violations, lack of democracy, rise in food price and general discontent in a dictator nation. Incredible Jasmine revolution, the sudden and explosive waves of street protests ousted and overthrew the authoritarian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled the nation with an iron hand for 23 years. Did those above events happen and have such power and spread without Internet and global language - English language? Because language and Internet have developed inseparably much quicker than ever, the study must be defective if we do not consider the language development in its strong environment, the Internet. Thought this paper only focuses on language, we should have a look at the data of language use in the Internet as shown following, to know how it gain that power. Now English is the largest language used in Internet about 10% of world population, and the number growing bigger and bigger.
4. The importance of minority language maintenance
Language maintenance is the protection and promotion of the first or native language in an individual or within a speech community, particularly among language minorities. Yet languages have no existence without people, the process of language maintenance involves different levels, individuals, community, nation, and linguists (through bilingual education, and language planning, for example), (Baker 2006; Pakir, 1994). Minority languages can be the languages of indigenous groups or of immigrants, which constantly cope with pressures of assimilation and replacement of the dominant language.
There are five basic arguments the researchers usually made why language maintenance is important. However, there is endless controversy on the topic (McCarty, et al, 2006). My view is, whether the language maintenance important or not, based partially on the owners/speakers of the minority language. My reasons are categorized in six basic points as following,
4. 1. Essentiality of Language diversity:
As some researchers said, “Because, with the loss of a language comes the loss of inherited knowledge, an entire thought-world. I've often heard it compared to losing a natural resource or an animal species” (Garrette, 2005b). Acording to me the world knowledge and “entire thought-world” can be translated into global language, and actually most of them in English. With single minority language we cannot access to human knowledge, but with English we can. However, damaging one of the elements in the ecosystem will result in unforeseen consequences for the whole of the system (Baker, 2006). If indigenous/ minority languages are seen as containing within them a wealth of ecological information as parts in ecolingustic system, their revivals are necessary deeds for linguistic diversity (Skutnabb-Kangas, &Phillipson, 2008); Pahl, 2008).
Development needs global language, sustainable development needs language diversity. I agrree that without a language, there is no human communication, no knowledge, and language only exists and develops solely in human society as he said, “A language, defined in this way from among the totality of fact of language, has a paricular place in the realm of human affairs, whereas language does not” (Saussure, 1983 p. 15). Languages have different status, power and dominance. Final goals of humanity are development communities, human societies in a sustainable way. In order to develop, with their language choice, people use and have the right to use whichever language powerful enough that enable them to access any resoiurces of infromation, and knowledge, to contact any partner they need, to broaden their job opportunities. What is that language if not the global language – English language. In order to sustain their development, people need to keep on language diversity. The indigenous/minority languages and cultures need to exist and develop in peace and harmony with other dominant languages, and global language. That is the resposibility of not only the indigenous/ minority speakers themselves but the human beings as well (UNESCO, 2005).
The only reason for mankind to keep language diverisy is because language is the present of the unique culture, the civilization and the knowledge of a community, a nation. There is some domains of minority language use related to traditional values, cultures, and religions which unable to replace by any other languages. For example, Cham community in Vietnam, since 1832 they lost their king dom of Champa and national authority, and became Vietnamese citizens. After about 180 years, under the pressures economic, social, political , their native language still alive, though many of them were assimilated to Vietnamese (Cat, 2010). They are proud of their unique language which is in active use in secured domains of their family, own culture, and traditional religions. Another rare example of diglossia, or stable bilingualism among Native Americans, it is Mississippi Choctaw of about 5,500 tribal members (1995) (Crawford, 1996). At least 90% among children entering schools, fluency in English. They use two languages for distinct purposes. “Tribal government, tribal business enterprises, and the trbally controlled system operate mainly if not exclusively in English” Crawford, 1996, p.55). Choctaw is used extensively in social, ceremonial, and family life. He also mentioned that this was the only reservation he visited where he encountered group of teenagers hanging out with each other speaking their native language, without teachers or other adults cajoling them to do so (Crawford, 1996.
4. 2. Language express identity
The child's first language is critical to his or her identity. Maintaining this language helps the child value his or her culture and sacred heritage from their ancestors, which contributes to a positive self-concept. It is the language that makes human beings distinction from animal and among themselves ( Bokhorst-Heng, 1999; Baker, 2008).
Some conceive the language is the means of conversation and store the ideas, feelings, and knowledge, they tend to use and want to use the best one to fix their need of communication and store the ideas, feelings, and knowledge. By this willing, the tendency of one language for the whole world may become true soon. It is the most dominant, powerful, and the highest status language (Stewert, 1968; Ruiz, 1988).
Some think that language is their identity, their culture, and their traditional values, which are handed down from their parents, and ancestors. They have to keep this sacred heritage unblemished and handed down to their children, children’s children. If they lose their language, they will lose themselves in terms of honor, hope, self esteem, and self pride (Fishman, 1994; Garrett, 2005a). They (some) commit many bad things because they think they have nothing to lose, such as, criminals, drug abuses, prostitutes, and even terrorists... This cause many bad effect to the sustainable development of communities and nations (Garrett, 2005a). Discriminate against a language means discriminate against its speakers. Because their language died, and they blamed on the language killers, they felt guilty, took revenge of the accused of murdering their language their identity, and became inhuman. As we knew, Tamil Tigers - speakers of the Tamil language - have been rebelling for decades against a Sinhalese-speaking majority. And in Spain, the Basque separatist group ETA has used acts of terrorism in pursuing its goal of an independent Basque homeland where Basque would be the national language. Many other conflicts and wars indirectly related to the linguistic issues (Garrett, 2005a).
In reality, both these desires usually exist corporately in one individual, one community and one nation. This is nurtures and motivates bilingual/ multilingual tendency in minority communities. Therefore maintaining the minority languages together with promotion national and global languages are important thing human beings accomplishment for their moving forwards.
4. 3. Social relationship:
When the native language is not maintained, important links to family and other community members may be lost. By encouraging native language use, parents can prepare the child to interact with the native language community, both in the United States and overseas. The question is in case all of them are bilinguals and they can use second language to communicate in every domain, they can link with all community members with the second language, do they need to speak their mother tongue? For social connection reason they may say no, but for maintaining identity reason, if they are proud of their traditional values, they do not want to change, they must say yes. That is why Cham indigenous in Pangduranga area in Vietnam, Choctaw in Mississippi can have kept bilingual status, their mother tongue with national language, until now (Crawford, 1996).
However, few outstanding educated individuals of some minorities lost their return when they got higher education. While they achieve academic distinction, they got fluency in national and global language, and they become the progressive models of their community. If they maintain their native language, they can help to develop their community and bilingualism status on their community, otherwise they break the connection between their community and themselves standing for the development. In this case some of them married dominant native speakers and stopped using their mother tongue. They lose their links to their relatives and community members. The community become smaller and smaller, and backwardness because it loses the educated portion of its population. Ethnic minority/ indigenous are usually in poverty and backwardness. When individuals got advance status of development they left their native community. Few of them feel ashamed of their community, culture and language they want to change their identities (Fishman, 1994). Meanwhile they release a bad message that the community not for nobleperson and their negative attitude to their origin (language and identity) quick spreading like epidemic within the community. This interior pressure ruins the confident of community use their native language and pushes the minority language to death faster.
The human history is the series of civilization from “savagery” to “barbarous” to “civilization”, the series of contacts, changes and replacements form “lower” status of cultures and languages to “higher” status of cultures and languages (Crawford, 1996). This progress is usually natural and desirable. In some periods of human history, the development took priority over sustainability. As a result, the “higher” culture and language community brutally tried to replace and erase the “lower” culture and language. Though democratic orientation took over the wrong direction, the consequences were hardly curable. Many human heritage languages had gone, and big number of mankind is living in poverty and hunger. As for me, maintenance bilingual status is essential. Great potential of individuals, communities, and nations will be unlocked under a relevant language policy and planning at local, regional, and global levels. It is also the purpose and motivation of social development. Words languages will be competitive in mutual existence (Skutnabb-Kangas, & Phillipson, 2008.
4. 4. Intellectual, repository of history of language:
Immigrant students need uninterrupted intellectual development. When students who are not yet fluent in English switch to using only English, they are functioning at an intellectual level below their age. Interrupting intellectual development in this manner is likely to result in academic failure. However, when parents and children speak the language they know best with one another, they are both working at their actual level of intellectual maturity (Cummins et al, 1994).
If we look at the individual’s intellectual maturity as an endless process, the switching in English education earlier than needed just delays the process for a moment. With the English, they own a most powerful tool for not only accessing in huge knowledge and information resources.
During the accomplishment of their intellectual, bilinguals know how to flexibly exploit their both languages. They use their languages spontaneously and sensibly in a variety of ways and for many different purposes. Even young children know surely how to use the two languages in different places, with different people, and for different purposes. Actually, bilinguals naturally know how to purposefully switch back and forth between the two languages in the course of a single activity or interaction (Collier, 1995.
4. 5. Educational advantages:
Research shows that there are important educational advantages in being bilingual particularly when bilingual learners also become biliterate, or literate in two languages. The more your bilingual learners can use both their languages in curriculum learning, the better. The two languages support each other and are interdependent, and bilingual speakers have some cognitive advantages over those who know only one language (Cummins, 1981).
Students who learn English and continue to develop their native language have higher academic achievement in later years than do students who learn English at the expense of their first language. This maybe right because those who still link with their mother tongue community, have strong motivation, and desire of learning, and doing something to help their community to develop and progress (Cummins et al, 1994).
Children's knowledge and skills transfer across languages from the mother tongue they have learned in the home to the school language. From the point of view of children's development of concepts and thinking skills, the two languages are interdependent. Transfer across languages can be two-way: when the mother tongue is promoted in school (e.g. in a bilingual education program), the concepts, language, and literacy skills that children are learning in the majority language can transfer to the home language. In short, both languages nurture each other when the educational environment permits children access to both languages (Collier, 1995; Cummins, 2000; Baker, 2006).
Practically, Bilingual children perform better in school when the school effectively provides teaching-learning the mother tongue and, where appropriate, develops literacy in that language. By contrast, when children are encouraged to decline their mother tongue and, consequently, its development disintegrates, their personal and conceptual foundation for learning is impaired (Baker, 2000; Cummins, 2000; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000; The, 2003).
Research findings have validated that, while maintaining bilingualism, academic, literacy, concepts, and knowledge linguistic skills transfer rather easily across languages (Baker, 2006; Lanauze & Snow, 1989). Recently, ample research has confirmed that mother tongue promotion in the school helps develop both the mother tongue and children’s abilities in the majority school language even if languages use different alphabetic system (Goldenberg, 2008; Cummins, 2001). Actually, when bilinguals are learning and reach fluency in second or other languages, the knowledge and skills can easily transfer across languages.
4. 6. Economic benefits and national security:
Better employment and business opportunities in this country and overseas are available for individuals and units who are fluent in English and another language. There are advantages of being bilingual or multilingual. If someone wants to get a better lifestyle and be successful in the new place, they should communicate and speak the language. They have more opportunities to get a better job and to get a competitive salary. Some companies seek for a bilingual person it is depends of the customer’s demand (Heller, 2008). In doing business, knowing minority languages or maintaining bilingualism/ multilingualism, enable you to reach target customers in the best medium and understanding way to offer your products/services. In the world trade, the endlessly continued rise in trade, capital flows and personal migration, at higher rates than ever, will require increasing human resources devoted to the practice of foreign languages and the study of foreign cultures (Jorge, et al, 1983).
In national and global level, maintenance of bilingualism or minority languages is critical important as we look as how the US treated with language and national security issue. In January 2006, President Bush announced the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI), an inter-agency effort coordinated by the White House to dramatically increase the number of Americans learning, speaking, and teaching critical need foreign languages (minority languages in the United States and other countries). He appealed,
“Foreign language skills are essential to engaging foreign governments and peoples, especially in critical world regions, to promote understanding, convey respect for other cultures, and encourage reform. These skills are also fundamental to the economic competitiveness and security interests of the nation. The Secretaries of State, Education, and Defense and the Director of National Intelligence launched this comprehensive and coordinated national initiative with new programs and resources to expand U.S. critical foreign language education beginning in kindergarten and continuing through elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education and into the workforce” (U. S. Department of Education, 2006).
Why it is only promoting understanding, respect for some critical need foreign languages, in critical world region, at a critical time, while every single language and culture deserves to be understood and respected? Actually, for the sake of economic competitiveness and security of the U.S., nurturing bilingualism in immigrant communities is feasible, humane, and effective. It enables the U.S. to build the link to most of world’s nations needed for a mutual sustainable development, especially for the U.S. benefits.
5. Conclusion
5. 1. Only therectical importance?
To maintain minority languages is very important as those above reasons and the central role of languages. It is crucial important in this era of information technology and high tech which may be very helpful to maintain the minority languages, but actually make them disappear quicker. However, It does not make sence if what we know and what we try to research do not help to make any slowdown the death rate of minority languages. Yes, we, linguists, can reconstruct a few extinct languages; but finally, what we have then is not much more than words on paper, and in museum. We cannot bring back from the dead a society that spoke the language, or the heritage and culture behind it. Once a language is gone, it's gone forever.
if the minority native speakers deny to recognaize their own language as important as we, researchers, ousiders do. It is no meaning and no use to revitalize the language, because as my experience, and some linguists and all researchers agreed that language preservation efforts are to succeed only if they are responded by the community, led by minority/indigenous institutions, organizations, and activists themselves, with the effective help and support from outside expertise and governmental policy and long term funding (Crawford, 1996; Derhemi, 2002). The most decisive factor in the future of these endangered languages is the will and the attitude of the speech communities. Without the interest of the speech community in revitalization, any effort to promote institutional protection would be senseless and insignificant (Derhemi, 2002). It seems only the speakers of the minority languages can say whether the maintenance of their languages is important!!!
5. 2. Who have to do, what can be done?
No matter what UNESCO declared about the indigenous Language Right (UNESCO, 2007), how important the language maintenance is, What we talk, what we think, the massive language death at a record rate faster than ever, meaning “it doesn’t work” Why?
Only the speakers/ owners of the endangered language may decide “It works”. The main players in the narrative need to understand this importance, know the stage their language is in, share practical experience (both failures and successes), and know what need to do to maintain their language step by step. Reforming their positive language attitude, promotion language use, reserving domains for minority language use among native speakers, are necessary for revival the language together with relavant language policy and language planning in terms of status, acquisition and corpus (Baker, 2006.
5. 3. Theory must match with pratice
It is easy to say not easy to do whatever even only to show that their minority languages are important. We never see the minority language appear equitably with dominant language in schools, mass-media, public places, on the Internet. We never look for community leaders, and never train them how their language is important and need to be promoted, and revitalized. The United States of America is the model of the world in its democratic oreintation, and in managing the nation. Though many studies on bilingual education and its important have been conducted, not many projects have been implimented. While fundings and projects for teaching English as a second language have been promoting everywhere with different names, TEFL, TESOL, TESL, ESL, and so on. Rarely or no chance is it to get scholarship or fund available for students and teachers seeking for higher education in bilingual fields. Finaly, “No child left behind” (passed in Jun, 2001) put an end to the destiny of minority languages, and bilingual education in the U.S. Is it serious if we are talking about language diversity while “English only” has kept trongly being supported from current language policy, language planning and the world of noblemen.
5. 4. Take Challenge or it is too late
The huge challenge to the process of maintaining minority languages is that most of them, the main players in the narrative, are usually not aware of their losing language sistuation and lack of condition to start a reverse movement of language shift. Only bilingual education in schools is not enough to make “it works”. WHO can make them think about the important of their language and change their language attitute towards their language, while they are truggeling with their hunger? WHO can find out their social leaders, and activists and train them to be language revival leaders? It seems much work need to be done to cure these language than what human being have done. The initial steps of action need to be done rather than huge research and declarations. The way we have acted sofar to say that we, human beings, want to promote only global language, and we will pay for this unforeseen deviation as we are paid for our past mistakes.
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