The State of Minority Languages: Intoductiory Remarks

In many respects, the state of minority languages reflects the dynamics of the society at large. On the eve of the year 2000, many minority languages are threatened by rapid modernisation and urbanisation; we see languages in decline for the simple reason that speakers have to reconsider language choice when entering larger social, political and economic realities. For other languages, new opportunities may arise. In a number of countries central governments have to recognize more autonomy for regions or local authorities and this fact alone can put former minority languages in a better, even dominant position. Political events that culminated in the Canadian Referendum of 1992, reported on by John Edwards in this volume, illustrate how such opportunities may arise. Other nation states and their official languages have to operate, mainly for economic reasons, within larger political structures. A good example here is the gradual change that is taking place in the countries that belong to the European Community (see Ammon, Mattheier and Nelde, 1993, for an overview). In addition to community-based factors and broad parameters in the national political landscape, this gradual process of federalisation gave new impetus to languages such as Catalan in Spain and France, and may well facilitate a revival of other languages such as Welsh in Britain. Moreover, the universal and rapid rise of migration has created new and unprecedented forms of multilingualism in most countries (see e.g. Alladina and Edwards, 1991a; 1991b; Extra and Verhoeven, 1992). It is up to the newcomers in countries of settlement to preserve a language, often the official and dominant language in the country of origin, in a new and rather unknown social, political and cultural context; this is not an easy task wherever immigrant languages are not (yet) protected by institutionals means, such as government authorities, schools, churches, etc.