Concept
Minority language
Related concepts (25)
National language
A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the territory of a country may be referred to informally or designated in legislation as national languages of the country. National languages are mentioned in over 150 world constitutions. C.M.B.
Language revitalization
Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community groups, or governments. Some argue for a distinction between language revival (the resurrection of an extinct language with no existing native speakers) and language revitalization (the rescue of a "dying" language).
Language policy
Language policy is an interdisciplinary academic field. Some scholars such as Joshua Fishman and Ofelia García consider it as part of sociolinguistics. On the other hand, other scholars such as Bernard Spolsky, Robert B. Kaplan and Joseph Lo Bianco argue that language policy is a branch of applied linguistics. As a field, language policy used to be known as language planning and is related to other fields such as language ideology, language revitalization, language education, among others.
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) is a European treaty (CETS 148) adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe. However, the charter does not provide any criterion or definition for an idiom to be a minority or a regional language, and the classification stays in the hands of the national state.
Language shift
Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceived to be higher status stabilise or spread at the expense of other languages that are perceived by their own speakers to be lower-status. An example is the shift from Gaulish to Latin during the time of the Roman Empire. For prehistory, Forster et al.
Alghero
Alghero (alˈɡɛːɾo; L'Alguer lalˈɣe; S'Alighèra saliˈɣɛɾa; L'Aliera laˈljɛːɾa) is a city of about 45,000 inhabitants in the Italian insular province of Sassari in northwestern Sardinia, next to the Mediterranean Sea. The city's name comes from Aleguerium, which is a mediaeval Latin word meaning "stagnation of algae" (Posidonia oceanica). The population is noted for having retained the language of the Crown of Aragon rulers from the end of the Middle Ages, when Sardinia was part of the Crown of Aragon; hence, Alguerese (the Catalan dialect spoken there) is officially recognized as a minority language.
Regional language
A regional language is a language spoken in a region of a sovereign state, whether it be a small area, a federated state or province or some wider area. Internationally, for the purposes of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, "regional or minority languages" means languages that are: traditionally used within a given territory of a State by nationals of that State who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the State's population and different from the official language(s) of that State Recognition of regional or minority languages must not be confused with recognition as an official language.
Official language
An official language is a language having certain rights to be used in defined situations. These rights can be created in written form or by historic usage. 178 countries recognize an official language, 101 of them recognizing more than one. The government of Italy made Italian official only in 1999, and some nations (such as the United States, Mexico and Australia) have never declared de jure official languages at the national level. Other nations have declared non-indigenous official languages.
Endangered language
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead language". If no one can speak the language at all, it becomes an "extinct language". A dead language may still be studied through recordings or writings, but it is still dead or extinct unless there are fluent speakers.
Cherokee language
Cherokee or Tsalagi (Tsalagi Gawonihisdi, dʒalaˈɡî ɡawónihisˈdî) is an endangered-to-moribund Iroquoian language and the native language of the Cherokee people. Ethnologue states that there were 1,520 Cherokee speakers out of 376,000 Cherokee in 2018, while a tally by the three Cherokee tribes in 2019 recorded ~2,100 speakers. The number of speakers is in decline. About eight fluent speakers die each month, and only a handful of people under the age of 40 are fluent.