A Bit More Detail

According to an email from Youssef Gaigi posted by Gillian York:

Today’s speech shows definitely a major shift in Tunisia’s history.
[Tunisian president Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali talked for the third time in the past month to the people. Something unprecedented, we barely knew this guy. Ben Ali talked in the Tunisian dialect instead of Arabic for the first time ever.

A story in today's New York Times will give you some background on the serious and astonishing situation in Tunisia: David Kirkpatrick and Alan Cowell, "Crisis Deepens in Tunisia as President’s Offer Falls Flat", 1/14/2011. [Update — Since I posted this, Ben Ali has resigned and fled the country, as the linked story indicates.]

By "Tunisian dialect" Youssef Gaigi means what the Ethnologue calls "Tunisian Spoken Arabic", and by "Arabic" he means what the Ethnologue calls "Standard Arabic", often referred to as "Modern Standard Arabic".

For those who aren't familiar with Arabic diglossia, a plausible analogy would be to equate "Classical Arabic" with Latin, to compare "Modern Standard Arabic" (MSA) to the variety of Latin used in the Vatican (with words and phrases added over the years to refer to more recent objects and concepts), and to link the various "spoken" Arabics (sometimes called "colloquials" or "dialects") with modern Latin-derived "Romance" languages like French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, etc.

The analogy is incomplete, since MSA is taught everywhere in schools, used almost everywhere in the media, and is the only variety of Arabic with significant presence in a written form. The "spoken" or "colloquial" Arabics are used in everyday life, but generally don't have a standard written form and are rarely written. Still, the linguistic differences between MSA and Tunisian or Syrian are roughly as large as those between Latin and French or Spanish.

A story may illustrate some of the ideologies involved. A few decades ago, a Tunisian linguist who had studied in the U.S. returned to a university position in Tunisia. Because some of his published work dealt with the phonetics and phonology of Tunisian Spoken Arabic, one of his colleagues formally accused him in the faculty senate of bringing the Tunisian nation into disrepute, by suggesting in print that Tunisians spoke such a degenerate and incorrect variety of Arabic.

Manchus originated from China's northeast, which under the country's last dynasty, the Qing, was off-limits to Han Chinese immigration. As the dynasty collapsed toward the end of the 19th century, Chinese migrants flooded in. When Japan occupied Manchuria in the 1930s, Manchu language education was replaced by Japanese. Once China retook the region at the war's end, Japanese classes were replaced by Chinese. The Manchu language was never again taught on a wide scale.

As a result, virtually no Manchus today have heard Manchu spoken by their parents. For many, it was taboo. Gebu Algika, a 30-year-old sports promoter who helps run one of the Manchu classes in Beijing, said his grandfather, a prominent Manchu, was executed by the Communists shortly after the 1949 takeover for being a "reactionary." His family fearfully changed its ethnic registration from Manchu to Han. "People born after 1950 don't speak it," he says. "It was politically dangerous."

As rulers of China's last dynasty, Manchus suffered especially under communist rule. Members of the court underwent ideological indoctrination: Most famously the last emperor, Puyi, whose life story was filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci, became a gardener. His relatives were forbidden to speak Manchu, and Manchu schools in Beijing closed down.

Today, only one elementary school in the country teaches Manchu, and that only as an elective. In universities and a handful of private schools, written Manchu is still taught but purely as a means to reading the Qing dynasty's archives.

From two million registered Manchus in China's 1980 census, the country now has nine million -- a reflection of people's willingness to ignore stigmas and embrace their true heritage. For Hasutai, the desire to reconnect to his roots flared up when he was 11 and realized that his people's language was all but dead. He decided to teach himself written Manchu, using textbooks and old ethnographic recordings of Manchus.

Over time, he came into contact with other Manchus who shared the same goals. The group launched two Web sites, reprinted old textbooks, made up flashcards and collected recordings of Manchu speakers. Hasutai began holding classes in downtown Beijing. "We want it to be part of our life, a language we speak with our spouses and children," says Ridaikin, who also uses the Chinese name Hu Aibo. The 24-year-old graduate student in mathematics teaches one of the Manchu classes in Beijing.

During the nineteenth century, most Cajuns spoke only Cajun French, which frequently irritated Anglo-American observers. As one New Yorker noted on a visit to south Louisiana during the 1860s, the Cajuns were "unable to speak the English language, or convey an intelligent idea in the national tongue." Even those non-Cajuns who appreciated standard French frowned on Cajun French as inferior. For example, in 1880 a Chicago Times reporter on assignment in Iberia Parish stated that "The educated people speak the bona fide Parisian, but the ‘Cagin’ [sic] patois is deemed good enough for 'the low-down folks.’ . . ." Census data indicates that about eight-five percent of Cajuns born between 1906 and 1910 spoke French as their primary language. In 1916, however, the state board of education banned the use of French in public classrooms; in 1921 legislators confirmed the ban in a new state constitution. As a result, many educators subjected Cajun students to humiliating punishments for daring to speak their traditional language at school. In addition, twentieth-century Cajuns were increasingly exposed to powerful Americanizing forces (such as compulsory military service, radio and television, the coming of interstate highways and "the jet age," and so on). Because of these factors, the percentage of Cajuns speaking French as a first language dropped considerably, particularly after 1940. Today few young Cajuns speak French: of those born between 1976 and 1980, for instance, slightly less than nine percent speak French as a first language.

[I]n a movement which accelerated after the Civil War, wealthy Acadian landowners assimilated to the white Creole or American society, while small farmers, labourers and craftsmen of Acadian extraction retained their French culture, low status and Cajun label (Dormon, 1983). This was the basis for the stereotype of the marginal, poor and uneducated Cajun which endured through most of the 20th century. The industrialisation and urbanisation of Louisiana in the 1930s was accompanied by the rapid assimilation of Cajuns into the American way: in a three-generation span, English became their first language, traditional farming and fishing occupations gave way to jobs in the oil-and-gas industry and manufacturing, and a kinship- and neighbourhood- based way of life was transformed by modern amenities in communication, transportation and leisure.

With imported furniture, wines, books, and clothes, white Creoles were once immersed in a completely French atmosphere. Part of Creole social life has traditionally centered on the French Opera House; from 1859 to 1919, it was the place for sumptuous gatherings and glittering receptions. The interior, graced by curved balconies and open boxes of architectural beauty, seated 805 people. Creoles loved the music and delighted in attendance as the operas were great social and cultural affairs.

White Creoles clung to their individualistic way of life, frowned upon intermarriage with Anglo-Americans, refused to learn English, and were resentful and contemptuous of Protestants, whom they considered irreligious and wicked. Creoles generally succeeded in remaining separate in the rural sections but they steadily lost ground in New Orleans. In 1803, there were seven Creoles to every Anglo-American in New Orleans, but these figures dwindled to two to one by 1830.

Anglo-Americans reacted by disliking the Creoles with equal enthusiasm. Gradually, New Orleans became not one city, but two. Canal Street split them apart, dividing the old Creole city from the "uptown" section where the other Americans quickly settled. Tcross Canal Street in either direction was to enter another world. These differences are still noticeable today.

When the Constitutional Convention of 1811 met at New Orleans, 26 of its 43 members were Creoles. During the first few years of statehood, native Creoles were not particularly interested in national politics and the newly arrived Americans were far too busy securing an economic basis to seriously care much about political problems. Many Creoles were still suspicious of the American system and were prejudiced against it.

Until the election of 1834, the paramount issue in state elections was whether the candidate was Creole or Anglo-American. Throughout this period, many English-speaking Americans believed that Creoles were opposed to development and progress, while the Creoles considered other Americans radical in their political ideas. Since then, Creoles have actively participated in American politics; they have learned English to ease this process. In fact, Creoles of color have dominated New Orleans politics since the 1977 election of Ernest "Dutch" Morial as mayor. He was followed in office by Sidney Bartholemey and then by his son, Marc Morial.

L'Assemblée de Corse a rejeté à une large majorité une motion déposée par les nationalistes indépendantistes visant à donner à la langue corse un "statut d'officialité", dans la nuit de lundi à mardi. La motion a été rejetée par 28 des 47 conseillers présents sur un total de 51. Dix neuf autres ont voté pour. La motion avait été déposée par Jean-Guy Talamoni, le leader de Corsica Nazione Indipendente. "A défaut de donner un statut d'officialité à notre langue - un trésor que nous avons en partage - il n'est pas envisageable d'en enrayer le déclin", a plaidé le conseiller territorial devant l'Assemblée.

Le communiste Dominique Bucchini a estimé qu'"il fallait donner un statut aux langues de France" et s'est prononcé pour "un statut de "co-officialité" du Corse, qui ne serait pas en opposition avec la langue de la République mais en complémentarité" avec elle.

Selon les chiffres avancés lors du débat, environ un tiers seulement de la population de l'île, 100.000 personnes, parlerait le Corse. Lors du débat, plusieurs élus de la majorité ont estimé qu'"il ne fallait pas brûler les étapes mais commencer par un réel apprentissage du Corse". "Il n'y a pas eu de sursaut dans la population, le nombre des locuteurs n'augmente pas, le bilinguisme instauré à l'école maternelle n'est pas une réalité, pas plus que les 3 heures d'enseignement hebdomadaire prévues dans le primaire, et 12% seulement des collégiens de l'île suivent un enseignement bilingue", a ainsi rappelé Madeleine Mozziconacci (divers gauche).

The January 2007 estimated population of the island was 281,000, while the figure for the March 1999 census, when most of the studies - though not the linguistic survey work referenced in this article - were performed, was about 261,000 (see under Corsica). Only a certain percentage of the population at either time spoke Corsu with any fluency. The 2001 population of 341,000 speakers on the island given by Ethnologue exceeds either census and thus may be considered questionable, like its estimate of 402,000 speakers worldwide.

The use of Corsican over French has been declining. In 1980 about 70% of the population "had some command of the Corsican language." In 1990 out of a total population of about 254,000 the percentage had declined to 50%, with only 10% using it as a first language. The language was clearly on the way out when the French government reversed its non-supportive stand and began some strong measures to save it. Whether these measures will succeed remains to be seen. No recent statistics on Corsu are available.

Gallicization seems to run deeper here than in Burundi. No, that’s not exactly right. More like: the European influences seems more assimilated. In Burundi, rich and elite Burundians can seem like wannabe Belgians, cut-and-pasting the culture of the former colonists. Elite Senegalese seem to be more comfortable integrating the different influences. It may just be that Senegal is a much less desperately-screwed-up place than Burundi, and so has less of a cultural cringe… I’m not sure.

But anyway. Another difference is that Senegal has a small but significant population of non-African francophones. In Burundi, this group numbered perhaps a few thousand — perhaps a tenth of one percent of the population. Here it’s more like a hundred thousand — Lebanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and a scattering of odds and ends like Greeks and Vietnamese. The Lebanese, in particular, occupy an important social niche: there are thirty or forty thousand of them, they’ve been here for generations, and they’re mostly merchants and traders in the larger cities. By Senegalese standards, most are rich. So while they keep fairly quiet politically, they have a disproportionate impact on Senegalese society and culture.

The French, same but more so. Some are descended from colonial-era merchants and landowners who stayed on after independence; more are recent immigrants and their children. Their numbers aren’t large, but there are enough of them to support a thriving little community. A tremendous amount of ink has been spilled on the topic of immigration from developing countries into Europe; the flow in the opposite direction has been almost entirely neglected. True, it’s much much smaller — there are a hundred Senegalese trying to reach France for every Frenchman considering a move to Senegal. But it’s not negligible, and there are countries where its impact is surprising. The non-African communities in Senegal play a significant role in the country today; if nothing else, they’re helping to keep Senegal firmly connected to la Francophonie and engaged with the wider world. Dakar is not a rich city, but it’s a surprisingly cosmopolitan one.

Tory cabinet minister Vic Toews accused Liberals of insulting all unilingual anglophones Tuesday after two MPs questioned his ability to implement official languages policy without being able to speak French.

The flap erupted as the Treasury Board president was being questioned at a Commons committee about his responsibility for language policy in the federal public service.

“Do you speak French?” inquired Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez. “Don't you think someone who has responsibility such as yours should be bilingual?”

Mr. Toews — who speaks English and Spanish as well as his first language, German — was incensed.

“I should feel free to be able to speak the official language of my choice and for you to even ask that question is an insult,” he raged.

But Jean-Claude D'Amours, another Liberal MP, pursued the matter.

“It seems to me that when we talk about official languages and bilingualism in Canada, you should be a bilingual person to better be able to serve the people,” Mr. D'Amours said. “For you that's an insult. I think it's an insult to me that you should be so bold as to make such a comment.”

Mr. Toews then accused the Liberals of suggesting unilingual Canadians are second-class citizens.

“For some reason, I'm less of a Canadian, I'm less entitled to hold public office because I only speak one of the official languages,” he fumed.

annafdd

This makes it sound like Italian was created a bit like Esperanto - somebody (probably Petrarca, Dante and Boccaccio, and we'll get to this order later) sat around a table and wrote a bunch of rules and compiled a lexicon. If only. It would be a much easier language to learn if it had gone that way.

Dante took the first step when he chose to write the Divine Comedy in his vernacular. The novelty was not that he wrote in vernacular - several other people had done so as far back as the thirteen century, and Dante himself had written poetry in vernacular. This wasn't remarkable - plenty of people were doing the same around him. (Well, it was indeed remarkable, but not as new).

Dante's act of defiance was to write a philosophical treatise in verse, that dealt with the highest matter concievable, the nature of the universe and his idea of theology, philosophy and government, and he did not chose Latin. Dante had already written very influential books in Latin, including a treatise on the necessity of a new language. But using the language of the riff-raff to talk about God? That was revolutionary.

His success was so overwhelming that nobody after him seriously questioned that whatever language this mostly theoretical nation, Italy, was going to speak, it was going to start from him. He was popular among learned people, and he was popular among the riff-raff. His poem was read aloud to adoring crowds, and memorized.

What Petrarca and Boccaccio did was born of another age, in which the democracy Dante had so hard fought for had eclipsed. Petrarca and Boccaccio were courtesans, who lived by producing art for the courts. Petrarca looked at Dante's fierce, vulgar language, and with an affectionate tut-tut proceeded to cleanse if of all that was popular and unrefined. The language he produced was beautiful, elegant, and his vocabulary much reduced. Boccaccio, who for his great popularity was also influential, took a look and decided to follow Petrarca. They were all from Tuscany, but they didn't write for Florence. They wrote for the courts of Italy, and the language they produced became the language of art and poetry. Not for the humble, of course.

There are many other steps along the way. One pivotal moment is the one in which Alessandro Manzoni, probably the real father of Italian language, decided that the great novel he had already written and published with some success could not become the springboard for a new language if it remained written in his Milanese Italian. He therefore rewrote it in a heavily Florentine accent, and created a monster, but a viable one: a language that could be taken seriously as a literary language because it had the authority of Dante and Petrarca and Boccaccio behind it.

The Kyrgyz elites continue to pursue the lifestyle imposed on them by the Russians. Their clothes, drinking habits, system of education, administration, law enforcement, military, civil code are stuck in the Soviet past. They receive their news from Russian television channels, read Russian language newspapers, correspond and speak in Russian.

There has been no concerted effort to change this and implement a ‘national' alternative. This is not surprising given the depth and scope of the indoctrination and dependency over the last century.

[. . .]

However, the local population does not share this view of their country's symbiotic relationship with the Russian Federation. There is a small and so far, silent minority that is aware of their historic origins as well as their culture, religion and language. They know that Joseph Stalin created the state of Kyrgyzstan. They do not support the continuation of the old Soviet status quo. They long for closer relations with the Turkic world, with their Islamic brethren as well as with democratic nations - in fact with any state other than authoritarian Russia.

Les proportions (ou pourcentages) entre les ethnies et les langues ne correspondent pas. Par exemple, il y a plus de Kirghiz (64,9 %) que de locuteurs du kirghiz (52,7 %), mais il y a plus de russophones (30,3 %) que de Russes (12,5 %); il faut comprendre que beaucoup de membres des communautés minoritaires utilisent le russe comme langue de communication (Ukrainiens, Allemands, Biélorusses, Arméniens, Géorgiens, Tatars, Dounganes, Coréens, Kurdes, Bachkirs, etc.), voire comme langue maternelle. Au total, les minorités linguistiques du Kirghizistan forment 47,3 % de la population[.]

The proportions (or percentages) of ethnic groups and languages do not match. For example, there are more Kyrgyz (64.9%) than Kyrgyz speakers (52.7%), but there are more Russian speakers (30.3%) and Russians (12.5%). It should be understand that many members of minority communities use Russian as the language of communication (Ukrainians, Germans, Belarusians, Armenians, Georgians, Tatars, Dungans, Koreans, Kurds, Bashkirs, etc.), even as their mother tongue. In total, the linguistic minorities of Kyrgyzstan are 47.3% of the population[.]

N'oublions pas qu'au Kirghizistan les kirghizophones ne forment que 52 % de la population et que, si les habitants du Sud (Batken, Och et Jalal-Abad) parlent le kirghiz (en plus du tadjik et de l'ouzbek), ceux du Nord (Talas, Tchoui, Naryn et Issyk-Koul) et de la capitale Bichkek sont largement russifiés. On peut même dire que le Kirghizstan est composé de deux «pays» bien distincts: le Sud (vallée de Ferghana), conservateur et islamisé, est tourné vers l’Ouzbékistan, alors que le Nord, industriel et russifié, est tourné vers le Kazakhstan (lui aussi largement russifié). Entre les deux grandes régions du Kirghizistan, on trouve des sommets rocheux généralement inaccessibles pendant les mois d’hiver. Dans un récent sondage, 63,5 % des Kirghiz estimaient que les clivages Nord-Sud étaient la cause principale de l’instabilité interne au pays.

Let us not forget that in Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyzophones represent only 52% of the population and that, where the inhabitants of the South (Batken, Osh and Jalal-Abad) speak Kyrgyz (in addition to Tajik and Uzbek) those in the north (Talas, Chuy, Naryn and Issyk-Kul) and the capital Bishkek are largely Russified. One can even say that Kyrgyzstan is composed of two quite distinct "countries" quite distinct: the South (Ferghana Valley), conservative and Muslim, turns towards Uzbekistan, while the North, industrial and Russified, turns towards Kazakhstan (also largely Russified). The two major regions of Kyrgyzstan are separated by rocky mountains whcih are inaccessible during the winter months. In a recent survey, 63.5% of Kyrgyz felt that divides North and South were the main cause of instability within the country.

Language--which comes down to whether Russian should enjoy the same status as Kyrgyz--has come up time and again since the country became independent in 1991. The last occasion was five years ago, when the then president, Askar Akaev, succeeded in according Russian the status of "official language" while Kyrgyz kept the title of "state language". It was a compromise that granted Kyrgyz superior status while allowing Russian to be widely used in public life.

After a lull of several years, the issue has come to the fore again as politicians debate the wording of a proposed set of wide-ranging amendments to the constitution.

The Ashar movement, which as long ago as 1989 was lobbying for improved status for the Kyrgyz language in the then Soviet republic, published a statement in the press on November 10 calling for Russian to lose its official status. This public statement was followed by the establishment of a campaign headquarters for "protecting the state language from the expansion of Russian"

[. . .]

Since the March revolution, some senior officials have shown more of an interest in Kyrgyz. For example, Defence Minister Ismail Isakov ordered that all commands and military terminology should be translated into Kyrgyz, and soldiers even began singing their army songs in the language.

Former foreign minister Roza Otunbaeva ordered diplomatic negotiations to be translated into Kyrgyz, while Justice Minister Marat Kayipov proposed that cabinet meetings should be conducted in the state language rather than Russian. Kayipov also suggested that the amended constitution should be drafted in Kyrgyz and then translated into Russian.

Edil Baisalov, who heads the NGO Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, accepts that Kyrgyz has had a bad deal over the years, but says changing the law will not fix things. He recalled how his brother was unable to find a good kindergarten that used Kyrgyz as the teaching medium, so that his daughter could have a good grounding in her mother tongue.

Since Kyrgyzstan became independent, most schools have used Kyrgyz rather than Russian as the principal language, but there are still relatively few in the capital, where all the prestigious, well-equipped schools use Russian.

"There isn’t a single decent Kyrgyz-language school or kindergarten in Bishkek. Everything is in Russian," complained member of parliament Kubatbek Baibolov. "We only have ourselves to blame. What sort of country is it that cannot develop or attend to its own state language?"

The clock on the kitchen wall at the Moraviantown Reserve seniors' centre loudly clicks away the seconds as Velma Noah waits to see if any of the few remaining speakers of a vanishing language can remember the word for "beet."

Five elderly women and a man stare ahead of them, silently searching for a word they may not have heard since they were children, when nearly everyone on this small reserve could speak the language. Ms. Noah frets the cover of an English-Delaware dictionary, which might hold a clue. But if the word for beet isn't in the book and she can't tease it out of the minds of the three women most likely to know, one more piece of the language could be gone forever.

Alma Burgoon is 80; Retta Huff, 86; and her cousin Mattie Huff, 90. Along with one or two other elderly women on the reserve, "they're the last known speakers. They're all over the age of 70," says Ms. Noah, 36-year-old mother of four.

[...]

Europeans gave this language the name Delaware (or Munsee Delaware), but its advocates today are taking back the name Lunaape (or Lenape). Its once-large territory has been reduced to a rump at Munsee-Delaware Nation -- also known as Moraviantown -- a reserve near London, Ont., with a population of about 200. During the 20th century, teaching Lunaape to children fell out of favour. Today it survives in the gossip of a handful of elders and on stop signs that read "ngihlaal."

Like dozens of First Nations languages across the country, Lunaape is in danger of disappearing within a matter of years. Canada's indigenous languages are in a state of crisis. Those who, like Ms. Noah, would save them can't afford to wait. Unless the knowledge is transferred to a new generation, dozens of traditional tongues will breathe their last.

By Statistics Canada's count there are around 50 indigenous languages spoken in Canada (other organizations reach higher figures by counting certain dialects as separate languages), and 222,210 people reported them as a mother tongue in the 2006 census. Only a handful of these languages -- principally Inuktitut, Ojibway and various dialects of Cree -- can be expected to survive without active intervention, according to linguistics experts. In 1951, 87% of aboriginal Canadians reported an indigenous language as a mother tongue compared with 21% by 2001 and 19% in 2006.

On the dusty streets of Iqaluit, Nunavut, stop signs read in two languages: English and the squiggly syllabic characters of Inuktitut. So do signs at the post office, bank and grocery store. Inuktitut is the first language for 70 per cent of the territory's 30,000 residents, and by some measures appears one of the healthiest indigenous languages in the country. But here in the capital, a town of about 3,600, English is the language of choice among young Inuit. Children wear SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirts, and buy the latest CDs by 50 Cent and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Internet use is widespread, as is satellite TV. The result: Inuktitut is a language under siege, and assuring it survives, even flourishes, has become a priority.

In a controversial move this year, Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik ordered that senior bureaucrats learn the language or lose their jobs. The government is also drafting two new language laws designed to help make Inuktitut Nunavut's working language by 2020, and lift employment barriers for Inuktitut speakers. "It really does open the ice for Inuit," says Johnny Kusugak, Nunavut's language commissioner. "Inuit kids can now look up and see that there are lots of positions in the government where they can reach their goals."

[. . .]

Some argue that young people in Iqaluit avoid Inuktitut because of the difficulty navigating its different dialects. But Louis-Jacques Dorais, a researcher at Université de Laval who has documented Inuktitut's decline, says other factors are at play. Because English is the language of pop culture and business, Inuktitut "risks being increasingly limited to petty topics, on the one hand, and highly symbolic domains on the other," he says. Serious social ills are also undermining education in either language. School dropout rates are astronomical -- only about a quarter of Inuit children graduate from high school -- and drug abuse and alcoholism are rampant.

In more isolated communities outside of Iqaluit, Inuktitut appears much healthier. Many of the elder residents are unilingual Inuktitut speakers. Still, even in places like Pangnirtung, a tiny hamlet an hour's flight north, English use is on the rise. "It started when the government sent people off to schools in places like Churchill," says Anuga Michael, 26, who worries about the type of education his infant son, Wayne Wilson, will receive. "My first priority is to teach him Inuktitut. That's the way I was taught, so that's the way I'll teach him." Asked about the challenge of protecting Inuit culture, though, he sighs: "It's complicated."