| 文章名 | Theorizing the decline of linguistic diversity |
| 作者 | Christopher Scanlon |
| 摘要 | This article advances a theory of language declining linguistic diversity drawing on the notion of constitutive abstraction developed by the writers Geo Sharp (1985) and the notion of levels of social integration developed by Paul James (1996). It argues that declining linguistic diversity can be understood in terms of the dominance of constitutively more abstract forms of social integration, which increasingly bypass and reframe those forms, such as face-to-face social integration, that are less abstract in form. Where languages are unable, or prevented from working across different levels of social integration, through technologies of abstract extension like print, they will be vulnerable to decline. This claim is elaborated through an examination of four threats to linguistic diversity (colonialism, the rise of the nation-state, processes of globalization and environmental destruction) which, it is contended, can be seen to be underpinned by more abstract forms of social integration. |
| 文章名 | Language maintenance and language shift among Arabized Malays (Makkawiyiin) |
| 作者 | Adil Elshiekh Abdalla |
| 摘要 | This study investigates the situation of the Arabic language amongst Malaysian citizens who were born in Saudi Arabia, acquired the Arabic language, speak it as their mother tongue, and adopt the Arabic culture. These people are known locally as Makkawiyiin (Meccans). Data were collected from 73 selected Makkawiyiin via questionnaire, interviews, and personal observations. The results show that these people have a high level of Arabic proficiency. They do not experience language loss nor face many problems in preserving the Arabic culture, and are keen to use Arabic in communicating with others. However, because Malay is the medium of instruction, language shift is observable. The subjects are trying to pass the Arabic language on to their children. Implications from these findings are discussed. |
| 文章名 | Language planning in Botswana and Malawi: a comparative study |
| 作者 | Gregory Kamwendo, Theophilus Mooko |
| 摘要 | The article discusses language planning in two Southern African countries, Botswana and Malawi. Both countries are multilingual and multicultural. They also share a common British colonial history. At independence, the two countries retained English as the official language. In Botswana, Setswana was made the national language while in Malawi, it was Chichewa. Over the years, these languages have been developed and promoted at the expense of other indigenous languages, a situation that has prompted linguistic minorities to engage in the language-based politics of recognition. The article discusses how Botswana and Malawi are responding to the call for the official recognition of more indigenous languages in domains such as government, education, and mass media. Relevant comparisons and contrasts between Botswana and Malawi are drawn in this regard in the article. One clear common denominator is the dominance of English in official domains in the two countries. |
| 文章名 | Dialect contact in Northern Cyprus |
| 作者 | Nurettin Demir Lars Johanson |
| 摘要 | The interest in the study of Turkic contacts with other languages is currently increasing. Recent investigations have shown that language contacts have played an important role in the development of the Turkic languages. On the other hand, developments due to encounters of different variants of Turkic have played similar roles, although they have not attracted much attention so far. The most common reasons for Turkic-Turkic contacts have been migrations, through which various varieties have come to influence each other. One of the most intensive contact regions is Anatolia. |
| 文章名 | Language in the press in Turkish Cypriot dialect |
| 作者 | Ahmet Kocaman |
| 摘要 | The language used in the press has aroused interest in recent years for a variety of reasons. It not only provides evidence for a register that is so widely used and encountered in all modern societies but also shows how means can be manipulated to “justify the ends.”In the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (henceforth TRNC), where Turkish is the state language, ten daily newspapers are published with an approximate circulation of 12,000. The aim of this article is to try to find out to what extent the ideological viewpoint of these papers influences the language they use. The data comprise samples from headlines and advertisements over a 45-day period of the five most popular papers.The analysis shows that the language used in the papers is not a simple, neutral representation of reality as such, but an effective means to manipulate it in line with the ideology of the newspaper and the expectations of its readers, which is best done through the language used in the headlines. The study of the sample advertisement texts, on the other hand, indicates that the global role of English as a means of communication is increasing every day even in a small community such as that in the TRNC. |
| 文章名 | Language maintenance: the case of a Turkish-speaking community in Birmingham |
| 作者 | Sue Wright, Nur Kurtoğlu-Hooton |
| 摘要 | Turkish speakers in Britain have settled mainly in London and the southeast of the country. This study concerns a much smaller population in the city of Birmingham in the Midlands, and looks at whether Turkish is surviving in the language repertoires of this group of Northern Cypriots. Its members live in a highly multicultural and multilingual city, and language maintenance would not be exceptional. However, despite this fairly positive setting, there are signs that intergenerational transmission of Turkish is not taking place. The reason for this may be the scattered nature of settlement and adults' dispersal in different employment sectors. There are no concentrations in particular industries and areas as in London and the southeast. |
| 文章名 | Turkish Cypriot women and their attitudes towards foreign words: a case of language loyalty |
| 作者 | Necdet Osam |
| 摘要 | Although language is a primary means of communication, the language use of individuals differs in many ways. The differences, in fact, can be related to the nature of language as well as to other variables such as educational background, age, power relations, social status, and individual characteristics. From a sociolinguistic point of view, one of the significant characteristics of an individual to be specifically taken into consideration in the analysis of language use is the sex variable. In this study the attitudes of Turkish Cypriot women towards the use of foreign words in Turkish Cypriot dialect will be evaluated. |
| 文章名 | The intonation of Turkish Cypriot dialect: a contrastive and sociolinguistic interpretation |
| 作者 | Kamile İmer, Nazmiye Çelebi |
| 摘要 | As pointed out by researchers in earlier studies, different languages in the same geographical area tend to develop similar properties deviating from their original forms. One of the reasons for this development in different languages is related to dialect contact. In this study, the primary aim is to focus on the dialect contact between Turkish Cypriot Dialect (henceforth TCD) and Greek Cypriot Dialect (henceforth GCD) with specific reference to the intonation pattern of the interrogatives. |
| 文章名 | An ethnographic case study of code switching and language choice: the uses of Cypriot Turkish in London |
| 作者 | Tözün İssa |
| 摘要 | This article explores the changing patterns of language choice, code switching, and borrowing in naturally occurring conversations of Turkish Cypriot adults in a London workplace. The small representative sample contains workers of second and third generation Cypriot women. It is shown that language use can be variable with intergenerational patterns. In Cyprus while Cypriot Turkish (henceforth CT) is influenced by Standard Turkish (henceforth ST), the shift is more towards English in London. However, CT continues to have an important social function in both communities and is used to convey culturally specific experiences in routine daily conversations. The purpose of this case study is to highlight language shift in a London sample, to show that language use in the Cypriot Community — as in other linguistic communities in the UK — is changing increasingly to adapt to new sociolinguistic paradigms. |
| 文章名 | Language maintenance and shift in Sudan: the case of migrant ethnic groups in Khartoum |
| 作者 | Abdel Rahim Hamid Mugaddam |
| 摘要 | This article investigates the process of language maintenance and language shift among ethnic minority groups living in Khartoum, the capital state of Sudan. A 22-item questionnaire was used to collect data on language proficiency, language use, and language attitude. The results show that a considerable number of younger-generation migrants have adopted Arabic as their primary language. Arabic was also used predominantly in most domains of communication. Although most respondents showed a positive attitude to their ethnic languages, they actually did not make any efforts to maintain them. |
| 文章名 | Intergenerational language transmission in an established Australian migrant community: what makes the difference? |
| 作者 | Helen Borland |
| 摘要 | Diasporic communities formed as a result of recent migration movements face particular issues and challenges in supporting the intergenerational transmission of their heritage language, especially when the language involved is not one that has high visibility and status in the surrounding society. This article is a case study of a mature migrant community in Melbourne, Australia — people of Maltese background — and aims to explore in some depth factors that are promoting and inhibiting intergenerational language transmission within the community. Two groups of factors are identified — facilitating factors and motivating factors — and these are discussed and related to the experiences and attitudes of the interviewees. The parents interviewed represent two vintages of migration: pre- and post-independence in Malta. Superficially, it appears that the post-independence migrants have a stronger commitment to intergenerational language transmission. However, it is argued that this only partially explains the observed differences. For both vintages, changes in the opportunities for diasporic engagement and in government policy settings in both the homeland and in Australia are creating an environment which is more facilitative of intergenerational language transmission for families motivated to support such transmission. |
| 文章名 | A language community from a historical perspective: homogeneity and variation |
| 作者 | Sandra Kipp |
| 摘要 | This article explores the notion of variation within homogeneity, using as a case study a German-speaking Sprachinsel (or linguistic enclave) established in the Western District of Victoria in 1853. The research demonstrates that a language community, even one that is highly concentrated geographically and with a high degree of homogeneity in both background and religious persuasion, is ultimately made up of subgroups and individuals, who may react to internal and external pressures regarding language and language use in quite different ways. |
| 文章名 | Linguistic practices and language attitudes of second-generation Italo-Australians |
| 作者 | Antonia Rubino |
| 摘要 | This article explores the role of Italian and Sicilian in the life of a second-generation woman of Sicilian origin. It examines her linguistic practices with family and friends through spontaneous conversations, interviews, and a language diary. The analysis focuses on language choice in relation to different interlocutors as indexical of her multiple identities, and on her language attitudes as they emerge implicitly in the conversations and explicitly in the interviews. The trends identified are explained in the light of the language ideologies prevailing in the Italo-Australian and Australian contexts, giving an insight into the prospects of language maintenance in the transition from second- to third-generation Italo-Australians. |
| 文章名 | “It's something that's just faded away”: how a Melbourne family of Swiss-German background makes sense of language shift |
| 作者 | Doris Schüpbach |
| 摘要 | This article is based on a case study of a family with three children who migrated to Australia from German-speaking Switzerland in 1984. It was found that within less than ten years, Swiss-German was substituted by English as the language in the home and today the younger generation use Swiss-German exclusively for communication with their relatives in Switzerland. The article retraces this change in language use and examines how the members of the family recall the language shift and make sense of it. The findings are discussed in terms of the roles played by the family members (in particular by the mother) and in terms of the family's language background. |
| 文章名 | Language maintenance and shift in the Danish community in Melbourne |
| 作者 | Bent Søndergaard Catrin Norrby |
| 摘要 | This article focuses on the level of maintenance of Danish in the Danish community of Melbourne and is based on 34 case studies drawn from a total of 89 interviews with people of Danish ethnic background carried out by Professor Bent Søndergaard in 1994. The informants fall roughly into four groups, the oldest consisting of people who migrated to Australia after the Second World War, and the youngest arriving in Australia in the late 1980s. The results indicate that the tendency to shift to English is more strongly pronounced among the earlier arrivals, while the more recent ones often report a strong wish to maintain Danish as the home language and transmit it to their children. However, the results also demonstrate considerable individual variation within generations, both with regard to the informants' linguistic goals and the actual outcomes. |
| 文章名 | Language maintenance in friendships: second-generation German, Greek, and Vietnamese migrants |
| 作者 | Jo Winter, Anne Pauwels |
| 摘要 | Our contribution explores the language maintenance (LM) patterns of children of migrants (second-generation) to Australia from three ethnolinguistic groups — German, Greek, and Vietnamese — in their same-age peer friendships. Focusing on the affective social relationship of “friendship” imagined as a dynamic fluid site of independence and a locale for identity formation, we scrutinize it as a pressure point for LM. The macro survey trends indicate that languages other than English (LOTE) are used in the friendship domain but with differing participations. Follow-up in-depth interviews reveal subtleties and complexities for LM practices. Co-presence of bilingual others in friendships proves to be a minimum but not sufficient condition for LM, particularly for German men and Greek women. Hyphenated belongings — for example, Vietnamese-, Greek-, German-Australians — construct varying LM alignments that reflect shared histories and authenticities (the migration experience) and the localizing of settlement (Australia). |
| 文章名 | Introduction: ethnolinguistic minority language policies in Bulgaria and their Balkan context |
| 作者 | Angel G. Angelov |
| 摘要 | Language policy failure can come at a high price. From 1984 to 1986, the Communist Party of Bulgaria attempted a forced “nationalization” of its minorities, Turks were specifically targeted; names were to be Slavicized and Bulgarian was to be the only language allowed in public places; even Turkish newspapers were closed down. This special issue of IJSL examines the collapse of that language policy and how the attempt to carry it out reverberates through Bulgarian and Balkan politics, affecting Bulgarian minorities and their counterparts in adjacent nations. As a case of a failed language policy with mild repercussions — after 1989, more severe failures occurred in other Balkan nations, several suffered armed conflict and “ethnic cleansing” — such extreme measures did not occur in Bulgaria; its relationships with its minorities remain more exemplary for other nations in the overcoming of harsh policies and avoidance of civil war. |
| 文章名 | Code-switching among Muslim Roms in Bulgaria |
| 作者 | Hristo Kyuchukov |
| 摘要 | This article presents the language of Muslim Roms, who form a trilingual community in the northeastern part of Bulgaria, discussing language mixing between Romani, Turkish, and Bulgarian, applying the model of Myers-Scotton (1993). Two different Roma linguistic groups are observed: speakers of Vlax (Zagondzi) and non-Vlax (Xoraxani). The non-Vlax language, which is full of Turkish loanwords, is more prestigious than the Vlax language, which is more conservative, but both show almost the same patterns of language mixing. The study argues for the connection between language mixing and language prestige and looks at the question: Why do Roma speakers use elements from other languages when speaking Romani? |
| 文章名 | Romani dialects in Bulgaria |
| 作者 | Birgit Igla, Desislava Draganova |
| 摘要 | The Gypsies and their language have been an object of attention for centuries. Numerous accounts describing their arrival in a particular area attest to the fascination of local people with what they regarded as an unintelligible language. These “strange” nomads and their language have attracted the attention of a number of researchers. Attempts to describe their dialects can be found even in some of the earliest records related to the Roma. |
| 文章名 | Bilingualism in a larger Slavonic background: Russian minorities and the Russian language in Bulgaria |
| 作者 | Angel G. Angelov |
| 摘要 | Kinship ties between Bulgarians and Russians have aroused heated debate concerning the essence of Slavdom and the common ancestry of at least ten nationalities today in Eastern Europe. Russians and Ukrainians, incomparably, are more numerous and populate larger territories than the Southern Slavs. Viewed from historical perspective, however, the importance of these less numerous peoples — Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats — is not proportional to contemporary situations. In earlier periods — from the 10th through the 14th centuries — the now smaller nations, due to location and other circumstances, were more active in cultural and political contacts. Especially for the Balkans in the Early Middle Ages, the direction of cultural influence was from southwest toward the northeast. Over the next centuries, the migration of people and ideas repeatedly changed direction, while in the 18th and 19th centuries, the influence of the Russian Empire gave a crucial impetus to formation of national self-identity among Balkan Slavic-speaking nationalities. |
| 文章名 | Bulgaria and linguistic matters of Bulgarian Jews |
| 作者 | Samy Polikar |
| 摘要 | This article aims to trace the presence of Jews on Bulgarian territory since ancient times without subscribing to preconceived theses. Naturally, the issue of Jewish migration cannot be discussed without due consideration for the relations with the respective states and their peoples: Byzantium, the mediaeval Bulgarian empires, the Ottoman Empire, the post-Liberation Kingdom of Bulgaria and contemporary Bulgaria. It focuses on the historical periods which have had a direct bearing on the present state of the small Jewish community in Bulgaria today. This community has several distinctive features that are immediately obvious. In Bulgaria there are no adherents of various Israelite religious sects, even though the false messiah Sabbatai Zwi, whose followers ultimately adopted Islam, lived on Bulgarian territory. A Chabad rabbi from the US recently went to Bulgaria, but Chasidism has never had followers in Bulgaria. Despite the very high level of integration of Jews into Bulgarian society and the comparatively strong goodwill and tolerance of Bulgarians for Jews, Zionism became popular very early on and has undoubtedly been one of the factors for the emigration of around 90% of the Jews to Israel; the contemporary Jewish community in Bulgaria is increasingly bonding with the State of Israel and departing from the traditions brought from Spain. |
| 文章名 | Catholic Bulgarians and their dialect |
| 作者 | Neno Nedelchev |
| 摘要 | Bulgarian historical and linguistic literature has long since adopted the term “Paulicians” to designate Catholic Bulgarians who believed in the Paulician-Bogomil heresy until around the mid-17th century. Today, as was the case ninety years ago, the traditional term “Paulicians” has only a scientific and historical meaning. The majority of Catholic Bulgarians who resettled in the area of Banat and near Bucharest in Romania after the 1688 Chiprovitsi Uprising and later are descended from Paulicians. Some of the “Banat” and “Bucharest” Bulgarians returned to their home country after the 1878 Liberation and settled in Northern Bulgaria. The dualistic heresy of Paulicianism originated from Manichaeanism, which emerged in the 3rd century. After the Turkish conquest of Bulgaria, “Paulicians” came to be used as a general term for heretics, whereas the term “Bogomils” became obsolete. In the first half of the 17th century, the majority of Paulicians adopted Catholicism. The beginning of the Catholics is associated with the activities of missionaries from the Catholic Franciscan Order, who were intermediaries between Chiprovets and the Roman congregation. Saxon Catholic miners lived in Chiprovets at that time. The Catholic bishopric was based in Sofia. Part of the Catholicized Paulicians subsequently renounced Catholicism and converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity |
| 文章名 | Variations sociolinguistiques en albanais du Nord — sur la base des données du parler de la ville du Shkodra |
| 作者 | Bahri Beci |
| 摘要 | Although Shkodra, the biggest city of the Northern part of Albania, is regarded as a stronghold of Catholicism, the two other religions of Albania (Islam and the Orthodox Church) are represented there as well. In Venetian sources, Shkodra was described as a Catholic town until 1479, when it was conquered by the Turks. During this period a number of the native Catholics emigrated to Venice, while another, smaller part of them was forcefully converted to Islam. Since then, the population of the city of Shkodra has always been dominated by a higher percentage of Muslims. Currently, 65–70% of the population are Muslims, 25–30% are Catholic, and a smaller percentage consists of Orthodox Christians. These historical events and the corresponding demographic changes have favored the formation of some distinctions in customs, clothing, and speech between the Catholic and Muslim population groups. The aim of this article is to present the linguistic distinctions in the speech of these two population groups, on the phonetic level. |
| 文章名 | Some differences between varieties of Albanian with special reference to Kosovo |
| 作者 | Pandeli Pani |
| 摘要 | The differences between the varieties of the Albanian language as spoken both within the Albanian state and outside have usually been investigated under dialectological aspects. From this point of view there are two main dialects of Albanian: Gheg and Tosk. The aim of this article is to investigate certain socio-historical differences between the Albanian spoken in Albania and Kosovo. The topics we are concerned with are differences in the vocabulary of the public sphere and politics, technology, and terminology. Notable differences can however be ascertained in the use of words (also such words that belong to the basic vocabulary of Albanian) and idiomatic expressions which are used in Kosovo with a meaning different from that which they have in Albania. There exists also a series of words which are totally unknown in the speech of the other community. Certain calques from Serbo-Croatian will also be discussed. The reader’s attention will also be drawn to some of the peculiarities of Kosovo Albanian syntax, which may have arisen from interferences through contact with Serbo-Croatian. |
| 文章名 | Who’s “mixing” the languages? Statistical-sociolinguistic analyses of differently developed bilingual practice of Albanian-speaking school pupils in German-speaking Switzerland |
| 作者 | Basil Schader |
| 摘要 | The extent to which the many Albanian-speaking children and adolescents in Switzerland apply a bilingual mode differs considerably. As part of a larger project, a quantitative exploratory study seeks to understand whether the frequency of code-switching is determined by demographic, individual, and peer-group-related factors. The fact that no striking relationships between these factors can be observed will be discussed with a view to the specificity of Albanian migration. Furthermore, these results raise questions with regard to the determinants of bilingual practice and the characteristics of “prototypical code-switch-speakers.” |
| 文章名 | Standard Albanian — linguistic controversy in post-Communist Albania |
| 作者 | Xhevat Lloshi |
| 摘要 | The status of Albanian as a national standard has become a matter of serious debate. In 1972 Standard Albanian (SA) was adopted in public communications and in schools. But after the political changes in Albania in 1991–1992 the language question was reopened, calling into question the SA. The roots of the present-day debate are to be found in the dialectal division of Albanian, the historical establishment of a number of written varieties, and the standardization achieved during the years of the Communist regime. This article describes how Standard Albanian was established and the recent developments. For the future it poses the question: Will there be one Albanian national identity, or two Albanian national identities? The answer is that Albanians already have a good standard language, though with many problems, of course, and much work needs to be done for its enrichment and improvement, but Albanians have no need to create a new standard, or to undergo a glosso-ectomy. |
| 文章名 | The Albanian language: developments in the lexicon under the new social and political order |
| 作者 | Jani Thomaj |
| 摘要 | In the past decade the Albanian language has undergone a period of significant change in terms of lexical development. These developments are almost entirely attributable to extralinguistic factors. The turbulent transition from a centralized socialist system to a market economy in the 1990s was accompanied by an immediate opening of Albania to the outside world. This upheaval also brought about a social and intellectual liberation, a change in mental outlook, and freedom from the weight of dictatorship and the totalitarian mindset. The transformation from collectivized property to private property and the birth of political and cultural pluralism constituted a novel variable within Albanian society.The pluralism of press and broadcast media and the phenomenal growth in the number of political parties are two important constituents for change in the lexical norm of the Albanian language, both in a positive and negative sense. A predisposition towards direct contact with Western languages and cultures, interpreted as a sign of the “Europeanization” of Albania, led to the proliferation of many foreign words, primarily English, into the lexicon of Albanian, especially in the domains of economics, trade, jurisprudence, information technology, politics, and administration. This study concerns itself with interpretation, classification, and examples of these changes |
| 文章名 | Restandardizing localized Englishes: aspirations and limitations |
| 作者 | Paul Bruthiaux |
| 摘要 | Languages in contact inevitably undergo cross-fertilization. English is no exception in that wherever it takes roots, a tension develops between a traditionally exonormative standard and the incorporation of local adaptations into the standard. Some sociopolitical motivations for restandardizing new varieties of English are explored. I argue that spoken practices are largely self-norming and thus beyond deliberate restandardization. By contrast, although written norms are potentially amenable to manipulation by language planners, successful restandardization requires the participation of influential users, especially in the print media. Thus, two factors must coalesce for restandardization to succeed: writers must agree to promote forms that diverge from prestigious transnational practice and/or institutional forces must exercise control over written norms and their users. Even in the event of the powerful agreeing on which forms to elevate to standard status, private interests will not support written restandardization beyond limited relexification because they have little to gain and much to lose from differentiating themselves from prestigious transnational practices. Moreover, the degree of coercion required to implement substantial restandardization of written norms may be undesirable because it would fall beyond limits deemed acceptable in most pluralistic societies and impractical because it would challenge the administrative capabilities of many societies. |
| 文章名 | English as a lingua franca: Singapore |
| 作者 | Joseph A. Foley |
| 摘要 | When people discuss English as a global lingua franca, the implication is not so much how widely used the language is but rather what form of English should be used. This paper describes the role and features of a variety of English used in Singapore as one example of the developing new varieties of English that are emerging. The consequences of the spread of new varieties is then discussed in more general terms of standardization, identity, and what role the language classroom has to play in developing a global English. |
| 文章名 | Standardization and self-regulation in an international speech community: the case of Esperanto |
| 作者 | Sabine Fiedler |
| 摘要 | This paper is concerned with Esperanto, the only planned language system that has managed the successful transition from the status of a mere project to a full-fledged language. This is partly due to linguostructural properties, but above all to extralinguistic factors. Esperanto has found a sufficiently diverse and productive speech community which guarantees the constant and sustained dissemination of the language. This paper describes Esperanto as a planned language of the autonomous a posteriori subgroup. Its linguistic norm, which is documented in the Fundamento de Esperanto (1905), has developed steadily and become stable. It is supervised by the Akademio de Esperanto. Self-regulation takes place in a field of tension between diversifying forces (e.g. different linguistic and cultural influences because of the speakers' native backgrounds) and unifying forces (e.g. application during international meetings, literature, and radio programs). Its productive and flexible word formation system and syntax make Esperanto a means of communication with high expressive quality and stylistic variation. The main reason for the ease of Esperanto communication, however, is its democratic character: the lack of a native speaker whose competence decides on the language standard facilitates symmetrical communication. |
| 文章名 | Afrikaans as a lingua franca in South Africa: the politics of change |
| 作者 | Kay McCormick |
| 摘要 | Afrikaans has been a lingua franca throughout its existence. Its early development took place mainly in and around Cape Town, in a situation of intensive language contact between indigenous Khoekhoe, Dutch settlers, and slaves. Since most people learned it informally, often from other non-native speakers, and since the Cape was relatively isolated from conservative linguistic influences, the language changed a great deal. Until the late nineteenth century, there was no concerted attempt to regulate it. Regulation and standardization occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, at a time of great hostility between white speakers of Dutch / Afrikaans and the British colonial authorities. The standard dialect was based on a variety spoken by white Afrikaners. After its declaration as an official language alongside English in 1925, political and cultural institutions promoted its use in all domains by all South Africans. The Afrikaner nationalist government, which took power in 1948, made renewed efforts to enforce the use of the language. The language was strongly associated with apartheid, and many of its speakers feared that it would suer in the new democracy. It does have less prominence in public life, but is still being used as a lingua franca. |
