I think it would be interesting to determine a working definition for a minority language in our class. The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages defines a “regional or minority language” as “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” (2). I highlight the emphasis on numerical here because Stephen May, in Language Policy and Minority Rights, states that a minority group “is based not on numerical size, but on clearly observable differences among groups in relation to power, status, and entitlement” (255). He doesn’t offer any further definition of a minority language, but continues to expand on the theme of socio-political power differentials between minority and majority languages.
Let’s focus for a second on the concept of whether or not a minority language can be numerically defined. It seems practical to say that if only a small part of the population, or a less than majority amount, speak a language, than that could be a minority language. However, it is possible for a powerful minority to impose their language on the majority of the populace. The charter takes this into consideration, though, by stating that a minority language must be different than the official language. I agree with May in that many other factors such as power and status need to be observed, but I think that for practical purposes numbers can be used to define a minority language in a state. This runs into problems with how people will be counted – what if there is no census in the country?
The second part of the Charter’s definition is more problematic. It states that a minority language “does not include other dialects of the official languages of the State or the languages of migrants.” Who defines what is a dialect or not? What happens if they are mutually unintelligible? Turkey used to say Kurdish was “Mountain Turkish” even though it is linguistically very distinct. Furthermore, I find the qualification about the language of migrants disturbing. Is this position altered when many of the migrants become nationalized, such as with Hispanics in the United States? Obviously a state cannot make provisions for language instruction and education for all of the different migrants with the nation, but I certainly think that translation services need to be offered for many of them.
Ultimately, I think the definition of a minority language should be any language that is not the official language of the state, but this runs into major problems of practical implication. No state has the money to provide services in all of the different languages there are present. There must be a numerical cut off somewhere, by someone. This is where we sink into arbitrary decisions and questions of political, social and cultural capital.
Back in the good old days of high Turkish nationalism "Mountain Turkish" (a.k.a. Kurdish) was believed to have acquired its name because the "Mountain Turks" were too poor to afford proper shoes and their sandals would make the sound "kurt kurt kurt" as they walked through the snow.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem with the idea of minority languages occurs when dialects arise. In some settings, due to prevailing norms, this may not be a problem. AAVE or vernacular Arabic are unlikely to pose threats the universal acceptance English or Modern Standard Arabic. If we look at the former Yugoslav, states, though, we can begin to see some problems. Should "Croatian" get minority rights vis-a-vis "Serbian"? What about Norway: does Nynorsk get minority language rights vis-a-vs Bokmal? Should Swedish or Danish get minority rights given their histories?
Good post, Caitlin. I agree. Unfortunately, while I think we both desire to protect all minority languages, the P's of LPLP are starting to get in our way. I am working on my rewrite for my European Charter exercise and it is difficult to come up with a good number. In France, you can cut the number off at 2% and say anything less than that is too-minority to be a minority language. You would then have like 3 or 4 languages. In the US, at a 2% cutoff, you'd have 2 languages: English and Spanish. Chinese is the 3rd most widely spoken language here (and it basically counts all dialects as one language), but only 2/262 million citizens spoke it during the census in 2000. Does that mean we push it back to 0.5%? That would then include English, Spanish, Chinese, and French. No Arabic, no Vietnamese, no Japanese, no Russian, no German. And it would bring the total in France up to 8 languages, which is getting a little too difficult to justify large government spending.
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