CHAPTER 5

NATIONAL LANGUAGES AND LANGUAGE PLANNING

I. National and official languages

According to [ CITATION Jan13 \l 1057 ] “A national language is the language of a
political, cultural and social unit. It is generally developed and used as a symbol
of national unity. Its functions are to identify the nation and unite its people.” A
national language is useful as one means of creating social cohesion at the
level of the whole country. It is also a symbol of national identity and of a
nation's distinction from other countries. Whereas an official language or also
called state language is simply a language which may be used for government
business. Its function is primarily utilitarian rather than symbolic. It is possible,
of course, for one language to serve both functions. As claimed by [ CITATION
Muh18 \l 1057 ] “Official language is simply a language which may be used for
government business. The function of official language is usually dealing with
certain business in a certain territory such as nation’s court, parliament, and
administration and it is not widely spoken in the society.” We can say that an
official language is a language that is used for official or nationist purposes in a
country. Like government business or documents, legal proceedings, police
reports, business contracts, that sort of thing.
The governments use the terms ‘official’ and ‘national’ to suit their political
ends, as illustrated in the case of Paraguay below:
Paraguay is the only Latin American nation with a distinctive national
language – Guarani. Guarani is an indigenous American Indian language
spoken by over 90 per cent of the population, and it has co-exited for the past
300 years with Spanish (which is spoken by no more than 60 per cent of the
people). Paraguay provides a clear case of stable broad diglossia, with Spanish,
the H language, used in formal contexts, for administration, a great deal of
education, and legal business, and Guarani, the L language of solidarity, the
language of love, humour and poetry.
In the 1960s, the Paraguayan government used two different terms to
distinguish between the status of Spanish and Guaraní: Guaraní was declared
the ‘national’ language while Spanish was an ‘official’ language of Paraguay.
However, the Paraguayan situation changed again in 1992, when Guaraní was
granted official status alongside Spanish. So Paraguay now has two official
languages and one national language, Guaraní. But though Spanish and Guaraní
both have official status, it is Guaraní which most people regard as their real
national language. Guaraní is felt to be the language that best expresses their
distinctive culture and traditions.
 Multilingual found in other countries, Tanzania (country in East Africa) with
one national language, Swahili, but two official languages, Swahili and English.
Likewise, in Vanuatu, the national languages are Bislama, Pacific Creole, and
they are official languages alongside French and English, the languages of the
previous colonial administrators. Many countries do not differentiate between
the national language and the official language.
In countries that regard themselves as monolingual nations, the same
language serves both purposes. In multilingual communities, however, all kinds
of permutations have been used in order to satisfy both political and social goals
on the one hand and more practical and utilitarian needs on the other. In
multilingual nations, the government declares a particular language to be the
national language for political reasons. For example, it may be an attempt to
assert the nationhood of a state just like Swahili in Tanzania, Hebrew in Israel,
Malay in Malaysia, and Indonesian in Indonesia. If this language is not capable
of serving internal and external functions like government or administration,
another official language is needed, just like French in Ivory Coast, Chad and
Zaire. Also, Arabic is an official language in Israeli besides Hebrew.
When the choice of a national language is problematic in a multilingual
nation, an official language must exist. For example, India has failed to label
Hindi as a national language; therefore there are 14 official languages alongside
English and Hindi. Some multilingual countries have nominated more than one
national language.The Democratic Republic of the Congo-Zaire, for instance,
has four African languages as national languages, Lingala, Swahili, Tshiluba
and Kikongo, alongside French as an official language. But Lingala is the
official language of the army.Whereas in Haiti, has two national languages:
Haitian Creole and French, but French is the official language.

1. Official status and minority languages

English is often shares an official status with an indigenous language in
many countries throughout the world, such as Pakistan, Fiji, Vanuatu, Jamaica
and the Bahamas. Interestingly, English is not legally an official language of
England, the USA, or New Zealand. In these countries it has not been
considered necessary to legislate that the language of the majority is an offi cial
language. In New Zealand, ironically, although English is de facto (in fact or
actuality) the official language of government and education, Maori and New
Zealand Sign Language are the two languages which have legal or de jure status
as official languages.
 The term ‘minority language’ is often used to refer to a language spoken by a
minority of the population of a country, even if the language is given official
status. An important aspect is that the minority languages are often also
‘threatened languages’ or ‘endangered languages' because they are at risk of
falling out of use as their speakers (are forced to) shift to using the dominant
language
Minorities in many countries have achieved their language to be an official
language. For example, in New Zealand, Maori is now an official language. The
first step in a process which could encourage the use of Maori in an increasing
number of official institutional domains such as the law courts, official
government ceremonies and transactions, and in education. Although English is
the language of the majority, English is not declared an official language
similarly, in England and in the United States English is not legally an official
language.
Maori activists campaigned for years for the right to use Maori in official
and administrative contexts. To get official recognition for their language. It
also happens that in Wales the Welsh administration recognizes Welsh as the
language of government and education, but has no official status in Britain. In
India, linguistic minorities have rioted over the governmental ignorance of their
demands. In Canada, although English and French were given equal status in all
aspects of federal administration, the Quebec government was not happy over
the English domination. Many minorities would like to gain official status for
their languages but the costs of providing services and information in all official
languages are considerable.

2. What price a national language?

A national language of a political entity would emerge as the official
language. “One nation, one language” was an effective slogan.
Linguistic nationalism in Europe grew by the 19th century. It has almost
doubled again in the 20th century when colonized countries became
independent. At that time Nationhood and independence were important
political issues around the world.
- In multilingual countries like Tanzania, Indonesia and China and Philippine,
the symbolic value of a national language in the face of colonization became
very strong.   
- In a single dominant group, the issue of choosing an official language does not
arise. In Somalia, Somali is the first language, and the national official
language. In Denmark, Danish is the first and the national language.
 Political influence in multilingual countries plays a role in choosing the
national language. For example: when Philippines gained independence,
Pilipino became the national language. It was based on Tagalog (the language
of the most influential political group in the country).  However, this is not the
case in Indonesia, where the language of the elite Javanese is not selected as the
national language, but rather Malay that was widely used as a trade language. It
was more neutral than Javanese which had a complicated politeness
system. India and a number of African countries avoided selecting a national
language because the wrong choice leads to riots. However, this is not the case
in Tanzania which successfully adopted a national language.

II. Planning For A National Official Language

There are four aspects of standardization
1.Selection : choosing the variety or code to be developed.
2.Codification: standardising its structural or linguistic features. This kind of
‘linguistic processing’ is known as corpus planning.
3.Elaboration: extending its functions for use in new domains. This involves
developing the necessary linguistic resources for handling new concepts and
contexts.
4.Securing its acceptance. The status of the new variety is important, and so
people’s attitudes to the variety being developed must be considered. Steps
may be needed to enhance its prestige, for instance, and to encourage people
to develop pride in the language, or loyalty towards it. This is known as
status planning or prestige planning.

The planning process of a national official language in a large multilingual

country (Tanzania) where the competing varieties are distinct languages.
1 Selecting a code
The first president of Tanzania chose Swahili as the official national
language. It was difficult to choose English as it was the language of the
colonizer. The choice was based on the facts that Swahili was already the
language of education. It also served as a lingua franca of the anti-colonial
movement, and strengthened social relations between different groups that
were subject to colonization. Swahili is also identified s an African language,
as it belongs to the Bantu family
 2 Codifying and elaborating Swahili
 Standardization began by the British Administration before
independence.
 A southern variety of Swahili was selected as the basis for the standard.
 The codification involved developing spelling system, describing
grammar, and writing a dictionary for the vocabulary.
 After independence, Swahili was used for many contexts like education,
administration, politics and law. The vocabulary expanded to cover the
needs of new contexts by borrowing from English and Arabic.
 The president recommended that Swahili would be used for post-primary
education, high courts and governments. This required more vocabulary
for making new technical terms needed for different fields.

3 Attitudes to Swahili
Because Swahili was used to unite the people of Tanzania it was regarded
in a positive way. Tanzanians were very loyal to the language that united
them in working towards freedom. The language also acquired the charisma
of the president who used Swahili in different occasions rather than English.
Literary works of Shakespeare were also translated into Swahili. Swahili had
a neutral status because it was not identified with a particular tribe.

III. Developing A Standard Variety In Norway

1. Selecting code
In Norway there was a diglossia situation where Danish was the H Variety
and the language of the oppressor from whom Norway gained independence.
Other Norwegian vernaculars are the L varieties. The attitudes towards Danish
were hostile, and it was not used by people at rural countries. On the other hand,
choosing from the regional Norwegian varieties also stirred problems in relation
to people’s attitudes, as well as form and function. So, there were two
approaches taken to develop a standard written variety of Norwegian. One
approach selected a variety based on Danish with some orthographic and
morphological modification reflecting Norwegian educated speech. (Bokmal).
The other approach created a New Norwegian written standard by drawing on a
range of Norwegian rural dialects. (Landsmal or later Nynorsk) also called New
Norwegian.
2. Codification and elaboration:
* The New Norwegian was subject to a process of codification and elaboration
by Ivar Aasen, a school teacher who:
Ø Wrote a grammar and a 40.000 word dictionary.
Ø Identified common grammatical patterns in different dialects, and
chose vocabulary from a range of different dialects also. He chose the
forms that were the least corrupted and influenced by Danish.
* Rural dialects solved the problem of functional elaboration or extending the
use of Norwegian into domains where Danish had been regarded as the
appropriate code.
* By the 20th century, language planners tried to bring Bokmal and Landsmal
together through codification efforts. After WW2, there was a gap between the
two languages, and the gap widened by 1990 when there were arguments about
the appropriate written form of Norwegian.
* The two languages, though different, share common syntactic features and
morphological variants. However they differ in terms of words. Pronouncement
is made by the Norwegian Language Council which identifies the appropriate
pronouncement.

IV. The Linguist’s Role In Language Planning

In learning academic language from time to time it is necessary to correct
some of the settings that a person often has a profound influence on language
planning, and especially on the standardization or codification of certain
varieties. The diversity of languages does have a direct influence on a person or
individual, therefore we can understand some of the opinions of experts. There
are several opinions from people who convey opinions about the language we
use every day.
From the writings of linguists or historians I get some examples and
analyzes such as Samuel Johnson's 40,000-word Dictionary is a landmark in the
codification of the English language, although, as shown in Example 7, he has
little illusion about the role of the lexicographer. Ivar Aasen in Norway creates
Norwegian (Landsmål / Nynorsk) variations of various dialects. In Israel,
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was the most influential proponent of the vernacular of the
Hebrew language. Francis Mihalic wrote the first official Tok Pisin grammar
and dictionary in the 1950s. And in New Zealand Harry Orsman completed
New Zealand's first English-language dictionary of historical principles in 1997.
More often recently, the intricacies of language planning by committee,
commission or academy. In addition, the focus of many language planning
activities has shifted from the promotion of national and official languages in
countries trying to establish their autonomy, to the attention of minority
languages and endangered languages. The Kindergarten Academy, for example,
was established to preserve the native language of New Caledonia. Codification
and expansion of vocabulary are usually the concern of language academies,
and in the following sections, I briefly illustrate this process, especially using
Maori as an example. [ CITATION Jan13 \l 1033 ]

1. Codification of orthography
Codifying a language can vary from case to case and depends on the
stage of standardization that might have already occurred naturally. It typically
means to develop a writing system, set up normative rules for grammar,
orthography, pronunciation, and usage of vocabulary as well as publish
grammar books, dictionaries and similar guidelines. In cases where several
variants exist for a specific aspect, e.g. different ways of spelling a word,
decisions on which variant is going to be the standard one have to be made. In
linguistics the term orthography is often used to refer to any method of writing a
language, without judgment as to right and wrong, with a scientific
understanding that orthographic standardization exists on a spectrum of strength
of convention.
Orthography is the practice or study of correct spelling according to
established usage. In a broader sense, orthography can refer to the study of
letters and how they are used to express sounds and form words.Missionaries
were often good linguists who produced a spelling system which accurately
represented the pronunciation of the language. Inevitably there were problems,
however. In Samoan, for instance, the sound [h] represented in English as ng
was accurately identified as a single sound rather than two separable sounds.
Samoans therefore write laga (‘weave’) but say something which sounds
to English ears like langa . They write galu but say something which sounds like
ngalu . Consequently English speakers generally mispronounce words like
mogamoga when they first see Samoan written down. In Maori, however, where
[h] also occurs, this single sound was written as two letters,ng . As a result
Maori words like tangi (‘weep’), which are almost identical in pronunciation to
Samoan tagi , are nevertheless spelt differently. The Samoan orthography is
strictly a more precise representation of its sound system – one symbol is used
for one sound. This example illustrates the influence a missionary could have on
the codification process.

2. Developing vocabulary
 Vocabulary development is the process of a person obtaining words and
uttering words in a form of vocabulary that is less clear to become clear and
understandable. In order to build their vocabularies, infants must learn about the
meanings that words carry. The mapping problem asks how infants correctly
learn to attach words to referents. Constraints theories, domain-general views,
social-pragmatic accounts, and an emergentist coalition model have been
proposed to account for the mapping problem.
From an early age, infants use language to communicate. Caregivers and
other family members use language to teach children how to act in society. In
their interactions with peers, children have the opportunity to learn about unique
conversational roles. Through pragmatic directions, adults often offer children
cues for understanding the meaning of words.
A specific example of the kinds of choices which faced the Maori
Language Commission in this area is illustrated by the problem of providing
Maori names for Government institutions, including themselves. They were
called at first Te Kdmihana md Te Reo Maori. Te reo is a widely known Maori
phrase meaning ‘the language’, but the title also includes the word kDmihana
which simply borrows the English word commission and adapts it to the Maori
sound system. The transliteration is quite predictable, with k substituting for c ,
h substituting for s (since Maori has no [s], and [h] is the usual fricative
substitution), and a final vowel, since Maori is a language in which all syllables
end in vowels. The Commission changed its name however to Te Taura Whiri i
te Reo MAori (literally ‘the rope binding together (the many strands of) the
Maori language’). This is a Maori name for the Commission – not one borrowed
from English. The commissioners felt that such a label had greater linguistic
and cultural integrity, and this provides an insight into how they see their task.
In advising others on usage, they are often faced with the dilemma of which of
these options to recommend:
1. a word borrowed from English
2. an equivalent Maori word which is perhaps not well known or with a
slightly different meaning which could be adapted
3. a word newly created from Maori resources.
The Commission takes the view that its task is not simply a mechanical one of
making Maori a more suitable instrument for official communication and
modern education. It recognizes another more symbolic and less instrumental
dimension to its task. Consequently where possible the Commission uses native
resources, trying to ‘remain true to the spirit of the language’; but of course this
is not always achievable.
3. Acceptence
 In Acceptance also has a linguistics meaning from the definition of a
word that is understood in general. From the examples in the book [ CITATION
Jan13 \l 1033 ] has given some very specific examples in this section of these types
of linguistic problems. Language planners were involved, mostly illustrating
from Maori. The same problem has occurred faced by those involved in the
development of the Navajo language in the US, Aborigines languages in
Australia, Swahili in Tanzania and standard Norwegian in Norway. The next
step in the process involving politicians and people as much as sociolinguistics.
4. Acquisition planning
Considering the role of linguists at the micro codification level, it is
ultimately useful to return to the macro-level language planning activities. Apart
from corpus planning and status or prestige planning, which were discussed
above, sociolinguists can also contribute to organized efforts to spread linguistic
variation by increasing the number of users. This is sometimes called
acquisition planning, and since the most widespread method of encouraging
language acquisition is to use the education system, it is also known as
language-in-education planning. Language planners may be asked to advise on
a variety of issues such as who should be the target of language promotion
efforts, the most effective language teaching methods in a given context, what
materials to use, and how programmers should be evaluated. Should everyone
have access to language teaching, for example? How much opinion should local
communities have on the way the language is taught, or the materials used,
compared to the uniform top-down approach monitored by the government?
In China, newspapers and radio contributed to early efforts to promote
Chinese knowledge: demonstration radio programs promoted approved
pronunciations, while newspapers in Chinese were printed in transcribed
characters. In Japan, although there are large minority groups who speak
Korean and Chinese, Japanese is the only official language.Current acquisition
planning focuses solely on English where all children are required to study
throughout the school system. In Tanzania, Norway, Singapore and many other
countries, the education system plays an important role in acquisition planning,
and issues of access, curriculum, methodology and evaluation are decided by
government departments. Israel's 'absorption centers', where immigrants live
while sorting out jobs and housing, offer Hebrew classes on a government-
subsidized setting. In contrast, in the early days of efforts to revive Maori,
people from the Maori community took the initiative to set up their own
preschools where Maori were used. They sought advice from sociolinguists who
had studied similar programmers abroad, but the early kohanga reo (language
hives) were under the control of local communities and made use of local
resources and materials. Classes are also held in many Maori communities,
using a variety of different methods and materials, to provide opportunities for
adults to increase their knowledge and proficiency of the Maori language. These
two examples illustrate different ways of approaching acquisition planning.

References
Holmes, J. (2013). An Intorductions to Socialinguistics fourth edition.
Routledge.
Ridwan, M. (2018). National and Official Language: The Long Journey of
Indonesian Language. Budapest International Research and Critics
Institute-Journal (BIRCI-Journal) .