Professional Documents
Culture Documents
National Languages & Language Planning
National Languages & Language Planning
Selecting a Code
Contents
• Codifying & Elaborating Swahili
• Attitudes to Swahili
• Developing a Standard Variety in Norway
• Selecting a Code
• Codification and Elaboration
• The Linguist’s Role in Language Planning
• Codification of Orthography
• Developing Vocabulary
• Acquisition Planning
• Conclusion
National Languages
& Language
Planning
• Sociolinguistics :
1) Selection
2) Codification
3) Elaboration
4) Securing its acceptance
The first President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, chose
Swahili, a language of the Bantu language family, which
was widely used throughout the country as a lingua franca
in many contexts.
TANZANIA Because :
• Swahili was already the medium of primary education,
Selecting a for instance, and so all Tanzanians learned the language
at school
Code • Swahili identified as an African language
• Swahili had served as the lingua franca of the anti-
colonial political movement for independence.
Codifying & Elaborating Swahili
• People have often seen the success of Swahili as the national language in Tanzania as due to its
‘neutral’ status – it is not identified with a particular tribe. But its widespread acceptance was
also due to the fact that Tanzanians developed a strong loyalty towards the language which
united them in working towards uhuru (‘freedom’) and It provides an economical solution to
the problem of which language to use for local administration and primary education
Developing a Standard Variety
in Norway
Upper-class people spoke Danish
with Norwegian pronunciation in
In 1814, Norway became
formal situations, and a
independent after being ruled by
compromise between that and
Denmark for four centuries
local Norwegian dialects in
informal contexts.
• Essentially the Norwegian government had the choice of developing a national language
from standard Danish or from local Norwegian dialects. While Danish offered all the
advantages of being codified in dictionaries and grammars but Standard Danish was not
used widely for informal interaction, especially in rural areas, and people’s attitudes
towards the language were generally at least ambivalent, if not hostile.
• The Nynorsk solution, which involved
amalgamating features from several
n and
linguistic point of view
• In New Zealand, the Maori Language Act of 1987 established the Maori Language Commission
to advise on the development of Maori as an offi cial language of New Zealand. On the long
vowel issue it has come down in favour of the systematic use of the macron, describing it as
simpler, easier to read, more economical and less likely to result in ambiguity