Minority Language Communities Research Articles

Resilience through language? A case study of three minority communities in Georgia

ABSTRACT The concept of resilience has been employed as an analytical tool in a wide range of scientific disciplines and fields from the natural sciences to social sciences and humanities, but within linguistics it is a relatively new and so far, rarely applied concept. This paper is intended as a contribution to fill this gap through a sociolinguistic study of three minority language communities in Georgia - Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Chechens. The sociolinguistic conditions of the three communities in Georgia partially overlap, but also show interesting differences. In order to observe the impact that minority languages possibly have on forming resilient communities, we have interviewed members of these three minority groups using semi-structured questionnaires. We concentrate on two important domains of use, namely education and work, and also explore language attitudes and ideologies. The results of our study are mixed: minority language speakers occasionally benefit from their language knowledge, and their positive attitudes towards their own languages strengthen their linguistic and sociocultural identity. Nevertheless, linguistic discrimination is also part of their every-day experience in a majority society that highly values the national language Georgian.

Manx speakers, language, and identity

Manx, the Goidelic language of the Isle of Man, has no extant traditional native speakers. However, thanks to the efforts of language activists and others involved in language revival, there exists a community of around 2200 people who claim competence in the language (Isle of Man Government 2021), of which a smaller portion will have advanced competence in Manx. All members of the Manx speaker community could be described as ‘new speakers’, having acquired this revitalized minority language primarily through means other than first language transmission in the home (O’Rourke, Pujolar, and Ramallo 2015: 1). The members of the Manx new speaker community, despite many having acquired “a socially and communicatively consequential level of competence” (Jaffe 2015: 25) in the traditional language of the Isle of Man, vary in terms of their national, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. Postmodern approaches to sociolinguistics challenge the assumption of a straightforward link between identity, especially national identity, and linguistic practice. The complexity of the elationship between language and identity is especially evident in cases of multilingual minority language communities – such as the extant Celtic-speaking communities. The present paper explores the relationship between identity and language use among Manx new speakers. It discusses the following specific question: How do new speakers of Manx understand and identify with ‘Manxness’? The paper uses a corpus of sociolinguistic interview and ethnographic observation data gathered from fieldwork among the Manx new speaker community as part of the author’s PhD thesis. The researcher, a Manx new speaker herself, spent six months gathering data, both through traditional sociolinguistic methods, such as interviews and questionnaires, and through ethnographic methods, namely participant observation in various contexts. The analysis of this novel spoken corpus offers a much-needed view into identity and language use in a 21st-century Celtic language community that lacks extant native speakers.

Bi/Multilingualism and Language Shift in Chhantyal

This paper outlines various aspects of bi/multilingualism and language shift in Chhantyal, a minority language community in Nepal. The main objective is to find the domains of language use and the causes of language shift among the migrated Chhantyal in Kathmandu valley. This research is based on mixed methodology of socio-ethnographic survey data where the data were collected with the help of survey questionnaire, key informants interviews (KIIs) and informal discussions and narratives with Chhantyal people based on Gautam (2021).The findings indicate that there is continuous shifts towards Nepali, English and Hindi languages among the speakers influenced by market multilingualism, globalization, migration, travel and tourism.

Translanguaging in Family Communication

This paper reports on a phenomenological study that examined Hungarian American parents’ perceptions and practices related to translanguaging—a systematic scaffolding strategy that utilizes multiple linguistic repertoires to facilitate competence and performance in two or more language—in family communication. We used semistructured interviews with questions related to language use, parents’ reactions to translanguaging, and their perceptions of why and how translanguaging occurs in oral and written family communications. The participants included twelve Hungarian American families with adolescent children who used the Hungarian language in family communication. The findings indicated that most families found translanguaging natural and positive, and these families used supportive and constructive behaviors when translanguaging happened. A few parents rejected the practice of translanguaging when the communication took place in Hungarian, which indicated monoglossic language ideologies. These divergent views of family language policy were often explained by the familial, social, and cultural contexts of the families. Because parents are the main stakeholders in language maintenance, their perspectives and practices are essential. This paper contributes to our understanding of family language policies regarding translanguaging and offer recommendations for a minority language community, the Hungarian American immigrant community, for which translanguaging is not well researched. jszilagy@brockport.edu

Educating future physicians for francophone official language minority communities in Canada: a case study.

Over one million Francophone Canadians live in official language minority communities (OLMC) outside of Québec. Availability and accessibility of linguistically appropriate care to these OLMCs is lacking, resulting in poorer quality of care. To help address this health equity gap, the FrancoDoc program was created in 2015 to identify Francophone/Francophile medical students enrolled at medical faculties that use English as their primary language of instruction and equip them with skills to increase their medical French abilities. Little is known, however, about the affordances and limitations of this educational endeavour. Our qualitative instrumental single case study explored participants' experiences with FrancoDoc, while also examining factors shaping the delivery of linguistically appropriate healthcare services to OLMCs. We conducted semi-structured interviews with medical students from across Canada and thematically analyzed these using a reflexive, inductive approach. Four main themes were derived from 12 interviews: factors facilitating French language learning; barriers to French language learning; contextual factors shaping linguistically appropriate healthcare provision; and recommendations to improve healthcare education to better prepare learners to provide care to OLMCs. Medical student participants are highly motivated to engage in educational activities linked to FrancoDoc. Their efforts are nonetheless frequently impeded by barriers such as time constraints, irregular event programming, lack of regular clinical learning opportunities, and lukewarm support from faculties of medicine. If medical faculties are to realize their obligations to the OLMCs that they serve, recognition of language as a specific social determinant of health and more robust institutional supports for initiatives like FrancoDoc are paramount.

Addressing the Shortage of Health Professionals in Official Language Minority Communities to Strengthen Retention Strategies for the Benefit of New Brunswick Francophone and Acadian Communities: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Design

COVID-19 has highlighted already existing human resource gaps in health care systems. New Brunswick health care services are significantly weakened by a shortage of nurses and physicians, affecting regions where Official Language Minority Communities (OLMCs) reside. Since 2008, Vitalité Health Network (the "Network"), whose work language is French (with services delivered in both official languages, English and French), has provided health care to OLMCs in New Brunswick. The Network currently needs to fill hundreds of vacant physician and nurse positions. It is imperative to strengthen the network's retention strategies to ensure its viability and maintain adequate health care services for OLMCs. The study is a collaborative effort between the Network (our partner) and the research team to identify and implement organizational and structural strategies to upscale retention. The aim of this study is to support one of New Brunswick health networks in identifying and implementing strategies to promote physician and registered nurse retention. More precisely, it wishes to make 4 important contributions to identify (and enhance our understanding of) the factors related to the retention of physicians and nurses within the Network; determine, based on the "Magnet Hospital" model and the "Making it Work" framework, on which aspects of the Network's environment (internal or external) it should focus for its retention strategy; define clear and actionable practices to help the Network replenish its strength and vitality; and improve the quality of health care services to OLMCs. The sequential methodology combines quantitative and qualitative approaches based on a mixed methods design. For the quantitative part, data collected through the years by the Network will be used to take stock of vacant positions and examine turnover rates. These data will also help determine which areas have the most critical challenges and which ones have more successful approaches regarding retention. Recruitment will be made in those areas for the qualitative part of the study to conduct interviews and focus groups with different respondents, either currently employed or who have left it in the last 5 years. This study was funded in February 2022. Active enrollment and data collection started in the spring of 2022. A total of 56 semistructured interviews were conducted with physicians and nurses. As of manuscript submission, qualitative data analysis is in progress and quantitative data collection is intended to end by February 2023. Summer and fall 2023 is the anticipated period to disseminate the results. Applying the "Magnet Hospital" model and the "Making it Work" framework outside urban settings will offer a novel outlook to the knowledge of professional resource shortages within OLMCs. Furthermore, this study will generate recommendations that could contribute to a more robust retention plan for physicians and registered nurses. DERR1-10.2196/41485.

Attending to the voice of people at all levels involved in mother tongue education – a case of two minority languages in Ethiopia

This paper reports on a qualitative research study conducted to obtain opinions about mother tongue education from members of two minority language communities in Ethiopia and other stakeholders. The study sought the opinions of representatives from the Ministry of Education, lecturers at teacher training colleges, as well as parents, community members and teachers. Six major themes arose from the research, which provided insight into reasons why mother tongue education could be either successful or unsuccessful.

Language and identity in the East Frisian-American (postvernacular) heritage community

This article reports initial results from an online survey in the East Frisian heritage community in the United States, inquiring about remaining cultural and linguistic practices. Answers from 31 participants indicate a generally positive attitude towards the Low German heritage language, despite low self-reported productive and receptive proficiency. Community members show awareness of the ongoing and inevitable language shift to English but feel unable to stop the trend. This also manifests in terms of identity construction: while autochthonous minority language communities have been shown to employ emblematic language use as a postvernacular identity marker, East Frisian heritage in the U.S. is constructed mostly around church affiliation, food and tea traditions, shared values, and being “German.” Thus, this study opens the door for additional (comparative) studies on the development of postvernacular communities and the (diminished) role of language use in these groups.

The ‘in-between’ role of linguistic minority sites in immigrants’ integration: the Francophone community as third space in Metro Vancouver

ABSTRACT Learning the dominant language of the receiving society is arguably key to ensuring immigrant integration. While this is important for immigrants who are not fluent in the receiving countries’ official language(s), in this article, we examine the significance of using an official, but minority language (French) in Canada’s Anglophone provinces. We focus on the Francophone minority community (FMC) in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, as a ‘third space’ for French-speaking immigrants’ integration. While the government considers FMCs as primary spaces of French-speaking immigrants’ integration, we interrogate their actual role in their everyday experiences in the multicultural context of Metro Vancouver. This article presents findings from a critical ethnography about French-speaking immigrants’ participation in Francophone community sites. Methods included observations in Francophone community sites as well as interviews with twenty French-speaking immigrants and six representatives of Francophone community sites. Findings suggest that the FMC constitutes a ‘third space’ that supports immigrants’ integration by playing an ‘in-between’ role in relation to the mainstream Anglophone society and participants’ ethnocultural communities. Furthermore, we argue that FMCs – as official, but minority language communities – constitute a unique hybrid mix of dominant and subaltern positions that offer possibilities for refining conceptualizations of ‘third space’.

Developing a Rule-Based Machine-Translation System, Ewondo–French–Ewondo

Machine translation (MT) significantly contributes to democratizing access to textual information across multiple languages and is established as a dynamic language service in the global multilingual society. Not surprisingly, the attractiveness of the MT market has stirred up spectacular innovations, driven by artificial intelligence in the digital technology industry. The commercial stakes of the industry has led to massive investments in the development of automatic translation systems for languages of wider communication and an increased marginalization of minority languages in this avenue. This article reports on the on-going development of a low-tech, rule-based MT system for Ewondo, a Bantu low-resourced language spoken in Cameroon. The project aims to fill the gap in access to MT services in the target minority language community and to generate parallel corpora from and into the Ewondo language.

Generational differences in the low tones of Black Lahu

Abstract We investigate apparent-time variation of the low falling (T21) and low level (T11) tones of the Black Lahu language of Yunnan, China. Linear mixed-effects modeling of spontaneous speech shows that both tones have a higher F0 trajectory among younger speakers and in certain phonetic environments. Since F0 is known to lower with increasing age, for comparison we also analyze variation in the high rising tone (T45) and find no evidence of generational difference. This suggests that the effect of age on low tones is not due to physiological change across the life span. We leave open the question of whether this result reflects a change in progress or a stable sociotonetic difference between older and younger speakers. This study contributes towards two underrepresented areas of sound change research: (1) sociotonetic approaches to tone variation in naturalistic speech styles, and (2) engagement with Indigenous scholars who are cultural insiders in small rural minority language communities.

Who texts what to whom and when? Patterning of texting in four multilingual minoritized language communities and a preliminary proposal for the language repertoire matrix

Abstract Though computer mediated communication has been widely studied, private messaging in minoritized languages (many without standardized orthographies) is an area of minimal research. This article looks at texting in four multilingual language communities: Maguindanaon (Philippines), Sebuyau (Malaysia), Mamaindê (Brazil) and Marubo (Brazil). The majority of the data comes from the Maguindanao case study, an Austronesian language spoken by over one million speakers in the Maguindanao province of Mindanao Island. Based on this preliminary data, an initial framework with which to understand the language choices for digital messaging in such societies is proposed. The broader implications of this study are its insights into the variable patterning of texting in minority languages in general, providing a baseline for future work in this area. This preliminary study suggests that the texting repertoires of minority language communities are found to pattern after their parallel repertoires of either orality or literacy. These patterns are collectively referred to as the “Language Repertoire Matrix”. The variable that distinguishes one texting repertoire from another is the language(s) used for intra-group texting: minority (L1), majority (L2), or minority + majority (L1 + L2) languages. We propose that the choice of employing either the orality or literacy repertoires for intra-group texting demonstrates the underlying function of such texting within that society. The conclusion offers some suggestions on how these insights might apply to the field of minority language development.

If We Do It Right, It Will Hurt: The Official Languages Act, Nation-Building, and English-Speaking Quebec

In Quebec—a province with complex and fraught language politics—the federal Official Languages Act recognizes the English-speaking population of Quebec as a minority language community. Anchored in the perspective of English-speaking Quebec, the essay argues that the Official Languages Act is an attempt at nation-building, embedded and embroiled in the history and politics of language. First, the essay discusses how the existence of English-speaking Quebec shaped language rights and the Official Languages Act in particular. Next, it describes the English-speaking minority of Quebec and how this minority fits within the framework of the Act, commenting on and critiquing the Act from this perspective. Lastly, it argues that the modernization of the Act is more than just a technical exercise and that it requires a national conversation and debate around language and identity.

Towards Equal Status: English-Speaking Minority Communities in Canada and the Official Languages Act

The introduction of the Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism lays the foundation for two official language minority communities in Canada, and the principle of equality, which “implies respect for the idea of minority status, both in the country as a whole and in each of its regions.” However, the Official Languages Act that flowed from the ‘Bi and Bi Commission, and the structures that oversee it, have not reflected an approach based on equality. The English-speaking community of Quebec—Canada’s English linguistic minority community—has not received “generous treatment” in the implementation of the Act. This paper based on my presentation at the 87th annual Acfas congress, offers some ideas about why this situation has developed and the impact this has had on the vitality of Quebec’s English-speaking community. I conclude that equality for both official language minority communities—the outcome envisioned by the Commissioners—must be achieved through the modernization of the Official Languages Act.

Minority language maintenance and the production‐prescription interface: Number agreement in New York Yiddish

AbstractStandardization is a focus of language maintenance efforts in many, but not all, minority language communities. What is the impact of this choice on interspeaker variation in maintained languages? This study investigates variable number agreement in Yiddish, a minority language spoken by two distinct communities in the New York area: (1) Hasidic Jews, who maintain the language without standardization, and (2) Yiddishists, who are overtly committed to maintaining a “correct” Yiddish. An analysis of data from 40 sociolinguistic interviews shows that Yiddishists have significantly higher rates of normative agreement than Hasidim do. The Yiddishists’ standard language ideology has also contributed to a leveling of the differences across grammatical constructions, a predictor that is more robust among the Hasidic speakers. These community‐based differences in speech reflect differences in speakers’ prescriptive judgments, which were elicited through a novel postinterview text editing task.

Can Machine Translation meet the needs of official language minority communities in Canada? A recipient evaluation

Canada is an officially bilingual country, but the only legal requirement is for federal services to be offered in both official languages. Therefore, services provided by provincial and municipal governments are typically offered only in the language of the majority, with cost being cited as the main obstacle to providing translation. This paper presents a recipient evaluation designed to determine whether machine translation could be used as a cost-effective means of increasing translation services in Canadian official language minority communities. The results show that not all communities have the same needs, and that raw or rapidly post-edited MT output is more suitable for information assimilation, while maximally post-edited MT output is a minimum requirement when translation is intended as a means of cultural preservation and promotion. The survey also suggests that average recipients are more receptive to MT than are language professionals.

Maximizing Scalability in Literacy Game App Design for Minority Languages

Minority language communities lack access to educational technology that facilitates literacy skill building. The approach currently taken by most educational game app developers privileges widely spoken languages and often requires intensive resource investment. In response, a new game app was designed to provide easily localized, pedagogically appropriate games for literacy skill building. Scalability to multiple minority languages was possible through a programming design based on language packs that could be compiled by local implementation teams without specialized technical skills and without significant resource investment. We describe the scalability issues encountered when localizing the app for the initial ten minority language pilot groups and how a language-neutral app design that relies on language packs to specify language-specific content and parameters can adequately address these issues. When it comes to meeting the demands of growing education technology markets in underserved Indigenous and minority communities, localizing an app initially designed for maximum scalability is more feasible than investing significant resources converting apps custom designed for one language into new languages.

Effects of social evolution on terminology policy in South Tyrol

AbstractThis paper illustrates the challenges of terminology policy in the legal domain in South Tyrol, Italy, i.e. within a minority community whose language (German) is an official language in other countries. In this context terminology planning becomes necessary mainly in relation to legal and administrative concepts, due to the system-bound nature of legal language. The method applied in South Tyrol is micro-comparison with other German-speaking legal systems. Based on South Tyrol’s example, we show how changes in society have affected approaches, methods and tools for terminology planning and practical terminology work. South Tyrol’s autonomy model is often considered a best practice for the resolution of ethnic conflict. Its long-lasting experience in terminology planning may equally serve as a model for minority language communities that have only recently been granted extensive language rights.

Odds of Anxiety and Depression Symptoms in School-Aged Children From Official Language Minority Communities.

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to assess the odds of suffering from anxiety or depression symptoms based on the presence of certain determinants of health for youth living in the province of New Brunswick, Canada, and in two linguistically different Official Language Minority Communities (OLMCs) in the same province.Methods: With a sample of 22,329 students from grades 7 to 12 in the province of New Brunswick, Canada, logistic regressions were performed to assess each determinant of health's effect on symptoms of anxiety and depression.Results: Some social determinants, like family support, social support and food insecurity, were identified as important determinants of mental health status regardless of linguistic group membership or community membership, while other determinants, such as alcohol use, cannabis use and natural environment, were more prominent in one OLMC than the other.Discussion: Social psychology and public health theories are used in an attempt to explain the results. Limitations and recommendations are also brought forward.

Background and language of the Narum community in Marudi, Sarawak

The Narum community is located in Marudi, Sarawak and belongs to a minority language community that is heading towards language extinction. In terms of language cognate, there are similarities between the language of the Narum community and the Kenyah community. However, the number of speakers of this language is declining and the number who can master the Narum language well, especially the younger generation is very limited. This puts the language of this minority community in a threatened position. This is a preliminary study aimed to introduce this language community. Data collection was gathered to document the linguistic and cultural situation practised in this language community. In this study, qualitative methods were applied. The data was collected by interviews to obtain data directly from this language community. The findings of this study describe the linguistic and cultural situation of the Narum language community. The attitude of the native speakers who do not pay much attention to their heritage has become one of the causes of the language of this community is increasingly threatened, in fact, this community is also increasingly unknown for their existence. In addition, intermarriage also contributes to the loss of the language of the Narum community and will also destroy the identity of this community. Indeed, it would be a huge loss if this minority community became extinct. Therefore, immediate action needs to be taken to save and preserve it. It not only needs to be immediately recorded and documented, but more importantly, these language communities need to use and know their history and language actively in order to preserve and revitalize their language and cultural heritage for future generations. Keywords: Ethnic group, language community, language extinction, minority group, Narum language, Swadesh list