{"id":5965,"date":"2011-09-04T18:30:51","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T07:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/?p=5965"},"modified":"2011-09-04T18:34:12","modified_gmt":"2011-09-04T07:34:12","slug":"multilingual-mindsets-are-good-but-not-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2011\/09\/multilingual-mindsets-are-good-but-not-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Multilingual mindsets are good, but not enough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The  failure of language revivalists to get people to accept a standard language (here the Swiss language Romansh Grischun) is the topic of a <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424053111903352704576540252076676760.html\">sad little article<\/a> by Deborah Ball in the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>. (Reprinted in <em>The Australian<\/em> 3\/9\/2011 but without the interesting graphics).  Google led me to an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/culture\/Romansh_speakers_rebel_against_standard_language.html?cid=29637410 \">earlier article<\/a> on the same topic by Terence MacNamee in swissinfo.ch.   <\/p>\n<p>There are apparently five dialects of Romansh spoken in Switzerland. It is the usual insoluble problem.  The number of speakers of the 5 dialects are small, so that it doesn&#8217;t seem economically viable to provide teachers and teaching materials for all 5. Not to mention the small pool of people to chat with and visit on holidays.<\/p>\n<p>Solution (1) Choose 1 of the dialects and use that as the standard Romansh language &#8211; BUT no one will agree to accept someone else&#8217;s dialect.  <\/p>\n<p>Solution (2) Create a hybrid from all 5 &#8211; BUT everyone hates the hybrid as a bastard.<\/p>\n<p>If language planners can&#8217;t keep a small language going in a country as multilingual and rich as Switzerland&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Endgame?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The failure of language revivalists to get people to accept a standard language (here the Swiss language Romansh Grischun) is the topic of a sad little article by Deborah Ball in the Wall Street Journal. (Reprinted in The Australian 3\/9\/2011 but without the interesting graphics). Google led me to an earlier article on the same &#8230; <a title=\"Multilingual mindsets are good, but not enough\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2011\/09\/multilingual-mindsets-are-good-but-not-enough\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Multilingual mindsets are good, but not enough\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-endangered-languages","category-language-policy-and-planning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5965"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5973,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5965\/revisions\/5973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}