Linguistic Assimilation

As the hegemonic trend toward a unique and uniform culture and language grows, some ethnic groups in South Texas are not ready to give up their cultural and linguistic rights. In opposition to Anglo American leading institutions, many students drop out of schools (Beykont, 1997, 2002). Historically, schools and teachers — consciously or unconsciously — have been the medium to institutionalize a policing of one language (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000) and to deculturalize and/or Americanize Mexican American students. Since Guadalupe Hidalgo's bill, the most common methods which were incorporated into educational policies included segregation and isolation, forced change of language, curriculum and textbooks reflecting the dominant group, denial of cultural and religious expression of dominated groups, and the exclusive use of teachers from dominant groups (Spring, 2007). Using a critical pedagogical approach, the authors discuss Texas' public school districts as an oppressive cultural system by Anglo Americans standards or policies, and some practical advice to Mexican-American/Latino Parents on how to stop the ongoing deculturation of future generations of their children, including the intensive use of technologies.

Since 2003, German skills have represented one of the primary integration requirements for so-called Third Country Nationals to obtain a residence permit for Austria. They are obligated by law to not only study German but to reach a defined level of proficiency within a designated time frame. If the Third Country National does not pass the test, he or she can get deported to their country of citizenship. This article draws from the concepts of Spracherleben, the lived experience of language, as well as the linguistic repertoire, and the method of language portraits (Busch 2013), to present the personal experience of learning German as a Third Country National. Based on one interview, this article discusses emotional effects this linguistic obligation has on an individual and further explains his experience of language in society.

The paper discusses the Polish language of Jews who emigrated from Poland to France between 1967 and 1980. An analysis of excerpts from interviews which contain discourse about the attitudes of the interviewees towards their mother tongue and its transmission, will allow us to answer the following questions: What place does the Polish language occupy in everyday life of the informers? What are their feelings towards their mother tongue? And lastly, how many of them have decided to pass the Polish language to their children, and so preserve it in their families?

Sinhala, Tamil and English languages have played dominant roles in shaping the socio-political relationships of the multi-ethnic populace in Sri Lanka since pre-colonial times. Postwar Sri Lanka that is eyeing national reconciliation provides an ideal milieu to venture a study to rediscover the rapport between Tamil and Sinhala languages mentioned in the 1978 Constitution. This study aimed to analyse the attitudes of a selected sample of first language (L1) Sinhala and English speakers in Sri Lanka towards learning Tamil language. Thus, utilizing a qualitative approach, forty respondents, aged 20-50 years and working in the government sector, were given a questionnaire-mostly comprising open-ended questions-to elicit their perceptions regarding learning Tamil. Further, in-depth interviews were conducted with five respondents of the same professional and age categories to provide some insight into the attitudes of L1 Tamil speakers towards learning Sinhala. The findings of the questionnaire were contradictory in nature. Although a positive perception towards learning Tamil language and being bilinguals of Sinhala and Tamil was shown initially, an emphatic reluctance to learn Tamil was implied as the questions became personalized. Tamil being a minority language, not used in many contexts and English's role being effectively played as the link language were the reasons fueling the reluctance towards learning Tamil. The findings conclude that learning Tamil or Sinhala out of obligation or for utilitarian purposes is neither assimilationist nor accommodationist, and may not guarantee national reconciliation.

This paper discusses vowel epenthesis in loanwords from both an empirical and a formal linguistic perspective and argues that epenthesis patterns are more complex than usually assumed with respect to vowel quality. A statistical analysis of several large loanword corpora in the ...

... By the 1880s, however, the balance had tipped in favor of the Czech language ... This disjunctionbetween recorded language and recorded na-tionality was institutionalized further by two ... 12 The perception gap, which has major political consequences since it provides additional ...

This paper aims to conduct a comparative analysis on the linguistic integration both in the case of Turkish immigrants in Germany, and Mexican immigrants in the United States within a historical perspective. These integrative policies will be studied first by giving certain background information on the migratory history of the two countries, Mexican immigration to the US, and Turkish immigration to Germany, respectively. These two cases were picked as the analytical subjects of this paper because both immigrant nations migrated to the related country to constitute a labour force since there was a huge need for that due to several reasons such as the loss of manpower after certain wars or revolutions. At the end of this comparative study, it is speculated to be found that there are certain parallels between these two immigrant societies in the way that they speak their native languages as part of their cultures in the receiving country since both nations have a conventionalist nature which makes them tend more to protect their own culture and pay less effort to integrate into the society in which they are living. Even though this integration might be realized in certain forms such as economic status and exogamy, it does not cover all segments nor is there any desire of the receiving government to integrate the immigrants but rather they make policies to isolate them.

L'A. montre a travers cet article les problemes de changement de langue et exemplifie ce phenomene avec l'exemple du raji en Inde. A cet effet, il dresse la liste des conditions generales d'apparitions de ce changement linguistique (pays multi-culturel instable,...) et decrit le processus qui mene a la mort d'une langue. Ensuite, l'article porte son attention sur les problemes particuliers des changements de code et de melange des langues et etudie le cas particulier du raji. L'A. montre alors les influences subies par cette langue, le declin progressif de son utilisation dans certains domaines et souligne que si elle se maintient encore, il n'est pas possible de determiner combien de temps elle resistera.