Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 2 – Many people
assume that increasing linguistic diversity will lead those who find themselves
in that situation to look for a common language and that it will thus work
against those who speak the numerically smaller language, but in fact Hector
Alos Font argues, the reverse may turn out to be true.
In a Facebook post yesterday, the Catalan
linguist who works in Chuvashia argues that “individual languages survive
better in milieus where there are many languages than where there are few and
thus the preservation of linguistic diversity … works in favor of each of the local
languages” (facebook.com/notes/hèctor-alòs-font/укрепление-других-родных-языков/10153955607592000).
That diversity, he
points out in comments that he says he has submitted to the Chuvash authorities
who are developing a concept paper on teaching the national language there can
be either based on long-standing patterns or be “the result of new migration
processes,” which bring speakers of other languages into the republic.
What that means, and this may seem
counter-intuitive to many, is that Chuvash benefits when non-Chuvash minority
languages are promoted because speakers of those languages can see why learning
Chuvash as well is useful for them in their daily lives, more useful perhaps
than learning some lingua franca like Russian.
One of the implications of Alos Font’s
argument is that the presence of other linguistic minorities in a particular
territory or the increase in such minorities as a result of immigration puts the
local titular nationality in a better position to survive than does a situation
in which there is only that nationality and Russian speakers.
And from that arise another: If his
point is accepted, those in non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation may
come to welcome the presence or the arrival of other minority languages as
important allies in their efforts to maintain their national language and
national identity rather than viewing them as many do now as adjuncts to Moscow’s
efforts at russification.
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