Here our discussion about  National Languages and Language Planning

From Damba Reja, Aulia Arifin, Genda Opriorika, Annisa Lestiani and Abdushomad Al Wahid.

NATIONAL LANGUAGES AND LANGUAGE PLANNING

 

Paraguay is the only Latin American nation with a distinctive national language. Paraguay provides a clear case of stable broad diglossia, with Spanish, the H Language used in formal contexts, for administration, a great deal of education and legal business and Guarani the L language of solidarity, the language of love, humor and poetry. An interesting example in Paraguay, Paraguayans are generally happy to recognise Spanish as a useful language for official business. But though Spanish and Guarani both have official status, it is Guarani which most people regard as their distinctive culture and traditions. Many Paraguayans consider that Guarani is an important symbol of Paraguayan identity. People feel that you cannot be a true Paraguayan unless you can speak the language. Some people say that there are things they can say in Guarani which are more difficult to express in Spanish. While people find that Spanish a useful language for formal and business interactions, most are proud of Guarani and express strong loyalty towards it.

 

NATIONAL AND OFFICIAL LANGUAGES

 

The government of Paraguay in 1960 distinguished the language status of Spanish and Gurani. Spanish is the "official" language while Gurani is the "national" language. In sociolinguistics, the distinction between national and official languages is made based on the ideological-instrumental dimension. A function of Spanish, the official language is utilitarian rather than symbolic, this language is used for government. Meanwhile, the function of the Paraguay language, the national language, is to identify the nation and unite its people, which means the language of the political, social and cultural unit which has a symbol as national unity. Besides, governments do not always support the differences sociolinguistics make. However, in 1992 the situation changed, with Guarani becoming the official language. So Paraguay has 2 official languages and 1 national language. Similar cases were found in multilingual Tanzania, which has one national language, Swahili, and two official languages, Swahili and English. Many countries do not differentiate between official and national languages. Such states serve political and social goals on the one hand. In multilingual countries, governments declare a language as the national language, often for political purposes. When the national language has problems, identification of the official language is required. As in multilingual India, attempts to give the national language to the singular status of Hindi were unsuccessful. Thus, fourteen regional languages of India are recognized as official languages along with English and Hindi for the country as a whole.

 

 

PLANNING FOR A NATIONAL OFFICIAL LANGUAGE

Form, functions and attitudes

This involves issues relating to the form of the variety, the functions it serves, and the attitudes that people hold towards it.

There are generally four interrelated steps:

1.      Selection: choosing the variety or code to be developed.

2.      Codification: standardising its structural or linguistic features. This kind of “linguistic processing” is known as corpus planning.

3.      Ellaboration: extending its functions for use in new domains. This involves developing the necessary linguistic resources for handling new concepts and contexts.

4.      Securing its acceptance. The status of the new variety is important, and so people’s attitudes to the variety being developed must be considered. Steps may be needed to enhance its prestige, for instance, and encourage people to develop pride in the language, or loyalty towards it. This is known as status planning or prestige planning.

The relationship between the steps is summarised in table:

 

	Form	Function and Attitudes
Social Linguistic	Selection Codification	Acceptance Elaboration

 

Selection and acceptance are steps which involve social and political factors. Codification and elaborating the code to handle a wider range of functions are,by contrast, essentially linguistic process.

Tanzania

·        Selecting a code

It’s hard to choose the national language for Tanzania when gained independence in 1961 because the government faced the dilemma to decide it. There are many changes of the language, choosing one language from over a hundred languages. Choosing English, Swahili, Bantu language. Swahili is many found in the lingua franca and used in education also administration. But Bantu language is the language which was known as African language.

·        Codifying and elaborating Swahili

This was begun by the British administration before independence. It was being used in primary education and for administration. Following Tanzanian independence in 1961, Swahili was used in more and more contexts for education, administration, politics, and law. In 1984, however, the government decided to extend Swahili-medium education to secondary tertiary education. English has been retained for these levels.

·        Attitudes to Swahili

It’s guaranteed it prestige and positive attitudes. The story of the acceptance of Swahili as the national language of Tanzania is therefore an interesting one. From many problematic so that Swahili became the national language of Tanzania. In this section, the steps involved in developing a particular code or variety for use as a national language have been discussed in relation to a large multilingual country, Tanzania, where the competing varieties are distinct languages. And the steps are relevant with the next section in relation to Norway.

 

DEVELOPING A STANDARD VARIETY IN NORWAY

 

Selecting a code

 Essentially the Norwegian government had the choice of developing a national language from standard Danish or from local Norwegian dialects.. So although choosing Danish would have reduced the linguistic problems facing the planners, it presented different kinds of problems. On the other hand, choosing a variety from among the regional Norwegian dialects raised problems relating to the form and new functions required of a standard language. Any dialect selected would need codifying and would require extensive functional elaboration. And the problem of  which  dialect to select caused obvious headaches in relation to people’s attitudes. Two different approaches were taken to developing a standard written variety of Norwegian.

 

Codification and elaboration

This composite variety was essentially the brainchild of Ivar Aasen, a schoolteacher who had studied Norwegian dialects. As a result this constructed variety turned out to be one of the best described languages around at the time. Aasen identifi ed common grammatical patterns in different dialects, and he chose vocabulary from a range of different regions. Where there was a choice of word forms he selected those he considered least ‘corrupted’ or ‘contaminated’ by Danish. Rural dialect resources also solved the problem of functional elaboration, or extending the use of Norwegian into domains where Danish had previously been the only appropriate code.

 From a linguistic point of view, they are very similar indeed pronouncements are regularly made by the Norwegian Language Council about which spellings of particular words are officially sanctioned. Official documents are printed in both varieties, and schoolchildren are taught to read and write both, though local councils decide which variety is to be used as the main vehicle of instruction in the local schools. 

 

Acceptance

 Aasen succeeded in this to the extent that in 1885 Landsmål was voted offi cial equality with Danish, in 1929 it was relabelled Nynorsk, and at its peak in 1944 it was the chief language of instruction for 34.1 per cent of all schoolchildren. Since then, Nynorsk has had mixed fortunes, and by 2008 it was the language of instruction for only 13.4 per cent of pupils in primary school.

In Norway, as in many more recently developing nations, things have not been so simple. The government has considered it necessary to make deliberate choices, to accelerate the process of language standardisation and to legislate on the status of particular varieties. It is clear that language planning is a fascinating mixture of political and social considerations, as well as linguistic ones Top-down’ signs are offi cial signs, designed by public authorities, while ‘bottom-up’ signs are non-offi cial signs, usually produced by individuals or groups.

 

THE LINGUIST’S ROLE IN LANGUAGE PLANNING

Language schools have existed for hundreds of years, but there are indeed individuals who often It has a huge impact on language planning, especially the standardization or compilation of specific species.

Samuel Johnson’s 40,000-word dictionary was a landmark in the codification of English, though, as example 7 demonstrates, he had few illusions about the lexicographer’s role. Ivar Aasen in Norway created a composite variety of Norwegian (Landsmål/Nynorsk) from a range of dialects. In Israel, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was the most influential proponent of the vernacularisation of Hebrew. Francis Mihalic wrote the first authoritative grammar and dictionary of Tok Pisin in the 1950s. And in New Zealand Harry Orsman completed the first dictionary of New Zealand English on historical principles in 1997.

These days, the details of the language plan are handled by the committee Committee or college. In addition, many language planning activities focus on In countries trying to establish self-government, there are differences in the promotion of national and official language changes, including attention to minorities and endangered languages. Compilation and vocabulary expansion are usually the most concerned issues of the language school.

 

CONCLUSION

 

Language planning is defined most simply as deliberate language change. This covers a wide variety of activities including the introduction of new labels for fruit, the reform of spelling systems and also includes the development of national languages and standard dialects. Language planners generally focus on specifi c language problems. This chapter has been concerned mainly with the language policies of countries and states rather than the language behaviour of individuals. In the first of this book, multilingualism highlights linguistic diversity and makes it easier to perceive, In section II of this book, we will look in some detail at how monolinguals draw on their linguistic resources to signal such non-linguistic information, and how they use these resources to construct social identities and social relationships.