Beyond The School

Reading Joshua Fishman's " What Do You Lose When You Lose Lour Language?" confirms for me
that language revitalization goes beyond the school or any institution. The language thrives in a 'cultural space'(Fishman) or what I call a 'homebase' or 'environment' of language. It's culture and community are the basic ecology of language, where language thrives. The local place or the land to which the language is indigenous is it's important homebase too, where the names of it's indigenous living things are encoded in the language as indigenous knowlege. To sustain a language is to sustain the ecology of the language as well. The disappearance of the language habitats or ecologies will guarantee the vanishment of their languages. Once the language communities breakdown, then follows the breakdown of their languages. So, the concern for language revitalization is not only a language advocacy per se, it's also advocacy that concerns the flourishing of the community. For without the living homebase and communities of the language, where shall it dwell? In the lonely archives for dead languages?

The home of the language is essential for its survival. The school can help as an added 'space' or 'environment' for the language, but it's just one 'cultural space', an artificial, a socila or a practical place for language learning and teaching. But language use thrives where the communities are using it informally. A living language is being used spontaneously in daily living.( Daily, as in 24 hours a day.) That's true in the language's home. Otherwise, it has limited speaking time in school.

Nevertheless, to develop local languages then let's expand and diversify it's home. Let's multiply the environments or cultural spaces where it will be used for fun and for life. Let's be grounded at home, go beyond the schools, and make more cultural spaces and environments for the language to thrive.