Maintaining Languages What Works? What Doesn't?

Maintaining Languages What Works? What Doesn't? (1)
Joshua Fishman


The last time many of us were assembled at this university Dang Pham, Deputy Director of the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs, indicated that the United States Government recognizes a special debt of responsibility to assist Native American peoples to foster and strengthen their languages. This second conference at Northern Arizona University was to be a more concrete step in that direction, listening to ideas, perhaps formulating plans that could benefit from such support, and I am sure that all of you are going to be very alert, just as I am, are going to be very alert, to see if any of the promises that were made at the first meeting will materialize. It is an understatement to say that I am pleased and honored to be here. The opportunity to interact with American Indian languages and their activists is an experience that very few sociolinguists in the United States have been able to have. The reason old-timers like myself still come to these meetings is because sometimes we hear a younger colleague saying things that make us understand language maintenance even better than before, let alone finding out what they are doing, which is what we really have to keep up with.[continue]