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The term of art is "language shift", but it's nearly always a case of internal colonialism. Nearly any time you see a linguistic minority abandon its language f

The term of art is "language shift", but it's nearly always a case of internal colonialism. Nearly any time you see a linguistic minority abandon its language for the majority language, you can bet that the government was taking kids away from their parents and beating and shaming them if they dared utter the language their parents spoke to them as babies. Occitan in 1860 was spoken by 39% of the population of France, and now has about 100k speakers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha

umanwizard 9y ago
This is true sometimes but not "nearly any time". For example rate of Spanish fluency in Arizona among second-generation residents is much lower than among their parents, without any kidnapping and beating going on.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Certainly plenty of shaming, though, if you've seen how many Arizonans feel about Hispanics, and heard the rhetoric about immigrants who "refuse to assimilate" (by failing to act, dress, and speak exactly like the locals).
- panglott 9y ago
  The situation can be a bit different with 2nd generation immigrants, especially based on the parents' attitudes towards English. I do see occasional reports in the US of punishing and shaming students for speaking non-English languages, though, and many Americans are very hostile to any accommodation of languages other than English (Spanish signage, "press 1 for English"). And there is a clear, unstated language policy in the US of making immigrant children into English speakers (with no regard to preserving/increasing their mother-tongue proficiency), as well as a general policy of making everyone English-language monolinguals (if we wanted bilingual kids we would have bilingual elementary schools). Minority-language communities really refers to communities where there is a long, stable history of intergenerational language transmission, and where functional bilingualism is possible or likely. Such as any Native American language, or something like Louisiana French. A sane educational policy in this case would be something like "most instruction is conducted in the majority language, but kids aren't punished or shamed for speaking their mother tongue at recess, and there's maybe even an occasional minorty-language literature class".
mc32 9y ago
Often times it's due to economic reasons. I believe there was a study (in this case, accents, but possibly works similarly with dialects) of some sort some decades ago which noted that people with Cape Cod accents found it easier to find jobs in a city not theirs (Boston), if they adopted some of the city language --and I may be mixing findings, it depended on the job sought. For some jobs accent didn't matter, for others it did matter.

umanwizard 9y ago

This is true sometimes but not "nearly any time". For example rate of Spanish fluency in Arizona among second-generation residents is much lower than among their parents, without any kidnapping and beating going on.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago
Certainly plenty of shaming, though, if you've seen how many Arizonans feel about Hispanics, and heard the rhetoric about immigrants who "refuse to assimilate" (by failing to act, dress, and speak exactly like the locals).
panglott 9y ago
The situation can be a bit different with 2nd generation immigrants, especially based on the parents' attitudes towards English. I do see occasional reports in the US of punishing and shaming students for speaking non-English languages, though, and many Americans are very hostile to any accommodation of languages other than English (Spanish signage, "press 1 for English"). And there is a clear, unstated language policy in the US of making immigrant children into English speakers (with no regard to preserving/increasing their mother-tongue proficiency), as well as a general policy of making everyone English-language monolinguals (if we wanted bilingual kids we would have bilingual elementary schools). Minority-language communities really refers to communities where there is a long, stable history of intergenerational language transmission, and where functional bilingualism is possible or likely. Such as any Native American language, or something like Louisiana French. A sane educational policy in this case would be something like "most instruction is conducted in the majority language, but kids aren't punished or shamed for speaking their mother tongue at recess, and there's maybe even an occasional minorty-language literature class".

mc32 9y ago

Often times it's due to economic reasons. I believe there was a study (in this case, accents, but possibly works similarly with dialects) of some sort some decades ago which noted that people with Cape Cod accents found it easier to find jobs in a city not theirs (Boston), if they adopted some of the city language --and I may be mixing findings, it depended on the job sought. For some jobs accent didn't matter, for others it did matter.