Language Problems and Language Planning - Volume 35, Issue 3, 2011

One of the most linguistically and culturally diversified countries in the world, Nepal is in the midst of linguistic and cultural chaos. Linguistic and cultural diversity itself is at its centre. One explanation for the sad situation is that the ruling elites, who have held power since Nepal’s inception in the eighteenth century, have conducted an invisible politics of privileging languages and of deliberately ignoring issues related to minority and ethnic languages to promote the languages of their choice. While this invisible politics of ‘unplanning’ of languages has been responsible for the loss of scores of languages, it has helped the elites to achieve ‘planned’ linguistic edge over the speakers of other languages. In the changed political climate, the Nepalese people have embarked upon a debate about what language policy the country should have and what roles and statuses should be accorded to the local/regional, national and international languages. The socio-political and linguistic context of the current language policy debate and the lack of a clear and consistent language policy allow the ruling elites to adopt an approach which in the existing situation does more harm than good.

This paper is an overview of language planning as carried out in Brunei Darussalam for Malay, its official language, English, its de facto other official language, and for the other eleven minority languages spoken in the country. After a general introduction to the country and its sociolinguistic situation, the paper outlines the main language planning activities carried out in Brunei through corpus, status and acquisition planning. The overview of status planning includes a brief description of the linguistic landscape of Brunei. The second part of the paper discusses the advantages of education using the students’ first language, something that is not happening in Brunei, and the future of education in the country after the introduction of the new education reform (SPN21). The paper closes with some general remarks on the importance of maintaining minority languages and some suggestions on how this can be achieved.

La question principale se pose ainsi : vis-à-vis de la coexistence linguistique hébro-arabe en Palestine, comment l’Etat israélien et l’Autorité palestinienne se comportent-ils du point de vue glottopolitique ? Et quels sont les enjeux de leurs politiques linguistiques ? Ainsi, chacun pour sa part, Palestiniens et Israéliens ne reconnaissent que leur propre langue, affichant partant leur volonté d’ignorer et marginaliser la langue de l’autre. Dans cette compétition linguistique, la glottopolitique de chaque partie croyant avoir des titres à revendiquer fonctionne dans une dimension différente de l’autre, regardant chacune en direction d’une autre période du passé et vivant dans un autre présent, bien qu’exactement au même endroit.

The lexicographer and linguist Petro Evstafyevich Stojan was born in 1884 and began learning Esperanto in 1903. After studying in Odessa and a year’s stay in Paris, he took up residence in Saint Petersburg in 1907, where he became active in the Esperanto movement. In 1916, he and various other well-known linguists (including Jan Baudouin de Courtenay) established Kosmoglot, a group that explored various approaches to an international language and examined several planned languages, some of them created by members of the group, Stojan among them. At the time of the Russian Revolution, Stojan moved first to the Balkans, then to Switzerland, and finally to France. In Switzerland, with financial assistance from Alice Vanderbilt Morris, he compiled his Bibliography of International Language, the most complete such bibliography, still consulted today. In France he continued his study of Indo-European languages and peoples, developing his so-called Vindiana theory, which was rejected by scholars. He began to lead the life of a hermit, finally dying by his own hand in Nice in 1961.