Language Problems and Language Planning - Volume 37, Issue 1, 2013

This article reports on the phenomenon of Arab authors in Israel writing in Hebrew. “Writing in Hebrew” refers to literary works originally written in Hebrew or translated from Arabic to Hebrew. The article examines the status of Arabic for Israeli Arabs, the scale of the phenomenon of writing in Hebrew, the bilingual literary works of Arab authors in Israel, and Israeli society’s acceptance of Arab authors writing in Hebrew.Some ten Arab novelists are currently writing in Hebrew in Israel, an apparently growing trend among Arab authors. The choice of these Arab authors to write in Hebrew is a conscious aesthetic choice and a reflection of their natural gift for writing and mastery of Hebrew. The ten writers are: Anton Shammas, Naim Araidi, Sayed Kashua, Atallah Mansour, Jurays Ṭannūs, Muhammad Ghanaim, Osama Abu-Ghosh, Odeh Basharat, Ayman Siksik, and Salman Natur.

The Kumzari language, with approximately 3,000 speakers in the Musandam Governorate of Oman, is an Iranian language spoken in the Arabian Peninsula. Although Kumzari speakers have lived along the Persian Gulf for hundreds of years, little research has been conducted on this language community. Issues related to constructing a systematic approach for analyzing language minority groups are considered in the context of the Kumzari language and community. In addition, factors and degrees of endangerment suggested in the 2003 UNESCO document entitled “Language Vitality and Endangerment” as well as classifications proposed by other researchers are addressed. Finally, the future status of this endangered language community is discussed.

The media have become a key site for the production and reproduction of language ideologies in modern societies. This is typically reflected in language ideological debates in 2010 in the Chinese media. In 2009, an article entitled “English ants are digging holes in the Chinese levee” got wide media coverage and aroused much controversy in the Chinese media in the following year. The crusade for linguistic purism ended with the promulgation of new regulations banning China’s media organizations and publishers from randomly mixing foreign languages with Chinese in publications. The present study aims to explore the inherent language ideologies naturalized in the debates of Chinese linguistic purism and various strategies adopted for the construction of the ideologies. The findings reveal that the ideology of “one nation and one language” and standard language ideology play an important role in the sociolinguistic imagination of a homogeneous Chinese society and protection of “pure” Chinese against English invasion. It is hoped that the present study will contribute to language ideology studies and shed new light on Chinese sociolinguistic studies.

What kinds of ideas and motivations drove artificial language promoters to face the skepticism, if not the mockery, of public opinion and advocate for one or another artificial language as the best solution to the communication predicament of the world? Were they purely instrumental ideas, or were they part and parcel of a distinctively religious agenda? This article contends that very much like other social and political movements of the turn of the twentieth century, such as Socialism, Nationalism, or Positivism, the longing for an international language, at least in the way it was conceived of by Ostwald and Zamenhof, also shares the basic characteristics of a secular religion: a message of meaning, a set of moral principles, and a message of salvation. More concretely, this article analyses Ostwald’s connection with the German Monist movement, and explains the role of Ido in his new religion, “Energism.” Similarly, it explores the connection between Zamenhof’s “Homaranism” and Reform Judaism, as developed by Abraham Geiger and Hermann Cohen.