CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

National Languages and Languages Planning

National and Official Languages. National languages is the language of a political cultural and social unit. It is generally developed and use as a symbol of national unity. Its function are to identify the nation and unite the people of the nation. An official language, by contrast, is simply a language which may be used for government business. Its function is primarily utilitarian rather than symbolic. It is possible, of course, for one language to serve both functions. In multilingual countries, the government often declares a particular language to be national language for political reasons. The declaration may be a step in the process of asserting the nationhood of a newly independent or establishment nation, for instance. The identification of official language may also be necessary when the choice of national language is problematic. Official and Minority Languages . English is an official language in many countries throughout the world as well as those listed above, but in England is not legally an official language. In this country, it has not been considered necessary to legislate that the language of the majority is an official language. Many language would like to gain official status for their languages, but the cost in terms of providing services and information in all official languages are considerable, and most governments count the carefully. Many countries have regarded the development of a single national language as way of symbolizing the unity of a nation.                              Planning for A National Official language. The function it serves, and the attitudes people hold toward.                        

1.      Selection. Choosing the variety or code to be developed.

2.      Codification standardizing it structural or linguistic feature.

3.      Elaboration : extending its functions for use in new domains.

4.      Securing its acceptance. The status of the new variety is important and so people’s attitudes to the variety being developed must be considered.

 In some language a standard dialect of a language, suitable for official uses and acceptable as a symbol, has emerged naturally, with little or no help from government agencies or linguistic experts. Official documents are printed in both varieties and children are expected to be able to read both, though local council decide which variety is to be used in the local schools.              The Linguist’s Rule in Language Planning. Language academics have existed for centuries, but it is also true that individuals have often had an enormous influence on language planning and especially on the standardization or codification of a particular variety. More often these days, the nuts and bolts of language planning is handled by committees, commissions or academic. Codification and vocabulary expansion are their main concerns. Language planning is defined most simply as deliberate language change. Language planners generally focus on specific language problems, their role is to develop a policy of language use which will solve the problems appropriately in particular speech communities. I this chapter focused in some detail on a few specific cases of language planning in order to exemplify some of the issues which have to be resolved by language planners and some of the ways which have been used to resolve them. This chapter has been concerned mainly with the language policies of countries and states rather than the language behavior of individuals. Multilingual highlights linguistic diversity and makes it easier to perceive as we have seen before. There is rich linguistic diversity within languages too. Members of monolingual speech communities use this diversity to signal their attitudes and allegiances, just as multilingual people use their different languages for these purposes.