Study Sheet for Final (!!) Quiz of the Semester: Language Endangerment and Language Loss

1. How many languages are there in the world? How many could disappear in the next 100-200 years?
2. What do we mean by "extinct," "moribund," and "endangered" languages?
3. Explain the main ways of attempting to preserve or revive languages, including strengths and weaknesses: classroom teaching; master-aprentice programs; immersion schools; at-home, individual or family learning; raising children as first-language speakers
4. Understand the issues involved with economies of size/scale with regards to language maintenance.
5. Understand the ideas of bilingualism, diglossia, and asymmetric bilingualism, as well as language shift.
6. Explain some of the political and bureaucratic obstacles that can exist for language maintenance efforts.
7. Understand what factors come into play in the case of a small but self-contained community (on a reservation, say) vs. a larger, but heavily interspersed community (such as many groups in Oklahoma)
8. What are the benefits of the Native American languages act? What does it NOT do?
9. Understand historical reasons for language loss: physical genocide; cultural genocide; boarding schools and forced assimilation; asymmetries in economic and educational opportunity
10. Understand what a "discourse" is (as described for the Navajo) and what it does in terms of politics and identity. Be able to discuss the positive benefits of discourses (including counter discourses to mainstream society), but also the dangers of discourses.
11. Understand from Meek's article on the Kaska how discourses of respect and value for the language, as well as respect and value for elders, can ironically conflict with each other and impede language revitalization.
12. Understand what I meant by "language reification" and the dangers and distractions it can pose to language maintenance and revitalization.
13. "Language loss is fundamentally a symptom of socio-cultural tension and socio-economic inequalities": explain briefly.
14. Why was John Peabody Harrington so important?