Language policy and planning in Nepal has been contested due to the co-existence of multiple contradictory discourses concerning teaching and learning of local, national, foreign, and international languages. Recently a multilingual policy was issued to create space for the once-banned ethnic/indigenous languages in public schooling, further…

In the early 1990s, the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) enacted educational reform. It officially abandoned its English-only policy at elementary school level, in favour of community languages. In response, the Kairak community of East New Britain Province developed a vernacular literacy programme. This paper, based on original fieldwork…

The proliferation of media and their associated platforms is creating radical changes in the way we interact with the world. Social media in particular have increased the manner of communication between people, with on-demand access to content any time, anywhere. With virtual communities being established online through a growing range of…

The aim of this paper is to examine the increased potential for language change from the micro-level, given the new domains in which minority languages are present in the global era. Drawing on the theoretical notion of sociolinguistic scales this paper presents a comparative account of the changing positions of the Irish and Inari Sami languages.…

Highlights the recognition of Meankieli, a former Finnish dialect, in the Torne Valley region of Sweden. The recognition of Meankieli as a language rather than a dialect in Swedish minority language legislation is an important language-planning decision with the potential to affect the whole linguistic ecology of the Torne Valley. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on the language situation in Hungary, a largely monolingual country, where nearly 89% of the populations speaks Hungarian as their first language. The primary focus is on the Hungarian language as used by some 10 million people within the national borders of Hungary; less attention is paid to Hungarian as a minority language or the…

In 1995, the Kadazandusun language was created as a standard form of all the Dusunic group of languages so that it might be taught in schools as a language subject. In the planning of Kadazandusun, terminology building involves both the creation of new terms that appropriate present-day categories and artefacts, and the selection of suitable…

Three Southeast Asian polities, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand share much of their geography, history, culture, religion and language. Not all speakers of more than 100 languages spoken in the area have a sufficient knowledge of the respective national languages, Khmer, Lao and Thai. Yet, for the most part, the national languages are the only…