The status of bilingualism in Cameroon is unusual in that both French and English are foreign languages. Although French seems to be predominant, the official intent is to establish bilingual primary schools to create completely bilingual individuals. This approach is costly, difficult, and perhaps unnecessary. (CHK)

Describes the complex multilingual situation that exists among the Tucanoan language groups in Columbia and Brazil, which illustrates interrelationships among cultural patterns and values, language attitudes, language use, and language survival. The groups are patrilineal and patrilocal; thus one's primary language is one's father's primary…

According to this paper, the biggest hazard of a private language (or professional jargon) may not be that it obscures efforts to communicate with those outside the business, but rather that it successfully communicates ideas never intended. The paper explores one bit of "educationese"--"safe space" or "safe place"--and reflects on what language…

Bidialectal approaches to American public school teaching presume a relativistic view of language on the part of teachers, a requirement which has received little scrutiny since bidialectalism has become a predominant approach to divergent language in school settings. Evidence drawn from documents of the American teaching profession over the past…

English language study should be introduced into the social work curriculum since various social judgments people make about each other on the basis of dialectal differences may interfere with communication between social workers and their clients, coworkers, or the general community. (Author/LBH)

The author notes the problems arising from the dichotomy between literary Arabic and the spoken varieties. The thousand-year-old system of teaching literary Arabic, the archaic elements of grammar, and the writing system are discussed. The written history of the literary language is presented in three stages--(1) the pre-Islamic classical, (2) the…

Presents a study of foreigner talk (FT) in a minority language (Welsh) in a bilingual community and describes some of the most prominent features of Welsh FT. FT is defined as a simple form of a language used by native speakers to communicate with non-proficient speakers of the language. (SED)

A language teacher urges the use of authentic listening materials that do not conform to the strictest standards of spoken usage, as a way of getting to know the language's norms and variations. (MSE)

The present work is divided into two parts. Part I provides a general orientation to the material for both linguists and non-linguists. Part II contains information about 700 of the world's languages. Chapter 1 presents a few of the essentials about language and languages for non-linguists. Chapter 2 provides a brief explanation of how the data…

Twenty-four English speakers from various regions of India were tested for the intelligibility of their speech. Recordings of speech in a variety of contexts were evaluated by listeners from the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, and Germany. On the basis of the resulting intelligibility scores, factors which tend to hinder…

The purpose of this booklet is to describe the major differences between the Levantine (Palestinian and Lebanese) and Egyptian (Cairene) dialects of Arabic, with some references to other geographical varieties of these dialects. It is designed to provide help to persons who have learned either one dialect or the other and need to transfer to the…

A dialect survey of the transition between two major Indo-Aryan languages in Nepal, Bhojpuri and Maithili, was conducted focusing on both the linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of the various languages and dialects. The purpose of the study was to find out where and how this transition occurred between the pure Bhojpuri-speaking area and the…

The simplification of legal language is required by President Carter's Executive Order requiring "clear and simple English" in government regulations. A major problem in the simplification process is the absence of any adequate description or classification of legal language. This paper defines some specific features of legal language,…

The purpose of this paper is to present a general overview of the linguistic setting of Arabic. Three main areas are covered. The first of these, diglossia, is defined in general terms and then examined more closely in relation to its historical development in Arabic-speaking countries (i.e., as resulting from geographic, socioeconomic, and…