Re: Language policy

Adam Walker wrote:

>Yesterday there was a VERY exciting article in my daily news paper, the
>_Taiwan News_, which said that the Executive Yuan has decided that starting
>next September all elementary students in Taiwan will be REQUIRED to study a
>native language -- either Taiwnese, Hakka or one of the Aboriginal
>languages.  They are quickly settling on standardized Romanizations for
>these langs to be used in these classes.  This is a HUGE change from past
>policy.  It wasn't that long ago that students were physically punished and
>fined for daring to speak anything but Mandarin at school.  Now they will be
>required to study the once-banned languages!
Hooray for that, and its about time! Too many native Austronesian
languages have died or are dying in Taiwan. Let's hope this can turn
the tide.

>ObConlang
>
>Have any of your conlangs been banned at any point in their histories?  If
>so how did that effect their evolution??

Well, Boreanesian has never been banned. On the contrary. But other
languages that belonged to the same family has not been so fortunate,
even though they themselves were not banned per se -- rather, they
were suppressed and then killed off by acculturation.

Standard Boreanesian (aka. Lmaq) is effectively a language isolate
because other languages that belonged to the family were victims of a
vigorous process of cultural diffussion and acculturation of Lmaq
culture. Cultural diffusion of Lmaq culture has a long history in
Boreanesia since the Lmaqs were pretty much the cultural despot in the
Boreanesian Islands. Obviously, the Lmaq language was the region's
lingua franca. By the mid 19th century, Germany, in their race for
acquiring colonies, decided to set up colonial outposts along the coast.
It became clear to the leaders of the Lmaq nation that in order to
preserve their independence from powerful western colonizers, they had
to modernize. Among the things that were built were railroads and a
modern navy. This sparked a nationalist movement in the whole
archipelago where other Boreanesians wanted to join Lmaq in a
Boreanesian Confederacy. After winning a short war against the Germans
at the turn of the 20th century, there was no turning back from
Boreanesian unity. All of Boreanesia was effectively acculturated as
one nation when the last speakers of a non-Lmaq language died in the
50's. Lmaq has from then on been refered to as Boreanesian.

-kristian- 8)