Suchergebnisse

The 1994 Population and Housing Census of Ethiopia gathered considerable information of linguistic interest, notably the number of speakers of seventy-seven languages which it recognized. The Census's list is largely consistent with lists of languages recognized in current research by Ethiopianist linguists. However, problems of two sorts arise in the Census list: dialects counted as languages and languages counted as dialects. Survey of research in Ethiopian linguistics supports instead the existence of seventy-three Ethiopian languages now spoken, a list of languages and their dialects which includes varieties of speech recognized and unrecognized by the Census.

Geography Markup Language (GML) is an XML application that provides a standard way to represent geographic information. GML is developed and maintained by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), which is an international consortium consisting of more than 250 members from industry, government, and university departments. Many of the conceptual models described in the ISO 19100 series of geomatics standards have been implemented in GML, and it is itself en route to becoming an ISO Standard (TC/211 CD 19136). An overview of GML together with its implications for the geospatial web is given in this paper.

This paper teases out the meeting points between macro and micro language planning in Wales, and how these influence community language use in real terms. The paper draws upon data gathered from an evaluation of the Welsh Government's strategy towards the maintenance and promotion of the Welsh language on a community level in Wales. Conducting this research provides an insight into how the community acts as a language planning crossroads where a plethora of factors contributes to language use within this sphere. Key findings report that many opportunities exist to use the Welsh language at macro and micro language planning levels within the communities, including opportunities provided via Welsh Government programmes. However, gaps in community provision exist and linguistic community interaction often occurred within daily, micro activities such as shopping and accessing services rather than within formally organised community activities at a macro level. Furthermore, evidence of existing complex language attitudes, ideologies and norms play a part in the daily negotiation and re-negotiation of language use on a micro level within these communities. This paper will argue that the WG participate in micro language planning in Wales by supplementing local activities via local actors within the communities studied.

This essay offers an overview of language and gender research as it unfolded in a particular 'Place': Japan. In the past thirty years, Japanese language and gender/sexuality relations have been characterised both domestically and globally as special, sometimes as unique, due to the existence of distinct joseigo 'women's language' and danseigo 'men's language'. A preferential focus on the surface-segmentable forms (pronouns, sentence final particles, etc.) over discursive features and a limited focus on Standard Japanese in the early years of Japanese language and gender research has led to a tendency to view 'the' Japanese language as a homogeneous unity and to the reification of the three critical categories, 'Japan', 'language' and 'gender'. In this essay, I discuss the problematic nature of the three critical terms, and suggest ways in which Japan-as-Place might profitably be renarrated as the complex place it is and Japanese language, gender and sexuality relations revisited as they operate within that complexity.

The Language Flagship Technology Innovation Center (Tech Center) at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa presents this Blueprint for Success in order to help The Language Flagship, as well as other federal initiatives and academic programs interested in enhancing high quality language programs, to improve language learning through the strategic integration of technology. Through multiple symposia and outreach events to promote input and collaboration across the Flagship programs, the Tech Center has worked to make the integration of effective language learning technology central to The Language Flagship mission. The participation and input of Language Flagship directors, instructors and students, along with colleagues from across academia, government and the private sector, has been instrumental in refining our views and practices in the integration of blended learning into high quality instruction. We offer these Goals and Guiding Principles to the Flagship Community to assist our efforts in the integration of best practices in technology-based learning into the overall programmatic approaches throughout academia and the federal and private sectors. ; The Language Flagship Technology Innovation Center (Tech Center) at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa presents this Blueprint for Success in order to help The Language Flagship, as well as other federal initiatives and academic programs interested in enhancing high quality language programs, to improve language learning through the strategic integration of technology. Through multiple symposia and outreach events to promote input and collaboration across the Flagship programs, the Tech Center has worked to make the integration of effective language learning technology central to The Language Flagship mission. The participation and input of Language Flagship directors, instructors and students, along with colleagues from across academia, government and the private sector, has been instrumental in refining our views and practices in the integration of blended ...

"This book outlines how African language media is affected by politics, technology, culture, and the economy and how this media is creatively produced and appropriated by audiences across cultures and contexts. African language media can be considered as a tool for communication, socialization, and community that defines the various identities of indigenous people in Africa. This book shows how vernacular media outlets including radio and television, as well as native formats such as festivals, rituals and dance, can be used to influence all facets of local peoples' experience and understanding of community. The book also explores the relationship between African language media sources and contemporary issues including the digitalization conundrum, peace and conflict resolution, identity formation, hate speech and fake news. Furthermore, it shows how local media can be used for development communication purposes during health and environmental crises. The book includes cases studies demonstrating the uses, experiences and activities related to various forms of media available in African languages. This book will be of interest to scholars in the field of communication and media studies, health and environmental communication, journalism, African studies and anthropology"--

This article explores computer-mediated communication (CMC) and information communication technology (ICT) use in language learning. More specifically, the article addresses the impact or implications of CMC tools for computer enhanced language learning. The article attempts to present a review of key literature in adaptation of communication technologies to teaching or learning language in general and specifically second language acquisition. The article stresses the need to understand culture and contextual appropriateness of language, thus, it argues for communication technology to be used as a secondary resource rather than a primary tool for language learners. The discussion addresses the dimensions of cultural variability with respect to language learning. At the same time, features of synchronous and asynchronous CMC were analyzed in the context of language learning. Finally, the article addresses implications for language learning in computer mediated communication or computer assisted environments.

The last fifteen years have witnessed rapid growth in the number of students studying Arabic and of programs concerned with the teaching of the language. This is directly attributable to the awakened interest in the United States in the Middle East in general, and the Arab world in particular, as a result of the entry of the U.S. in World War II and its emergence as a global power with strategic, economical, and political interests in the area. This is not to say that the teaching of Arabic is a new phenomenon in the U.S. As an indespensible tool of Orientalistic scholarship, Arabic was taught for many years in a few institutions which offered programs in Oriental and Semitic Studies.

Among Slavic and East European heritage communities, the post-1989 geopolitical situation in Central and Eastern Europe has changed both emigration patterns and core aspects of the relationship between speakers in the homeland and abroad. Many speakers have both an enhanced motivation to maintain their heritage languages and greater resources to do so. As a reflection of this increased interest in Slavic and East European heritage languages, recent years have witnessed a rise in the number and scope of community language schools, established primarily by parents who wish to ensure that their children maintain active use of their heritage languages. At the same time, many Slavic and East European language programs at the college level have increasingly come under threat, due to the combination of reduced enrollments, greater administrative focus on class sizes, and a loss of federal funding. In this paper, using Czech as the base language, I suggest that by placing a greater emphasis on connections with heritage communities, we may be able to enhance the viability of Slavic and East European programs at the college level. This potential is supported by a marked increase in research on heritage language learners over the past two decades, which provides a foundation for curricular adjustments that address the specific needs of heritage language learners.

Although previous work on sexist linguistic structures has identified the causes of sexism in language as stemming from an androcentric world view, it has not described the social and semiotic processes involved in the historic production and reproduction of this kind of linguistic sexism. This article uses the three processes of iconisation, fractal recursivity, and erasure to bring together what appear to be disparate phenomena (such as the masculine generic, and even the very existence of the feminine grammatical gender) into a unifying theory. Iconisation results in the binary division of humanity into females and males; fractal recursivity explains how this division was projected onto language; and erasure demonstrates how certain discourses have been ignored, to the profit of others. A Queer critique of the two concepts of binarity and markedness (which arise as a result of iconisation) opens up exciting new ways to approach sexism in language, and to revitalise research in this area.