Example:

Rexy lives in Wanganui, a large New Zealand town. She is 10 years old and she speaks and understands only English, though she knows a few Maori phrases. None of his mates know any Maowi either. His grandfather speaks Maori, however. Whenever there is a big gathering, such as a funeral or an important tribal meeting, his grandfather is one of the best speakers. Rexys mother and father understand Maori, but they are not fluence speakers. They can manage a short simple conversation, but thats about it. Rexys litlle sister, Sinta, has just started at a preschool where Maori is used, so she thinks maybe she will learn a bit from her.

Language Maintenance and Shift http://tefltere.blogspot.com/2009/05/language-maintenance-and-shift.html Multilingual communities allow people to choose any code or variety in social interactions. These choices may have potential longer-term effects on the languages existing in those communities. The first effect is language shift. It is the process whereby a community gradually abandons its original language shifts to another language. Factors contributing to language shift are economic, social, political, demographic factors as well as attitudes and values (p.54). If this phenomenon continues, the speakers gradually lose the fluency and competence. This is the process of language death. The speakers tend to use less complex grammatical patterns and smaller amount of vocabulary. When the speakers the language die, the language die with them. In order to save the language from dying, certain communities attempt to maintain the language. The communities continue speaking its original language in most domains. This language maintenance is done through language planning in education, law, government, or media. For languages which are considered dead like Latin or Hebrew, there is also an attempt to revive them through formal instruction. According to the writer, there is no magic formula for guaranteeing the success of language maintenance or revival or for predicting language shift or death. I agree with this opinion because factors triggering the above phenomena in each multilingual community vary. The pressure from the dominant language speakers will not automatically lead to language shift.

I am very interested in studying these language phenomena. It shows me how people use the language in attempting to adjust with other speech communities. As a multilingual, I personally do not want to experience language shift let alone language loss. I see that being multilingual gives me more opportunities to interact with different speech communities. It helps me widen my horizon.

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO LANGUAGE SHIFT Language shift occurs when a community who share similar mother tongue abandon it, and collectively shift to speaking another language. It is always preceded by multilingualism. Someone cannot shift to a new language unless he or she learns to speak it. According to Hoffman, when a community does not maintain its language, but gradually adopts another one, we talk about language shift (186). As an example, there is a language shift among the second born Telugu immigrants in New Zealand. Their ability to use English enables them to integrate and settle in an English speaking country. However, the loss of the Telugu language is more in the written and writing skills than the listening and speaking skills (Kuncha and Bathula, 2004). This paper discusses language shift which are triggered by demographic, attitude, economic, social, and political factors. Firstly, demographic factor plays the role in the process of language shift. When there is a community of speakers moving to a region or a country whose language is different from theirs, there is a tendency to shift to the new language. Every time an immigrant learns the native language of the new country and passes it down to children in place of the old country language. For example, I was born in Solo so my mother tongue is Javanese which was used as the language in my former neighborhood and the medium of instruction in my elementary school. I moved to Jakarta in 1979. Since then, I only use Javanese at home with my family and my Javanese neighbors. Because there is a high frequency of contact with people coming from different ethnic groups who use Bahasa Indonesia, I gradually shift from Javanese to Bahasa Indonesia. This is a clear evidence that demography is an influencing factor in language shift. Secondly, the negative attitudes towards the language can also accelerate language shift. It occurs where the ethnic language is not highly valued and is not seen as a symbol of identity. As stated by Holmes, young people are the fastest to shift languages (60). Teenagers in some big cities of Central Java Province gradually abandon Javanese in daily communication. Having various levels of formality, Javanese is seen as a difficult medium of instruction. They are required to choose different variety when talking to different people. In addition, they feel more prestigious when using Bahasa Indonesia or English than when using Javanese. (Samadi SP, Suara Karya). Teenagers nowadays want to be a part of a global community. Therefore, they do not have the need to show their identity by using Javanese. If this continues, they will eventually lose their ability to speak Javanese. Thirdly, language shift is caused by economic reason. Holmes says that job seekers see the importance of learning a new language which is widely used in business (60). The high demand from industries for employees with fluent English has successfully encouraged job seekers to equip themselves with English. In fact, being competent in English leads to well-paid jobs. Finally, political factor imposes on language shift. In a multilingual country, the authority usually chooses one language as the lingua franca to unify various kinds of ethnic groups.

Consequently, the number of ethnic language speakers decreases. As an example, the political situation in 1947 led to the partition of India. Sindhi Hindus fled from the Sind. They spoke Sindhi at home but had to adopt the local languages. This process has led to language displacement leading to language loss among the Sindhis (Bayer, 2005). Another example, the official languages of many African countries were determined by their former colonialists. Those languages replace African tribal languages. Both examples show how they experience language shift. To sum up, language shift is an interesting and inevitable linguistic phenomenon.The factors which trigger the shift vary from one language community to another. Some of them are demographic, attitude, economic, social, and political factors.

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO LANGUAGE SHIFT Economic, social and political factorsEconomic (may also political): People see the importance of learning the second language forget a better job and better living.For example, most Indonesians learn English or Chinesebecause those two languages have a great contribution in this nation economic aspect. Thisresults in bilingualism which make language shift. However, it does not always result in shift.Social: People see no benefit of their children to use their original language because they thinkthat is unimportant. For example, when parents from the minority language, they tend to maketheir children use the second language. This make the children have bilinguality and oftenresults in language shift.Demographic factorsVillagers tend to maintain their ethnic language. In Rural areas, shift occur faster because of improved town services, television even internet. However, sometime the size of the group isalso a critical factor. The bigger the group size, the more they resist the language shift. Theexample can be read in J. Holmes book on page 60 (Example 5).Attitude and valuesPride of using language tends to slow down language shift. It because of people feels it isimportant to use their original language to show their proud feeling about their identity. Theinternational language status can make it easier to maintain the language itself.HOW CAN A MINORITY LANGUAGE BE MAINTAINED?- The minority language groups realize the importance of maintaining the language as identity- The minority language group families interact with each other frequently- The minority group emigrant makes contact with their homeland frequentlyLANGUAGE REVIVALIt will happen when the community realizes that its language is in danger of disappearing. Thecommunity strives to revitalize its language and reverse the language shift.The example can be read in J. Holmes book on page 66 (Example 9) http://id.scribd.com/doc/60311748/Factors-Contributing-to-Language-Shift 7/19/2011

Factor contributing to language shift

(Economic, social and political factors)

What factors lead a community to shift from using one language to using another?? Economic factor Initially, the most obvious factor is that the community sees an economic. Obtaining work is the most obvious economic reason for learning another language. In English dominated countries, for instance, people learn English in order to get good jobs. This results in bilingualism. The high demand from industries for employees with fluent English has successfully encouraged job seekers to equip themselves with English. In fact, being competent in English leads to well-paid jobs

Social factor The second important factor, then, seems to be that the community sees no reason to take active steps to maintain their ethnic language. When there is a community of speakers moving to a region or a country whose language is different from theirs, there is a tendency to shift to the new language. Every time an immigrant learns the native language of the new country and passes it down to children in place of the old country language. For example, where a migrant minority group moves to a predominately monolingual society dominated by one majority group language in all the major institutional domains school, TV, radio, newspaper, government administration, courts, work language shift will be unavoidable unless the community takes active steps to prevent it.

Political factor Rapid shift occurs when people are anxious to get on in a society where knowledge of the second language is a prerequisite for success. Demogaphic Factors Demogaphic factos are also relevant in accounting for the speed of language shift. Resistants to language shift tends to last longer in urban areas. This is partly reflection of the fact that rural groups tend to be isolanguage beted from the centres of political power for longer, and they can meet most of their social needs in the etnic or minority language. So, for example, because of their relative social isolation, Ukainians in Canada who live out of town farms have maitained their ethnic language better than those in the towns. Attitudes and Value

Language shift tend to be slower among community where the minority language is highly valued. When the language is seen as an important symbol of ethnic identity, it is generally maintaned longer. Positive attitude support efforts to use the minority language in variety of domains, and this helps pe from the people resist the pressure from the majority group to switch to their language. Ethnolinguistic Vitality a. The status of the language as reflected in attitudes towards it. b. The size of the group who uses the language and there distibution (e.g. concentrated or scattered) c. The extend to which the language enjoys institutional support. d.
http://yatilavigne.blogspot.com/2012/06/factor-contributing-to-language-shift.html posted on june 19, 2012

What Is a Language Shift?

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-language-shift.htm

A language shift occurs when the people in a particular culture or sub-culture change the primary language that they use for communication. This can happen in two primary ways: by indigenous languages been replaced with regional or global languages or by the language of immigrant populations being replaced with the dominant language of the host country. When there are no more native speakers of a language, it is considered dead or extinct. As of 2011, linguists estimate that at least half of the world's 5,000 languages are considered endangered as a result of globalization. The most common way for a language shift to happen is through formal education in a more dominant language. For example, as indigenous peoples in Central America have increasing access to education, they are more likely to become fluent in Spanish. The first languagemight continue to be used at home for a period of time, but gradually Spanish may replace the indigenous language for education and business. Over a few generations, the firstlanguage may fall out of use even in private settings, resulting in a language shift. A number of factors can combine to make a language shift more or less likely. In general, the fewer people who speak a language, the greater the chances that its speakers will find it necessary to learn regional or global languages in order to get by in an interconnected society. On the other hand, if a people group is especially isolated, such as on a small cluster of islands or deep in the rainforest, they may have a better chance of maintaining their language since they have less interaction with others. Stronger cultural ties between speakers of a language also lessen the likelihood that a complete shift will occur. Tamil speakers in Malaysia, for instance, have largely retained their own language as a result of cultural and religious differences with their Malay-speaking neighbors. Native Tamil speakers may learn either Malay or English in schools, but generally are unlikely to intermarry or culturally assimilate with the larger Malay cultural group. There have been efforts in many areas to revive endangered languages after a shift or to prevent shifts all together. Gaelic was re-instituted in Irish schools, bringing about a small revival of the language in the middle and late 20th century. In other areas, primary education may take place in a local or indigenous language, to encourage speakers to solidify their knowledge of their mother tongue before learning the dominant language of the area. Language shifts may also occur among immigrant populations in much the same way that they do in indigenous populations. Children of immigrants are educated in a secondlanguage, and the first language may

gradually fall out of favor as immigrants become more adapted to the surrounding culture. The more immigrants there are from a particular area, however, the less likely this is to happen. In the United States, for instance, many successive generations may continue speaking Spanish since the presence of a large Spanishspeaking community makes language maintenance easier.

Language shift
Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. Languages perceived to be "higher status" stabilise or spread at the expense of other languages perceived by their own speakers to be "lower-status".

Examples
[edit]Alsace In Alsace, France, a longtime German-speaking region, German and Alsatian, the native Germanic dialect, have been declining after a period of being banned by the French government after the First World War and the Second [3] World War. They are being replaced byFrench. [edit]Belarus Despite the withdrawal of Belarus from the USSR proclaimed in 1991, use of the Belarusian language is declining. According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, while Belarusian is used by only 11.9% of Belarusians. 29.4% of Belarusians can write, speak and read Belarusian, while only 52.5% can read and speak it. According to the research, one out of ten Belarusians does not understand Belarusian. [edit]Brussels Main article: Frenchification of Brussels In the last two centuries, Brussels transformed from an exclusively Dutch-speaking city to a bilingual city with French as the majority language and lingua franca. The language shift began in the 18th century and [4][5] accelerated as Belgium became independent and Brussels expanded out past its original city boundaries. From 1880 on, more and more Dutch-speaking people became bilingual, resulting in a rise of monolingual French-speakers after 1910. Halfway through the 20th century, the number of monolingual French-speakers carried the day over the (mostly) [6] bilingual Flemish inhabitants. Only since the 1960s, after the fixation of the Belgian language border and the socio[7] economic development of Flanders was in full effect, could Dutch stem the tide of increasing French use. [edit]Carinthia Until mid 19th century, southern Carinthia in Austria had an overwhelming Slovene-speaking majority: in the 1820s, [8] around 97% of the inhabitants south of the line Villach-Klagenfurt-Diex spoke Slovene as their native language. In the course of the 19th century, this number dropped significantly. By 1920, already a third of the population of the area had shifted to German as their main language of communication. After the Carinthian Plebiscite in 1920s, and especially after World War II, most of the population shifted from Slovene to German. In the same region, today only some 13% of the people still speaks Slovene, while more than 85% of the population speaks German. The figures for the whole region are equally telling: in 1818, around 35% of the population of Carinthia spoke Slovene; by 1910, this [9] number dropped to 15,6% and by 2001 to 2,3%. These changes were almost entirely the result of a language shift in the population, with emigration and genocide (by the Nazis during World War Two) playing only a minor role.

[edit]China The most recent language shift in China is the disappearance of the Manchu language. When China was under Manchurian rule (Qing dynasty), Manchu and Chinese had co-official status, and the Emperor heavily subsidized and promoted education in Manchu. However, learning Chinese was so essential to upward mobility and contact with non-Manchu groups that even the Manchurian rulers began to prefer Chinese to Manchu. It is believed that the Qianlong Emperor and his successors, though ethnically Manchurian, were more proficient in Chinese than in Manchu. In several years following the fall of minority rule and the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, Manchurian people completely dropped their own language. Today there are fewer than 100 native speakers of Manchu. A number of loanwords from Manchu survive in the Northeastern varieties of Chinese, though. In addition, many Chinese dialects, such as Shanghainese and Taishanese have declined as local populations have shifted to more prestigious, government-supported dialects such as Cantonese, Mandarin, and Taiwanese. For example, immigrants to Hong Kong, where the autonomous government promotes education in Cantonese, generally lose their native language (including Mandarin, but not English) in favor of Cantonese. Because of Hong Kong's cultural influence, the adoption of Mandarin even as a second language has been slow [10] in Guangdong and Guangxi. In most other parts of mainland China, Mandarin is the target of the shift, because of [11] its use as a lingua franca among migrant workers and immigrants. [edit]Finland Finland still has coastal Swedish-speaking enclaves, unlike Estonia where the last coast-Swedes were decimated or escaped toSweden in 1944. As Finland was under Swedish rule from the medieval ages until 1809, the language of education was Swedish, withFinnish being allowed as a medium of education at the university only in the 19th century, and the first thesis in Finnish being published in 1858. Several of the coastal cities were multilingual; Viipuri had newspapers in Swedish, Finnish, Russian and German. However the industrialization in the prewar and especially the postwar era and the "escape from the countryside" of the 1960s changed the demography of the major cities and led to the Finnish language dominating. While Helsinki was a predominantly Swedish-speaking city in 1910, the Swedish speaking minority is now 6% of the population. [edit]French

Flanders

French Flanders, which gradually became part of France between 1659 and 1678, was historically part of the Dutch sprachraum, the native dialect being West Flemish. The linguistic situation did not change dramatically until the French Revolution in 1789, and Dutch continued to fulfill the main functions of a cultural language throughout the [12] 18th century. During the 19th century, especially in the second half of it, Dutch was banned from all levels of education and lost most of its functions as a cultural language. The larger cities had become predominantly Frenchspeaking by the end of the 19th century. However, in the countryside, many elementary schools continued to teach in Dutch until World War I, and the Roman Catholic Church continued to preach and teach the catechism in Flemish in [12] many parishes. Nonetheless, since French enjoyed a much higher status than Dutch, from about the interbellum onward, everybody became bilingual, the generation born after World War II being raised exclusively in French. In the countryside, the passing on of Flemish stopped during the 1930s or 1940s. Consequently, the vast majority of those [12] still having an active command of Flemish are older than 60. Therefore, complete extinction of French Flemish can [12] be expected in the coming decades. [edit]Hungary Cumans seeking refuge from the Turko-Mongols settled in Hungary and were later Magyarized. The Jassic people of Hungary originally spoke the Jassic dialect of Ossetic, but have completely adopted the Hungarian language, forgetting their previous Ossetian language. Also, language shift may have happened during Hungarian pre-history, as the prehistoric culture of Magyars shows very little similarity to the other Uralic peoples. [edit]Ireland Main article: History of the Irish language#Nineteenth and twentieth centuries

[edit]North

America
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.(August 2011)

Calvin Veltman ("Language Shift in the United States," 1983) has written extensively on the language shift process of a dozen minority language groups in the United States. Based on a 1976 study prepared by the Bureau of the Census, data show that rates of language shift and assimilation have been rising for the past fifty years in the United States. Immigrants with Spanish mother tongue are switching to English within two generations, and in the absence of continuing immigration, the language would not survive more than two generations. Quebecois French, widely spoken by French-Canadian immigrants in New England in the early 20th century, has more or less disappeared from the U.S., replaced by English; a similar process has occurred in Louisiana, a former French colony. Data published in McKay and Wong's "New Immigrants in the United States" confirm this picture with data from the 1990 Census. This process has also been observed in Canada outside of Quebec, where the rates of shift for French language minorities presage their disappearance. Meanwhile, in Quebec itself, the decline of French has been reversed, and given high rates of emigration and substantial intermarriage with French Canadians, the English language now has faced decline.

Singapore
Main article: Languages of Singapore After Singapore's independence in 1965, there was a general language shift in the country's interracial lingua franca from Malay toEnglish, as English was chosen as the first language for the country. Among the Chinese community in Singapore, there was a language shift from the various forms of Chinese to Mandarin Chinese. For instance, Mandarin Chinese has replaced Singaporean Hokkien as the lingua franca of Chinese community in Singapore today. There has been a general language attrition in the use of Chinese other than Mandarin, especially amongst young Singaporean populace.
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Social consequences
Language shift can be detrimental to at least parts of the community associated with the language which is being lost. Sociolinguists such as Joshua Fishman, Lilly Wong Fillmore and Jon Reyhner report that language shift (when it involves loss of the first language) can lead to cultural disintegration and a variety of social problems including [citation needed] increased alcoholism, dysfunctional families and increased incidence of premature death. Others claim that language shift allows greater communication and integration of isolated groups previously unable to communicate. This could have a positive effect in the long term. For example, Ohiri-Aniche (1997) observes a tendency among many Nigerians to bring up their children as monolingual speakers of English and reports that this can lead to their children holding their heritage language in disdain, and feeling ashamed of the language of their parents and grandparents. As a result of this, some Nigerians are said to feel neither fully European nor fully Nigerian.

Types of language death

Language death may manifest itself in one of the following ways:

gradual language death bottom-to-top language death: when language change begins in a low-level environment such as the home. top-to-bottom language death: when language change begins in a high-level environment such as the government. radical language death linguicide (also known as sudden death, language genocide, physical language death, biological language death)

The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original (or heritage) language. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population. Speakers of some languages, particularly regional or minority languages, may decide to abandon them based on economic or utilitarian grounds, in favour of languages regarded as having greater utility or prestige. This process is gradual and can occur from either bottom-to-top or top-to-bottom. Languages with a small, geographically isolated population of speakers can also die when their speakers are wiped out by genocide,disease, or natural disaster. A language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died. If there are only a few elderly speakers of a language remaining, and they no longer use that language for communication, then the language is effectively dead. A language that has reached such a reduced stage of use is generally considered moribund.[3] Once a language is no longer a native language - that is, if no children are being socialised into it as their primary language - the process of transmission is ended and the language itself will not survive past the current generation. This is rarely a sudden event, but a slow process of each generation learning less and less of the language, until its use is relegated to the domain of traditional use, such as in poetry and song. Typically the transmission of the language from adults to children becomes more and more restricted, to the final setting that adults speaking the language will raise children who never acquire fluency. One example of this process reaching its conclusion is that of the Dalmatian language. Language death can be fast, when the children are taught to avoid their parents' language for reasons such as work opportunities and social status. At other times, minority languages survive

much better, for example when the speakers try to isolate themselves against a majority population. Often, especially historically, governments have tried to promote language death, not wishing to have minority languages.
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