Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

36 Language Planning and Education
We do not wish for Landsmål’s demise; let those, for whom it is natural to do so, write it
[…] but if it is forced on those for whom it is alien, then it will not be possible to conceal
the fact that it is an artifical and randomly put together dialect language, and it will suffer
the fate of all artificial languages: it will pass quietly away. [Storm, J. 1896: 114–15. Cited
in Linn, A. 2004: 228]
5. One might cite the case of Swahili here as a further example, in that the decision taken in
the 1930s under British colonial rule to standardise the language on the basis of the Zanzibari
dialect Ki-Unguja was badly received by speakers of the rival northern dialect, Ki-Mvita,
centred on Mombasa. There is no evidence, however, that this has impeded the spread of
Kiswahili as a lingua franca in Kenya.
6. By 1966 the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) had published 475 titles, mainly
educational books for schools and readers for the general public. A Dictionary of Malay
followed in 1970. (Alishjahbana 1974: 407). The DBP is also involved in coining new
terminology (70,000 items by 1967).
7. The Welsh Language Board was given statutory recognition in 1993 (see Chapter 3).
8. Lewis (1999: 75) attributes this metaphor to the Turkish language reformer Falih Atay
(1894–1971). Speaking of coinings that do not catch on, one thinks of the Spanish term
‘balompie’ for football (‘futbol’), which all too evidently has fallen out of popular use (except
in the title ‘Real Betis Balompié’).
9. One survey (see Lewis 1999: 158) estimated that by 1931, 51 per cent of the vocabulary
of five well-known Turkish newspapers was of Arabic origin as against 35 per cent of Turkish
origin.
10. These words are those of Atatürk himself (1930), as cited and translated by Lewis (1999:
42).
11. Hanyu Pinyin is a romanised writing system used for transcribing Chinese characters
based on Mandarin pronunciation.
12. Irish is a compulsory school subject.