ABSTRACT
The Foundation for Endangered Languages has a long and successful history of bringing communities and scholars together to support and strengthen languages and overcome barriers of all kinds. Its establishment by Nicholas Ostler was a turning point in the recognition that communities and scholars must work together in this process.
Scholars used to speak of language death, extinct or dead languages and many other unnecessarily negative terms; over the last 25 years, these have been replaced with more appropriate neutral terms such as language endangerment and sleeping languages. Twenty-five years ago, many national governments viewed multilingualism and cultural diversity as problems to be eliminated rather than resources to be fostered; but through the efforts of local communities assisted by linguists and other scholars committed to the groups with whom they have been associated and of multinational organisations such as UNICEF and UNESCO, many national language and education policies have become more favourable to mother tongue education and use, with many governments coming to view minority languages as a resource rather than a threat.
There are still many issues to confront; here I will discuss three of them, all of which are contentious:
Who decides what is a language?
Who decides whether a language is endangered, and how endangered?
What should be done about language endangerment?
