On 29/01/2008, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
To some extent. However, long-term maintenance of
bilingualism at all
levels of a society is rare, and in those situations where it can be
found, one language can still be said to be "dying", for example Welsh
and English.
I'd certainly disagree in the case of Welsh. The official promotion of
it in schools means a generation of Welsh kids is growing up speaking
it as well as they do English.
The idea is that for a language to be
"healthy", it will
need to have a large portion of functionally monolingual people. This
has not been proven definitively, but there is much literature on the
subject. Many linguists today believe that when everyone is fully
bilingual in a vehicular language (dominant language), the smaller
language is doomed.
- d.