Endangerment/vitality of Japan's indigenous languages
Assessment of language endangerment/vitality of Japan’s indigenous languages
One of the most widely used frameworks to assess language endangerment / vitality is Joshua Fishman’s (1991, 2001) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale. It draws on the Richter scale for measuring the earthquakes – the higher the score, the more endangered the language is. Fishman calls endangered languages Xish and dominant languages Yish, their speakers Xmen and Ymen, respectively. The 8 stages of the GIDS are defined as follows (Stage 9 can be added to that scale in order to account for extinct languages):
Stage
Definition
1
Xish is used in education, work sphere, mass media and governmental operations at higher and nationwide levels
2
Xish is used in local/regional mass media and governmental services
3
Xish is used in the local/regional (i.e. non-neighbourhood) work sphere both within the ethnolinguistic community (among Xmen), as well as outside it (among Ymen)
4a
There are schools in lieu of compulsory education and substantially under Xish curricula and staffing control
4b
There are public schools for Xish children, offering some instruction via Xish, but substantially under Yish curricular and staffing control
5
There are schools for literacy acquisition, for the old and for the young, and not in lieu of compulsory education
6
Xish is transmitted as mother-tongue in between the generations in a demographically home-family-neighbourhood community
7
Cultural interaction in Xish is primarily involving the community-based older generation
8
Reconstruction of Xish and adult acquisition of Xish are necessary
(9)
Language extinct
Joshua A. Fishman (1991): Reversing Language Shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Joshua A. Fishman (2001): Can Threatened Languages be Saved? Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
On the basis of GIDS, Japan’s indigenous languages can predominantly be assigned to the following stages:
