National languages

and language planning

By
David Cuellar Gonzales
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National and official languages

In sociolinguistics the distinction between a national language
and an official language is generally made along the affectivereferential dimension, or more precisely in this context, the
ideological-instrumental dimension.
O A national language is the language of a political, cultural
and social unit. It is generally developed and used as a symbol
of national unity. Its functions are to identify the nation and
unite its people.
O An official language is simply a language which may be used
for government business. Its function is primarily utilitarian
rather than symbolic.
It is possible, of course, for one language to serve both functions.
Not surprisingly, governments do not always recognize the
distinctions made by sociolinguists. They use the terms official
and national to suit their political ends.

For instance, in Bolivia the government declared 37

languages (Spanish, Quechua, Aimara, Guarani and 33
others) as official and there is no mention of a national
language. While in other countries such as Paraguay there
is just one official language, Spanish, and two national
languages, Spanish and Guarani.
Many countries make no distinction between a national
language and an official language. In countries which
regard themselves as monolingual nations, the same
language serves both purposes. In multilingual
communities, however, all kinds of permutations have
been used in order to satisfy both political and social goals
on the one hand, and more practical and utilitarian needs
on the other.

In multilingual countries, the government often

declares a particular language to be the national
language for political reasons, the declaration may be
a step in the process of asserting the nationhood of a
newly independent or established nation. When this
national language cannot serve all the internal and
external functions of government business, it is
necessary to identify one or more official languages
as well.

The identification of official languages may also

be necessary when the choice of national
language is problematic. In multilingual India,
for example, attempts to give Hindi sole status as
the national language have not succeeded.
Fourteen regional Indian languages are
recognized as official languages alongside
English and Hindi for the country as a whole.
Other countries have nominated more than one
national language. Zaire, for instance has four
African languages as national languages, but
only one official language, French.

Official status and minority languages

Because of its colonial history, as well as its value as a world
language and international lingua franca, English is an official
language in many countries throughout the world, such as
Pakistan, Fiji, Vanuatu, Jamaica and the Bahamas. Often it
shares this official status with an indigenous language such as
Malay in Malaysia, Swahili in Tanzania, and Gilbertese in
Kiribati. But, interestingly, English is not legally an official
language of England, the United States of America, or New
Zealand. In these countries it has not been considered
necessary to legislate that the language of the majority is an
official language. In new Zealand, ironically, although English
is in fact the official language of government and education,
Maori is the only language which has been legally declared an
official language.

Maori activists campaigned for many years for the right to use Maori in official
and administrative contexts, and finally, in 1987, Maori was declared an official
language of New Zealand. This declaration gave the language a status it did not
have previously, and acknowledged its symbolic importance to the country as a
whole, as well as to the indigenous Maori people in particular. It can also be
regarded as a positive statement of intent a first step in a process which may
encourage the use of Maori in an increasing number of official institutional
domains such as the law courts, official government ceremonies and
transactions, and in education.
Many minorities would like to gain official status for their languages, just as
Maori people did, but the costs in terms of providing services and information in
all official languages are considerable, and most governments count them
carefully. In Canada, for instance, as well as French speakers and the indigenous
Canadian peoples, such as the Cree and Mohawk, there are many other Canadian
minorities Italians, Portuguese, Chinese and Ukrainians. Together they make
up about 27 per cent of the total Canadian population. Many resent the special
status of the French, who make up only 28 per cent of the population. Providing
services, information, legal representation and, in some places, education in just
two official languages is an expensive business. It seems unlikely other
minorities will earn such rights easily.

What price a national

language?
Many countries have regarded the development of a single
national language as a way of symbolizing the unity of a nation.
One nation, one language has been a popular and effective
slogan. In earlier centuries the national language of a political
entity often emerged naturally and relatively unselfconsciously
over a period of time. English in England, French in France,
Japanese in Japan, Spanish in Spain seem obvious examples.
There were very few languages with this kind of status before
about1500. Then the number increased dramatically, especially in
the nineteenth century as linguistic nationalism in Europe grew. It
has almost doubled again in the twentieth century with the
emergence of colonized countries from colonial rule into
independent nation-states.

Over the last hundred years nationhood and independence

have been very important political issues throughout the
world. In the struggle to establish a distinct national
identity, and to secure independence from colonial rule,
the development of a national language has often played
an important part. The symbolic value of a national
language as a unifying rallying point in the fight for
independence was quickly appreciated in countries such
as Tanzania. In other multilingual countries, such as
China, the Philippines and Indonesia, where there are
large population speaking hundreds of different
vernaculars, a national language is not only a useful
lingua franca and official language, it also serves a
symbolic unifying function for these nations.

Where there is a single dominant group, the issue of

which language to choose as the official language
to represent the nation generally does not arise.

However, when the county is multilingual, the

government has to face the task of selecting a
national or official language.

Like India, some African countries have avoided

selecting just one language as the national
language, since the wrong choice could easily
lead to riots and even war. Tanzania, however,
successfully adopted Swahili as its national
language, and the story of how this was achieved
illustrates nicely what is involved when a
country decides to develop an indigenous
language for use as a national language.
Linguists are often involved in this process of
language planning.

Planning for a national official language

O Form, functions and attitudes

What is involved in developing a code or variety so that is suitable for

official use? Addressing this challenge involves issues relating to the form of
the variety, the functions it serves, and the attitudes people hold towards it.
There are generally four interrelated steps:
1. Selection: choosing the variety or code to be developed.
2. Codification: standardizing its structural or linguistic features. This kind
of linguistic processing is sometimes called corpus planning.
3. Elaboration: extending its functions for use in new domains. This
involves developing the necessary linguistic resources for handling new
concepts and contexts.
4. Securing its acceptance: the status of the new variety is important, and so
peoples attitudes to the variety being developed must be considered.
Steps may be needed to enhance its prestige, for instance, and to
encourage people to develop pride in the language or loyalty towards it.

Selecting the code to be developed is often an

entirely political decision and acceptance by the
people will generally require endorsement by
politicians and socially prestigious groups.
So selection and acceptance are steps which involve
social and political factors. Codification and
elaborating the code to handle a wider range of
functions are, by contrast, essentially linguistic
processes. Producing a dictionary and ensuring
there are words available for teaching maths in the
variety, for instance, are problems for linguists. In
practice, however, all these steps are closely
interrelated, as the next examples will demonstrate.

Tanzania
Selecting a code
Tanzania faced the dilemma of which language to choose as its
official national language. Choosing one language from over a
hundred indigenous languages would have simply provoked
discontent, if not inter-trival warfare, and choosing English for a
newly independent nation seemed inappropriate. The first president
of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, Chose Swahili, a language of the Bantu
language family, which was widely used throughout the country as a
lingua franca in many contexts. There were some obvious reasons
for his choice. Swahili was already the medium of primary education,
and so all Tanzanians learned the language at school. Also Ninety-six
per cent of Tanzanians languages are Bantu languages, like Swahili,
so it could be clearly identified as an African language. Moreover
Swahili had served as the lingua franca of the anti-colonial political
movement for independence, acting as a link between very disparate
groups. All those reasons made of Swahili the best option.

Codifying and elaborating Swahili

The fact that Swahili was being used in primary
education and for administration meant
standardization was essential. Its codification
involved developing a standard spelling system,
describing the grammar of the variety selected as the
new standard, and writing a dictionary to record its
vocabulary.
As Swahili was used in more and more contexts for
education, administration, politics and law. Its
vocabulary was expanded to meet the demands of
new contexts by borrowing freely from Arabic and
English.

Attitudes to Swahili
The role of Swahili in unifying the people of Tanzania to
work for independence guaranteed it prestige and
positive attitudes. The charisma of Nyerere himself
carried over to the language he used extensively in his
speeches and his political writings. He used it in
domains where formerly English had been used
exclusively, and this too increased its status. People have
often seen the success of Swahili as the national
language in Tanzania as due to its neutral status it is
not identified with a particular tribe. But its widespread
acceptance was also due to the fact that Tanzanians
developed a strong loyalty towards the language which
united them in working towards freedom.

The steps involved in developing a particular

code or variety for use as a national language in
a large multilingual country are equally relevant
in the deliberate development of a particular
dialect for use as national language in a
monolingual country.