- HOW LANGUAGE SHIFT IN DIFFERENT COMUNITIES?
Holmes, (1992). Migrant minorities, language shift occurs may different for groups and different person, because over time the language of the wider community take over from the minority native language continously.
Migrants family provide an example of the language shift. School in country like England, and Australia where is the place of migrant children meet English. They have to use English as the main language when communicate with people such as teacher and another children at school. They may have heard English from TV show they watched and from people who talked English at market and these conditions forces them to talk and communicate in English at school, English continously becomes common language in communicating with their family members too.
Migration is not only the reason of language shift, but economic and social politic may able to make it occur in a community and effect the language. For example, Farsi is the language that spoken by the largest and powerful community becomes a menace to the language which spoken by the small group. Azeri is language spoke by the largest minority is sitfting to Farsi. Farsi stand out in public place in Tadris because it has official position and even the government of Azerbaijan often code switched between Farsi and Azeri in political speech.
Migrant majorities, people may move their location and language for a reason, such as need for work. Many speakers of Irish, Scottish and Welsh mainly move to England to get job, the impact is they have to communicate in English for their job success. This implies how language shift because of the economic and social factors.
- WHAT FACTORS LEAD A COMMUNITY TO SHIFT FROM USING ONE LANGUAGE TO USING ANOTHER?
The most clear factors is that the community aware of the important reason for learning other language, such as economic reason, they need to get job for that they have to learn another laguage to support their success at work. English is the most large language spoken in the world, people learn English for a purpose and this situation results in bilingualism but it’s not only the result of shift.
Second one, is people nowdays may not sees any advantages to their family, such as their children, they may think that there is no danger in shifting language, because they don’t aware of how language disappear may effect. For example, where a small group of migrant move to the place where monoligual community dominated by one majority and powerful community language it makes language shift inevitable and often leave their native language. The community may loss their native language for they did not take any effort.
Ibrahim, Ruslan and Muhammad Nur Ashar Asnur (2019:206-218), in their research about the effect of language shift on Bahasa Lowa by social factors shows some factors, such as: age, gender, and the dominant factor is the Education, the research stated that the more higher the Education grade of people, the more higher the potential of language shift is. Furthermore Nenoliu (2019) stated the biggest factors in language shift is education which increase the other language but the first language.
- IS IT IMPORTANT TO MAINTANCE THE NATIVE LANGUAGE?
Shortly, yes. Preserving our native language skill matters since of some personal, social, educational and economic reasons. Noydays many global sitizen come up and become bilingual or even multilingual. Early chilhood research point out that many migrants people leaving their native language and lost it. Jenie Gabriel in Gengo (2019) writes three reasons why do we have to preserving our native language.
Firstly, it is to reinforce our cultural identity and family bond. Native language shows the character and our identity, when we decide to study and continuing our native language, it helps us how to value the culture and heritage. But when we give up on it, it means the identity and family bond we built may be lost slowly. Native language skill also maintain the correlation to their home country, and being fluent in another language helps foreigners adapt more easily to new culture.
Secondly, to master other language. According to Multilingual Living magazine, mastering our native language has proven many advantages when learning a second language, for example the children with intense first language skill are more prepared and can learn a second language. In principle, the basic of the first language should be steady before the second language is learned.