In Australia the Indigenous Affairs minister, Mal Brough, declared on
May 24 that "he was considering a plan to restrict welfare payments to
aboriginal parents in order to force their children to attend school and
learn English." As if the linguistically fascinating but severely
endangered Australian languages were not under enough threat already.
Brough is concerned that there are some aborigines in isolated areas who
"can only speak their own language, which perhaps is only known to 200,
300 or 400 other people." Quite: these languages are at the lower
threshold of size with respect to having a sustainable populations of
speakers. So his idea is to cut their welfare for not learning the
language of the dominant majority. Will Australia never change?...
More here:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004567.html#more
My own view is that everyone in Australia would benefit from learning
English but _forcing_ Aboriginals to do so, and threatening to cut off
welfare payments to poor people who don't speak English, is outrageous.
