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An innovative book that stretches the borders of sociolinguistic investigation into unchartered areas by focussing on language communities that fall between majority and minority configurations, between large and small languages. The contents are instructive, challenging and shed fascinating new light on significant in-between categories of speakers that tend to get neglected in general overviews.
» Hugo Baetens Beardsmore, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Too small to be big, but also too big to be really small, medium-sized language communities (MSLCs) face their own challenges in a rapidly globalising world where multilingualism and mobility seem to be eroding the old securities that the monolingual nation states provided. Les mer
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An innovative book that stretches the borders of sociolinguistic investigation into unchartered areas by focussing on language communities that fall between majority and minority configurations, between large and small languages. The contents are instructive, challenging and shed fascinating new light on significant in-between categories of speakers that tend to get neglected in general overviews.
» Hugo Baetens Beardsmore, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
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This well-edited volume provides very useful comparative descriptions of the situation concerning several medium-sized languages from almost all major areas of the European continent, plus Hebrew. The similarities and differences between the languages documented in this book profoundly stimulate our thinking about language ecology and sociolinguistic typology.
» Ernst H
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Just as growing interest in scale challenges the theoretical dichotomy of micro-macro, the conceptualization of medium-sized languages allows a fresh approach to varieties that are more robust than 'endangered' minority languages but too small to seem secure, much less 'dominant'. This volume brings welcome views of linguistic sustainability within a globalized market economy and multilingual societies.
» Kathryn A. Woolard, University of California, San Diego, USA
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This volume merits praise for its innovative study of a new area of research, namely, those languages intermediate between majority and minority tongues. This well-edited and informative volume on medium size languages fills an important gap on this group of languages.
» Frank Nuessel, University of Louisville, in Language Problems and Language Planning 38:1 (2014)