Local languages policies to respect identity.

Introduction.
Along the paper there will be reasons and thoughts about the answer to the question: How
should second language education be managed in terms of language policy and planning as
to respect local languages? The essay will provide some information, which is relevant in
the matter of language education and its management, taking into account language policy
and its relation with the idea of preserving and maintaining native languages. As in current
times it has been evidenced that the dominant languages around the world are been used
almost everywhere, the advertisements, the advices in public places are posted in the native
language and the dominant one. The idea is to show that it is important to create policies
which allow the countries to respect their local languages and to take care of them.
Several decisions on language planning and language policy have been made around the
world, the thing is, to defend, to protect, to preserve local languages or instead of that to
introduce a new language without taking into account the nationalism and the love for the
country and its culture. The governments of the countries have the power to decide on this,
they are the people on charge of saving the language or making the citizens to start using a
new one while forgetting their mother tongue, or letting it aside. As (Cooper, 1989: 45) said
language planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the behavior of others with
respect to the acquisition, structure, or functional allocation of their languages codes,
there, it is understood as the mechanism government uses in order to improve
communication patterns in the society they are in, but there is a drawback when policies do
not take into account problem solving inside real context on mother tongue, but also they
include a global language as a mean of communication without having improved their local
language first. At the same time they are giving an official and an indispensable role in their
curricula and in their society, what can be taken as a negative way of operating and
planning languages policies. For example, in South America, specifically, in Bolivia the
government and the society leaders have adopted an excellent way of protecting local
languages, most of the professional people should at least talk two official languages, and
the teaching of French, which is a foreign language for them, was replaced by the teaching
of an indigenous language which shows identity and respect for their nationality and their

culture. In addition to this, now it has become illegal to teach foreign languages in primary
schools unless an indigenous language is being taught, so the language policy in that
country is well-structured and works in a way that preserves their languages, and helps to
construct identity by knowing their cultural background first and then know about other
cultures.
Differently, there are many countries which have included the teaching of foreign languages
in their plans, it is to say over the local languages. There are many cases in which there is a
deficiency on the way people communicate in their own language, so it would be helpful to
make an effort on this issue before starting to learn a new language. Moreover, many
people do not know their own culture nor their own language, which represents or plays an
unpleasant role in language field. Colombia, for example, has passed by several stages
looking for an efficient language policy, which will take people out of the
underdevelopment others talk about. As presented by Zuluaga (1996) cited in Mejia, A.M
(2004) from bilingual education in Colombia; since the colony Colombia has evolved in
terms of language management, first, Latin, Greek, and Spanish were imposed by the
church, then some powerful people sent their children to Europe where they started to learn
French, German, and English which was assumed as to be intelligent and important around
the globe while indigenous languages and creoles were seen as non-developed languages
and in most of the cases they were associated with ignorance. After those changes, the
processes of globalization appeared and the teaching of French and English in Colombia
got stronger after the World War II and the government made efforts to implement policies
which would introduce these languages to the education in schools. Then, as stated by
Mejia, A.M. after a visit from the Colombian president to France, they decreed that 6 th and
7th graders students should learn English, 8th and 9th graders would have the choice between
English or French and finally, 10th and 11th graders must study French. From this point in
history foreign languages were given a great respect and value in Colombian policy while
indigenous and minority languages were not given any relevance. Then, Valencia, S.
(2007a), talk about the inclusion of a syllabus in which language was contained, this
approached the communicative language teaching in schools from 6th to 11th grade, what
opened the door to administrators in education to include different languages in their
curricula. Until the moment it has been evident that the government has not done any effort

to preserve local languages, increase identity and knowledge about minority groups in
Colombia. Furthermore, a project called Proyecto COFE Colombian framework for
English described by Frodden and Correa (2000) as the initiative which was carried out in
universities of the country between 1991 and 1996, to offer professional development to
local educators, it was given as a partnership between the governments of Colombia and
UK. The project had drawbacks, which was because as Usma and Frodden (2003) pointed,
the little familiarity of teachers at that time with research in educational fields, and the lack
of resources led to several difficulties on developing the projects. Late in 2005, after taking
into account the globalization and the need for competent professionals on international
fields, the ministry of education formulated a project, known as national bilingual program
2004-2019, the new language policy to be implemented in Colombia, this program would
be complemented by a plan called educational revolution seen at (Ministerio de
Educacin Nacional, 2008), which was supposed to change absolutely the way people in
Colombia see the foreign languages. Eventually, to show a contrast between Colombia and
for example the language policy in Bolivia, according to (Usma, J.A. 2009: 9), the situation
in Colombia is very similar to what happens in other countries around the world regarding
language policy, the thing is that the government tries to standardize and to marketwise the
foreign languages in the country, moreover, the prestige and the stratification play an
important role when implementing the language reforms. That differs too much from
Bolivian conception about language and culture, first of all, because they have included
foreign languages in their plan, but before that they decided to respect local languages by
giving an important role to them in their educational policies.
Then, it is possible to assume that although Colombian government has tried to develop a
second language policy, until the moment they have not shown a proposal in which the
respect for local languages be evident, the matter is to learn foreign languages to be
standard and competent but without knowing about local languages in the educational
system, by this it means schools, where students start to learn cultural background which
contains minority languages. Despite efforts have been made in order to create reforms to
protect endangered minority languages experts have informed the low efficacy of it,
because of that several native, official, and minority languages have disappeared or are
going to. According to Fishman, (1997: 194) endangered languages are such because of the

lack of transmission from one degeneration to the other and not because they are not being
taught in schools or because they do not have prestige. The matter is that anyway languages
are dying and that politically some governments do not take that into account, recent
studies have shown how the percentage in language speakers of local languages in Bolivia,
the country which is an example because of its policy in local and foreign languages, have
decreased along the time, as Molina, R. and Alb, X. (2006) evidenced, Bolivians
knowledge about Spanish have increased while indigenous languages knowledge have
decreased. Because of this phenomenon people and government decided to protect in some
way their variety of language, so that, they are an example for the world, they protect their
identity, their culture, and their independence without obstructing the development and the
teaching of foreign tongues. Therefore, to maintain and to preserve minority languages,
every country, from the government should release a policy or a law in which the subject
matter be the local languages first, and then the bilingualism as a mean of development for
the country and the people in it. If opposite, the problem emerges and causes terrible
consequences for underdeveloped countries where the government in their hurry to make
it better impose laws in which just approaches bilingualism, multilingualism but never
includes local culture and language.
Eventually, despite the efforts the governments have done, it is evident that the
globalization is taking a vital part in the development and the implementation of harmful
policies towards minority languages which are disappearing. According to Crystal, D.
(2000), the minority languages of the world are threatened and that is because of the
globalization and the low level of prestige speakers and language have. In his book
language Death, he explains why people should care about this terrible blindness, he
argues that the diversity is important, concurrently, language is the base for identity in a
culture, it is the key to know about the past and is the mean of communication between
generations, so its value is incalculable, that is why every government should act as a
doctor to save languages from death. In the same way Crystal suggests some ways of
reinforcing or recovering the languages health, it is possible by giving them more prestige
at the same time that their native speakers recover their identity and start using and sharing
it to others, also by offering a language to have more presence in educational system, and of

course working in team with teachers, linguists and government to restore the normal
characteristics in terms of local and native languages.
As seen in Bolivia, they have tried to protect that diversity and identity they have, it has
been a hard work but the benefits and their image towards the world is very positive; in
contrast, Colombia has always tried to implement bilingual or multilingual policies in order
to be competent according to the new tendencies and the marketing exigence, while it is
about to ignore the education in their own culture and languages, several Colombian
languages are endangered and nothing is being really done to stop it, the only aim for the
government is to be bilingual, something that at the same time, has been very hard to carry
out due to the lack of resources, and the normal situation of the educational system which
most of the times is not working properly. Finally, the endangered languages have not had
the appropriate effort to be restored again but also with the globalization they are every day
dying and disappearing, because some countries have the ideal of being bilingual and
competent to operate properly internationally without realizing the issues inside
themselves.

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