Abstract:

This paper explores how linguistic surveys in multilingual markets can help language planning and language policy. By studying the multilingual cities from a sociolinguistic point of view we can observe how rapid urbanization shapes the linguistic situation of a country and at the same time shapes the languages themselves. This allow us to obtain an idea of the future of the current situations and foresee the direction of changes. Some similarities between development of vehicular languages in multilingual cities and processes of creolization in islands (as it is the case of Chabacano of Zamboanga) are pointed out, and some ways of strengthening endangered languages are suggested.

Author: Louis-Jean Calvet