The Challenges Of Language Standardization The Case Of Gamo

Article 3.5.1of The Education and Training Policy (1994) of the Federal Democratic RepublicrnGovernment of Ethiopia has granted citizens with legal policy grounds to use their nativernlanguages as mediums of primary education. This legal initiative has resulted in the introductionrnof many local languages to education and other official settings. The placement of the languagesrninto the new domains has created opportunities to develop and standardize them. Gamo is one ofrnthe languages, which, due to such policy changes, has received orthography and is introduced asrna medium of instruction in schools. This research tried to investigate the social challenges facedrnin the standardization process of the Gamo language. It argues that as a language newlyrnintroduced into different domains, Gamo has to be standardized to fulfill the newly assignedrnsocial roles. There is a pressing need to establish a standard language that fits the attitudes andrndemands of the Gamo society. A standard language of Gamo would effectively play variousrnsocial roles if the users participate in the standardization process by forwarding their views inrndifferent settings. So far, we do not have sufficient information about the social attitudes andrnneeds towards the standardization of Gamo. The research, hence, endeavored to fill in this gap byrnproviding valuable data about the real attitudes and needs of speakers of the language at therngrassroots level.rnThe research tried to address the following questions; which dialect is used as a base for thernstandard norm of Gamo and what criteria determined the selection? What are the mainrnchallenges that the standardization process encountered? How do the norm selection decisionsrninterplay with the actual social needs and attitudes of the speakers towards Gamo and itsrnstandardization? And, how can Gamo be standardized best? In order to find answers to thesernquestions, the research adopted a mixed data collection method and employed questionnaire,rninterviews, focus group discussions and document analysis. The findings revealed that “thernstandard form of Gamo” was mainly based on the Dache dialect, which is one of the dialectrnvariants of the language spoken by the majority of the population. Other dialects like Kucha,rnOchollo and Dorze, also shared with Dache most of the words collected from the standardrnlanguage, but the Ganta dialect shared only a quarter of the words analyzed. The majority of thernrespondents had positive attitude towards Dache to serve as a standard Gamo. They believed thatrnDache can serve best as a base to the standard norm since it is spoken and understood by thernmajority of the society identified as ethnically Gamo, and can keep social unity and integration.rnHowever, there was a strong interest reflected by many participants of different dialect speakersrnto see some features of their respective dialects accommodated in the standard Gamo. In fact,rnsome morphological and lexical features of those dialects were rarely used in the texts analyzedrnso far, but that did not please the users since the inclusion was very random and lacksrnconsistency of application, i.e the dialect features were often replaced by the standard forms. Onrnthe other hand, the majority of the participants’ conviction, from the five dialect groups, was thatrnwords from Ganta cannot be included in the present standard Gamo. There was a concern that ifrnfeatures from divergent dialects are included in the standard form, the written norm might resultrnin confusion and misunderstanding for others in communication. The degree of dialectalrnvariation, procedures followed to standardize the language, and attitudes held towards usingrnGamo in wider public settings were considered to be the major challenges of standardization inrnGamo.rnBased on the findings, the research concluded that the norm selection technique followed in thernstandardization of Gamo was monocentric. The study considers that the adoption of a polycentricrnmultidialectal approach in the establishment of standard Gamo is one of the basic factors tornachieve successful language standardization. Particular features of Kucha, Ochollo and Dorze,rnand other dialects not included in this study as well, should be studied further and should bernintroduced progressively into the written form to be part of the standard norm of Gamo. On thernother hand, trying to entirely mix Ganta with standard Gamo is impossible due to the prevailingrnlinguistic Gap and may pose a new challenge to norm acceptance. Instead, pending therndevelopment of an independent standard to divergent dialects of Gamo, selected words of Gantarncan be introduced into the current standard. That makes the standard norm impartial to thernspeakers and may enable the respective Ganta dialect speakers to develop a sense of ownershiprnof the language of education.

Get Full Work

Report copyright infringement or plagiarism