"If you've got a mother tongue, please use it!" - Minority language development: the case of Rangi

Oliver Stegen

While the United Nations guarantee the right to use minority languages freely in private and in public, this right is in reality restricted by several circumstances, one of them being the fact that many minority languages do not have a body of written literature, or even an orthography, thus restricting language use to the oral medium. In this talk, I will present the situation of one particular minority language: Rangi of Northern Central Tanzania. After sketching the brief history of the Rangi language development project, I will focus on the key factors of language vitality, language attitude, and project ownership, and show their implications for potential project approaches. The talk will end with an outlook on avenues for further research and possible future action.