A Study On The British Government Policy In The Protection Of Linguistic Minority Languages

Nowadays multi-ethnic countries exist in every corner of the globe and ethnic diversities spur the phenomenon of multilingualism. Any contact and encounter between two languages in a country inevitably result in putting one of them in danger of extinction.Under such a background, if there is no effective and reasonable language policy and planning for the endangered language, it will not only lead to the decline of its speakers but also lead to social unrest, especially those minority languages which are related to ethnic unity and stability. Language planning and policy is becoming a chief means of solving language problems of multi-ethnic countries. In recent decades, extinction of some minority language attracts attention of researchers, sociolinguistics appeal to language policies to interfere in the development of minority languages and prevents the language from decline and fall.On the surface, Britain is a monolingual nation and regards English as its national language. However, actually there are quite a few Gaelic speakers and Welsh speakers.With steady development and growth of those linguistic communities, Britain has to regulate its growth by language policy making. But has those minority language policies against English hegemony been at all effective in long term? Whether minority languages are adaptable to those language planning? In order to find reasonable answers of those questions, this article deliberately choose two British minority languages--- Welsh and Scottish Gaelic because of the largest population of speakers, and explores the historical process and current status of Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, and analyze data and statistical data and minority language medium educations, and makes the following summaries:Scottish Gaelic, once was the primary language of Scottish highland area, but now suffers from the result of speaker clearance due to the low prestigious of a contemptible tribal language. The population of speakers was sharply reduced by this clearance. Until the end of 19 th century, Gaelic was received protection from legislation but Gaelic in other aspects,such as public media, was still repressed by English due to lack of official status.Meanwhile Gaelic has a great performance in artistic activities. The recent data, showing the decline in number of Gaelic speakers is slowed down, is powerful evidence that language protection for Gaelic works now. Compared with Scottish Gaelic, Welsh is under a better protection because of national pride and high level of native language loyalty. The official status of Welsh was established rather early and Welsh bilingual education is well organized now. Welsh language is the compulsory course in the Wale’s national curriculum.Even though the number of Welsh speaker went down before, it start to revitalize over the past years, which proves the effectiveness and necessity of language planning on minority languages. By analyzing the protection of Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, the article also applies major findings to other minority language protection and makes suggestions of strengthening the language prestige, confirming the official status and establishing of bilingual education system.