Literacy in Contact and in Context

Abstract

According to UNESCO, at least 2500 languages are vulnerable. Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, French are “hegemons” - each having at least 100 million native speakers and accounting for over 51 percent of the global population. Half of the hegemons are written with an alphabet. For the non-alphabetic group, native speakers may read and write in logographic (e.g. Chinese) or syllabic writing systems (e.g. Devanagari) or both (e.g. Japanese). In languages that are spoken by less than one million people, Latin, Arabic and Chinese writing systems dominate but they do not always map to local dialects transparently. Multi-literacy is a growing global phenomenon particularly in Asia. In the 21st century, access to electronic literacy will include multi-literate speakers. However, multi-literacy brings questions. Multi-literacy is as old as civilization due to spoken language contact in commerce, ideology and religion. Literacy adapts to new technology via codification of symbols allowing multi-literacy to grow. Documentation of writing has a history but it is not prominent in global policy making. Programmes to develop literacy are reserved for monolingual ‘hegascripts’ (dominant languages) e.g. English. However, neglecting diversity in writing systems in developing countries risks more inequalities if indigenous language speakers are taught literacy in their non-native language only.