Language planning facts for kids

Language planning is the attempt to influence how a language is used. This is usually done to make it possible to use the language for more subjects. Goals, objectives and strategies are made to change the way a language is used. For many languages there are special organisations, that look after the language. Examples of such organisations are the Academie Française for French or the British Council for English.

In general, there are different forms of language planning:

• Corpus planning creates new words, expressions or changes old ones to have a new meaning. Corpus planning is involved with creating standards for a language, such as spelling and grammar, or to create dictionaries. Linguistic purity is about avoiding foreign influences to a language because they are seen as bad. It also belongs to corpus planning.
• Status planning wants to change the way a language is used. It is about making some languages (or dialects) official languages for a territory. Very often, part of status planning is creating a writing system for a language that was only spoken before.
• Acquisition planning is about teaching the language. It looks at ways to make it easier or more attractive to learn a language. Very often, acquisition planning also involves making the language more attractive to learn for speakers of other languages.

For further readings Nahir's work on language planning can be read.