Abstract

Language is one of the most important distinctive characters between human beings and animals. It is the spiritual home for human beings and the carriers of ethnic culture. Therefore it is required to protect the varieties of language. However，in the current time “language convergence” is the main tendency in language life and more and more languages are going to be extinct. The current study analyses Hebrew revival，Australia Kaurna revival，Taiwan Hakka protection and Tianzhu Tibetan protection and explores the theories in the protection of endangered languages.

Classical Hebrew was the only language for the Jews，with which they created the splendid ancient civilization. After their kingdom was invaded by other ethnics the Jews were exiled in the world. From that time on the Jews began to take some mixed languages as their oral language，such as French - Hebrew，Judaeo-Spanish，Yiddish language，and so on. However during the Hebrew “sleeping” period some writers still created literature with Hebrew language，which not only inherited but also extended the using domain of Hebrew，making it beyond the realm of religion into secular life，and enriching the Hebrew vocabulary.

In the late 19th century the Zionism inspired many Jews to return to the Palestinian territories and to revive the Jewish kingdom. As the Jews lived in different parts of the world before they backed to Palestinian，most time they could not communicate with each other. In addition for political consideration the future Jewish country required a lingua franca as the national language. As the symbol of the ancient Jewish kingdom，the Classical Hebrew was selected as the future national language. From that time on the Hebrew was on the way to be revived.

After many years’ effort the Jews revived the Hebrew successfully in some fields. The British Mandate of Palestine September 29^th1923 and the Law and Administration Ordinance have confirmed the Hebrew language，together with other language（s），as Israel’s official languages. However，the Modern Hebrew language （some people call it “Israel”） is different from the Classical Hebrew on voice system，lexicon and grammar system in some degrees. It has become a multi-leveled and multi-sourced mixed language of Afro-Asiatic languages and Indo-European languages. From this perspective of view we cannot regard the Hebrew revival as a successful language corpus planning.

The Kaurna language was the native and everyday language for Australian Kaurna people. As the result of the killing，plague and discrimination for many years，the number of Kaurna speakers became less and less. In 1929 the last native Kaurna people Ivaritji died. From that time on Kaurna language began to be in “sleep” status.

In 1990 with linguists’ help Kaurna people began to revive Kaurna language. After 20 years of effort，Kaurna language revival has achieved some achievements. The revivalists have identified the voice system of Kaurna language，drafted the Kaurna-English Dictionary. They have also distinguished the syntactic structure for Kaurna language and subject-object-predicate order，while they still have some confusion in morphological change for the Nouns and the Verbs. Another achievement is the popularization of Kaurna language education in schools and training agencies. By the year of 2011 there were 10 schools offering Kaurna language courses in South Australian. However，Kaurna language has not gotten any official language status by now. There are only some parks，buildings，rivers named by both English and Kaurna language and the Kaurna name is less popular than the English name among Non- Kaurna people.

The Hakka is the mother language and the first language for Hakka people. As the Hakka’s contact with other language varieties such as Minnan dialect，Japanese and Mandarin in different periods，some Hakka people transferred their first language into other languages or dialects. In June 2001 Taiwan set up the Council for Hakka Affairs （now Hakka Affairs Council） to manage the affairs about Hakka language and culture protection. The Council issued a number of regulations on the protection of Hakka language. On the one hand the Council tries to cultivate Hakka people’s Hakka language abilities；on the other hand，it builds the social environment for Hakka people to speak Hakka language. These efforts do not seem to enhance the vitality of Hakka in Taiwan. The number of Hakka speakers decreased a little although the decrease trend becomes slow gradually. That is to say，the Council’s efforts can slow the Hakka’ endangered speed but it cannot enrich the Hakka’ vitality.

Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County is located in the eastern end of the Hexi Corridor. Due to the special geographical and social environment，the local Tibetan language environment is weaker than other Tibetan areas relatively. Some Tibetan transferred into Bilingual speakers，and even Chinese speakers. After 1949，the Chinese central government and the Tibetan local governments issued a number of laws and policies to protect the vitality of Tianzhu Tibetan language. These laws and regulations are mainly focused on Tianzhu Tibetan political planning and Tianzhu Tibetan education planning. The invested data between 1980s and 2010s witnessed that theses efforts can protect Tibetan language vitality in Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County，which is the successful cases of language protection.

Comparing the above cases，this study suggests that language protection is a systematic project. It includes protecting not only the language vitality，but also the user’s language identity. Language protection has nothing to protect “language purity” and it does not contradict with language development and language change.

Language developing and changing are the nature requirements for language，which are accompanied with language borrowing，even language shifting. Language protection cannot remain the language ontology static but can help maintain the user’s language identity even the language ontology has changed greatly. The study believes that the ideal way to protect language is not to exclude the language development and change，especially the “unconscious change”，but to cultivate language users’ language identity.

Key Words：Language Protection；Language Vitality；Language Identity