Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

This book provides a valuable insight into the past and present situation of Mexican indigenous languages (MIL). It delves into the dynamics of power that emerged in the Mexican colony as a result of the presence of Spanish, today the dominant language in all public domains. After almost five hundred years, the imbalance of power-sharing functions created the need for structural changes that resulted in the new legislation of 2003. The book also offers innovative classifications of MIL, trends of bilingualism, and new programs of bilingual education. It reinterprets the chronology of language policy in the early colonial period and provides the rationale for reversing language shift in the twenty-first century.

Review:

This volume is an excellent contribution to Language Policy studies in general and to Reserve Language Shift studies (Fishman 1991, 2001) in particular. Liliana Sanchez in: Journal of Sociolinguistics 3/2011