What is language development?

Language development is the task of preparing a language to serve as a vehicle of literacy and education.

Language development is not the process of developing a language so that it can be used as an effective vehicle of communication. Any natural language is already a suitable vehicle for oral communication.

However, literacy and education are language-based technologies involving writing. Some development work is required to prepare a language for these technologies.

Here are some examples of typical language development tasks:

• Development of

  • a basic writing system
  • conventions for spelling, punctuation, word-space, capitalization, hyphenation, and writing of loan words
  • conventions for place names and personal names that are compatible with national conventions
  • appropriate technical terms (metalanguage) to talk about these features of language
  • a dictionary to standardize spellings and use of terms
  • a grammar of the language including appropriate technical jargon to talk about the language
• Language standardization work between villages or regions

• In the case of education, the development of

  • appropriate pedagogical jargon, and
  • appropriate terms for the many concepts to be introduced in the educational process
• If necessary, the development of a system of terms for such things as numbers, counting, time keeping, currency transactions, and ages

• Concept module: language development
• In overview module: Glossary (Literacy): L
• In modular book: Glossary of literacy terms
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 2 July 1998

© 1999 SIL International