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5 - The Economics of Language Diversity and Language Resilience in the Balkans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2020

By
Adam D. Clark-Joseph  and
Brian D. Joseph
Edited by
Cécile B. Vigouroux  and
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Cécile B. Vigouroux
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Summary

We focus here on the resilience and sustainability of the Greek language in southern Albania, looking at it from the perspective of both economics and the ecology of language. Greek is a minority language in the region, spoken by as many as 100,000 speakers in a number of small villages and small urban centers. We chronicle here the ways in which the language has survived despite a near-perfect storm of factors working against it, and we provide an economic-theory rationale. A parallel is drawn to the fate of Turkish in Bulgaria.

Keywords

Language diversitylanguage sustainabilitylanguage contactGreekAlbanianTurkishBulgarianBalkansincentivessocial capital
Type
Chapter
Information
Bridging Linguistics and Economics , pp. 140 - 157
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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