Language Choice, Education Equity, and Mother Tongue Schooling: Comparing the Cases of Ethiopia and Native America

With a few exceptions – Inuktitut in the Far North, for example – virtually all Native North American languages are highly endangered (Krauss 1998; McCarty 2008a). Thus, the goals of language planning and policy in Native North America and Ethiopia differ in an important respect – mother tongue maintenance in the Ethiopian case and language revitalization in the Native American case – although in both cases a high level of competence in the language(s) of wider communication (LWC) is also a key goal.