Somers, Harold wrote:
> In a recent paper I made a distinction between "minority" language and
> "minor" language, the former being defined in terms of numbers of
> speakers, the latter in terms of language engineering resources. Of
> course the irony is that languages which are far from being minority
> ones worldwide (Hindi, Urdu) are still minor languages. A more-used term
> however is "less resourced" or "under-resourced" language, or indeed
> "lesser-used language" (see thread on this forum of some moths ago!).
On this side of the Atlantic, the term seems to be "low density
languages", although I've also heard "less commonly taught languages"
used for languages which have few computational resources (perhaps
because the two sets of languages largely overlap, at least here in the
US). I traced the term "low density language" back to Congressional
testimony in the late 1980s, where the sense was maybe more like
languages which don't have large enrollments in college language
classes. The term seemed to be "in the air" (the speaker did not make
it up), but I haven't succeeded in tracing it any further back.
Mike Maxwell
CASL/ U of Maryland
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