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The National Language Debate in Fiji concerns the status of the country's three official languages - English, Fijian, and Hindustani (the name used in the 1997 constitution for Fiji Hindi). From colonial times, the sole official language was English, but the 1997 Constitution gave equal status, for the first time, to Fijian and Hindustani, alongside English. ==Compulsory subject?== There is considerable debate as to whether Fijian, and possibly also Hindi, should be compulsory school subjects. In May and June 2005, a number of prominent Fiji Islanders called for the status of Fijian to be upgraded; the present Education Minister, Ro Teimumu Kepa endorsed calls for it to be made compulsory, as did Great Council of Chiefs Chairman Ratu Ovini Bokini. Similar calls came from Misiwini Qereqeretabua, the Director of the Institute of Fijian Language and Culture, and from Apolonia Tamata, a linguistics lecturer at Suva's University of the South Pacific, who both said that recognition of the Fijian language is essential to the nation's basic identity, as a unifying factor in Fiji's multicultural society. Fiji Labour Party (FLP) leader Mahendra Chaudhry also endorsed the call for Fijian to be made a national language and a compulsory school subject, provided that the same status be given to Hindi - a position echoed by Krishna Vilas of the National Reconciliation Committee. Academic and former Education Minister Taufa Vakatale said that she supported making Hindi available in all schools, but considered that Fijian should get priority. ''"If the Indians in the country lost their language, there is a whole continent of people in India who would still have the language,"'' she said. ''"In the whole world only 330,000 people know how to speak in Fijian and if it is lost, there is nowhere it can be revived from, that is why the Fijian language is very important to preserve."'' A investigation by the Rewa Provincial Council, made public on 23 November 2005, revealed that 26 percent of indigenous children in the first and second grades of nine Rewa schools could not speak their own language. The council was exploring ways to redress this area of concern. Vice-President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi added his own voice on 9 January 2006 to the campaign to make Fijian a compulsory subject. Addressing the 72nd annual meeting of the Fijian Teachers Association in Suva, Madraiwiwi said that it was dangerous to assume that Fijian children would automatically learn their own language. His parents' generation had emphasized prioritizing English on the assumption that Fijian could be learned later, but this had resulted in a generation knowing little Fijian, and unless the language was made compulsory at all levels of primary education, it would be lost to the next generation, he said. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「National language debate in Fiji」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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