Language Maintenance Factors: Reflections on the Arabic Langauge

The maintenance of community languages has always been a challenging field for investigation. Most of these languages live under the cultural power of the host country language. Therefore, it has never been an easy task for immigrants and their children to maintain their community languages, especially under the linguistic and cultural pressures of the English language. The majority of community languages lose ground to English and adopt it in several domains in everyday life and this is a sign of language shift. This latter is most likely predictable in Englishspeaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand, England and the USA, where English is a dominant and the more prestigious language. In Australia, statistics from a 2016 census demonstrate that only a few languages have withstood the cultural strength and high status of English language (ABS, 2016). As a result of that, the maintenance of community languages remains a major concern for linguists, educators, language activists and for immigrant families, who need to support and maintain these languages for the next generation.