Indigenous language in the context of "Majority language"

The Caucasus (/ˈkɔːkəsəs/) or Caucasia (/kɔːˈkeɪʒə/) is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have conventionally been considered as a natural barrier between Europe and Asia, bisecting the Eurasian landmass. Mount Elbrus, Europe's highest mountain, is situated in the Western Caucasus area of Russia. On the southern side, the Lesser Caucasus includes the Javakheti Plateau and the Armenian highlands.

The Caucasus is divided into the North Caucasus and South Caucasus, although the Western Caucasus also exists as a distinct geographic space within the North Caucasus. The Greater Caucasus mountain range in the north is mostly shared by Russia and Georgia as well as the northernmost parts of Azerbaijan. The Lesser Caucasus mountain range in the south is mostly located on the territory of southern Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The region is known for its linguistic diversity: aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian, and Northeast Caucasian language families are indigenous to the area.

The International Year of Indigenous Languages was a United Nations observance in 2019 that aimed to raise awareness of the consequences of the endangerment of Indigenous languages across the world, with an aim to establish a link between language, development, peace, and reconciliation.

Irish (Standard Irish: Gaeilge), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic (/ˈɡeɪlɪk/ GAY-lik), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family that belongs to the Goidelic languages and further to Insular Celtic, and is indigenous to the island of Ireland. It was the majority of the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century, in what is sometimes characterised as a result of linguistic imperialism.

Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in Ireland's Gaeltacht regions, in which 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2022.

Indigenous peoples of Mexico (Spanish: Pueblos indígenas de México), also known as Native Mexicans (Spanish: Mexicanos nativos), are those who are part of communities that trace their roots back to populations and communities that existed in what is now Mexico before the arrival of Europeans.

The number of Indigenous Mexicans is defined through the second article of the Mexican Constitution. The Mexican census does not classify individuals by race, using the cultural-ethnicity of Indigenous communities that preserve their Indigenous languages, traditions, beliefs, and cultures. As a result, the count of Indigenous peoples in Mexico does not include those of mixed Indigenous and European heritage who have not preserved their Indigenous cultural practices. Genetic studies have found that most Mexicans are of partial Indigenous heritage. According to the National Indigenous Institute (INI) and the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (CDI), in 2012 the Indigenous population was approximately 15 million people, divided into 68 ethnic groups. The 2020 Censo General de Población y Vivienda reported 11,132,562 people living in households where someone speaks an Indigenous language, and 23,232,391 people who were identified as Indigenous based on self-identification.

Irish (Standard Irish: Gaeilge), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic (/ˈɡeɪlɪk/ GAY-lik), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family that belongs to the Goidelic languages and further to Insular Celtic, and is indigenous to the island of Ireland. It was the first language of the majority of the population until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century, in what is sometimes characterised as a result of linguistic imperialism.

Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in Ireland's Gaeltacht regions, in which 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2022.

The spread of the Latin script has a long history, from its archaic beginnings in Latium to its rise as the dominant writing system in modernity. The ancestors of Latin letters are found in the Phoenician, Greek, and Etruscan alphabets. As the Roman Empire expanded in classical antiquity, the Latin script and language spread along with its conquests, and remained in use in Italy, Iberia, and Western Europe after the Western Roman Empire's disappearance. During the early and high Middle Ages, the script was spread by Christian missionaries and rulers, replacing the indigenous writing systems of Central Europe, Northern Europe, and the British Isles.

In the Age of Discovery, the first wave of European colonization saw the adoption of Latin alphabets primarily in the Americas and Australia, whereas sub-Saharan Africa, maritime Southeast Asia, and the Pacific were Latinised in the period of New Imperialism. Realizing that Latin was now the most widely used script on Earth, the Bolsheviks made efforts to develop and establish Latin alphabets for all languages in the lands they controlled in Eastern Europe, North and Central Asia. However, after the Soviet Union's first three decades, these were gradually abandoned in the 1930s in favour of Cyrillic. Some post-Soviet Turkic-majority states decided to reintroduce the Latin script in the 1990s, following the 1928 example of Turkey. In the early 21st century, non-Latin writing systems were only still prevalent in most parts of the Middle East and North Africa, the post-Soviet states, Asia, and some Balkan countries.

Linguistic imperialism or language imperialism is defined as "the transfer of a dominant language to other people".

This language transfer, or more accurately, unilateral imposition, is a consequence of imperialism. The transfer signifies power, traditionally associated with military power but in the modern context, also encompassing economic power. Typically, aspects of the dominant culture are transferred alongside the language. Geographically, while hundreds of Europe's indigenous languages function as official (state) languages in Eurasia, non-indigenous imperial (European) languages serve this role almost exclusively in the "Rest of the World". In contemporary discourse, linguistic imperialism may also be examined within the framework of international development. It influences the criteria by which organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank assess the reliability and value of structural adjustment loans, often reflecting perspectives commonly emphasized in English-language discourse rather than a neutral stance (linguistic relativism).