Two further goals are "To preserve ethnic or religious
ties" and "To give equal status to languages of unequal prominence in the
society". These goals are relevant for linguistic minorities, firstly as bilingual
education could re-educate children in their parents' language once they
have completed the language shift away from their ancestral tongue to the
dominant language. This is the case on the mainland of NF, where Frisian
has to be taught to a certain degree as a foreign language. The second reason
is that if a minority language is given equal prominence, it will be less
stigmatized, so that language shift can perhaps be halted, if not reversed.
This, it might be argued, is the case on the island of Fohr in NF. The
particular goal will determine whether a policy of transfer is adopted,
whereby the vernacular is later abandoned for the dominant language as in
the process of acculturation, or a policy of maintenance, whereby the
vernacular is maintained next to the second language (Mackey, 1978).
There are a number of other factors influencing the design of a bilingual
programme which can be discussed individually: