In Western Europe alone there are some 50 minority languages {Stephens, 1978) and in North America there was an estimated 147 American Indian languages in 1941 (Ohannessian, 1972). A linguistic minority can perhaps be defined as a group of people who, within the family or tribal unit and in their everyday lives, predominantly speak a language which differs from the language spoken by the majority of the population in that particular country. Linguistic minorities can range in size from, for example, the estimated 2000 speakers of East Frisian (Saterlandic) (Fort, 1980; Sjolin. 1969) to the 10-12 million speakers of Occitan (Haarmann, 1975).