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Fruitful and lively discussions during EUNoM Symposium Leeuwarden
Fryske Akademy unveils plans for academic Master on Multilingualism
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EUNoM Projectleader
Miquel Strubell |
“The relationship between universities / research on multilingualism and globalisation and regionalisation, the new language policy and research agenda of the European Union and multilingualism of institutions for higher education themselves. Those were the main themes of the second EUNoM symposium, held in Ljouwert / Leeuwarden (The Netherlands) on 18 and 19 November 2010. It was the second symposium in a series of six of the European EUNoM network.
Besides lectures, there was plenty of room for discussion, which led to interesting conclusions, insights and also to new questions.
Miquel Strubell pointed out that the importance of language as a phenomenon (not necessarily multilingualism) is much greater nowadays, in the current knowledge economy. Alastair Walker emphasized that Higher education can train people to convince others, namely parents, functionaries, politicians, education authorities, teachers of the importance of (the implementation of) multilingualism. Jeroen Darquennes (Namur / Namur, Belgium), outlined the opportunities for multilingualism as a research theme within the eighth EU Framework Programme (2014-2019): within the social sciences aimed at achieving the Lisbon goals. A striking fact was mentioned by René Jorna: not English, Chinese or Spanish is biggest language in the world, but JAVA and HTML. Heidi Rontu described the process of developing a language policy and an implementation strategy for that policy for the bilingual Swedish-Finnish Aalto University. Discussions in smaller groups provided more food for thought. One of the recurring issues was the need for clear definitions, for instance: "What exactly do we mean with the term multilingualism?"
International interest Master Multilingualism Fryslân
One of the presentations was by René Jorna, head of the Social Science Department of the Fryske Akademy, who explained the plans for an academic Master on Multilingualism. Read more...
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International Conference: ‘Languages of the Wider World’: Understanding Resilience and Shift in Regional and Minority languages
This is the second international conference organised jointly by the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning of the Fryske Akademy (The Netherlands) and the SOAS-UCL Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning ‘Languages of the Wider World’ (LWW CETL) (UK). The conference will take place from 7-8 April 2011 in the charming city of Leeuwarden, the capital of the bilingual province Fryslân (Netherlands). The venue is the ‘Aljemint’, conference centre of the Fryske Akademy.
All people have the right to learn and use their mother tongue, and to learn a second and third language. This formal right is often absent and its use in practice is often less well guaranteed and less developed than should be the case, especially for speakers of smaller or lesser used languages variously labelled as ‘regional’, ‘minority’, ‘immigrant’, ‘community’ (including sign languages), ‘heritage’ languages, etc. The conference will focus on theoretical and empirical work in research, teaching and learning of such languages worldwide. Read more...
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Parnership for Diversity Conference and Liet International 2010
On Saturday 27 November both the Partnership for Diversity conference and the European song contest for minority languages Liet International took place in Lorient/An Oriant in Brittany (France). Tjallien Kalsbeek, staff member of the Mercator Research Centre, visited both. During her speech at the conference, she mentioned the report on the Study on the Devolvement of Legislative Power and Provisions as well as the letter sent to the Council of Europe and European Parliament by several Frisian organisations. Both Dónall Ó Riagáin and Davyth Hicks expressed their wish for a linguistic diversity centre among others. Straight after the conference several delegates gathered and discussed the possibility of a new network for civil society organisations after the former European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages (EBLUL). More information about this will probably become available in the next months.
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| The winner of Liet International 2010: Orka (Sandro Weltin/Council of Europe) |
Liet International
In the evening Liet International took place. Many great performances from all over Europe were conducted on the stage and the tension became higher and higher when the award ceremony came closer. Finally Mr Alexey Kozhemyakov, head of the secretariat of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, announced the winner of the public votes: R. Esistance in Dub (Friuli). And Ms Lena Louarn, vice-president of the Conseil régional de Bretagne, had the honour to announce the winner of the jury: ORKA (Faroe Islands). The Frisian participants, Equal Souls, a week earlier the interlude at the EUNoM conference of the Mercator Research Centre, ended up at a fantastic third place.
During the weekend the partner meeting of Liet International took place as well. During the constructive meeting several agreements were made, regarding the professionalisation of the European co-operation. And the next edition of Liet International can be announced: Udine (Friuli, Italy) in 2011. More information about Liet International and the participants can be found at the website of Liet International.
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Mercator meets RML2Future
To get to know each other, discover what the similarities and the differences are between the European project RML2Future and  the European projects of Mercator and in which field cooperation might be possible. Those were the main goals of the meeting between RML2future and Mercator on Monday the 15th of November at the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning in Leeuwarden.
After some general information, Mercator presented specifically the Mercator Network and the Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) project. RML2Future also presented their project. The network intends to foster multilingualism and linguistic diversity in Europe with a strong focus on regional and minority languages (RML). Its main aim is to promote the European objective of multilingualism, according to which each European citizen should learn two additional languages beside his/her mother tongue.
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Chinese delegation visits Mercator Research Centre
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| (fltr) Hans v/d Velde, Xu Daming, Reinier Salverda, Wang Tiekun, Cor v/d Meer and Tseard de Graaf |
Last month Wang Tiekun, Vice Director General of the Chinese Ministry of Education’s Department of Language Information Management and prof.
Xu Daming, professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Nanjing and director of the China Centre for Linguistic and Strategic Studies
paid a visit to the Mercator Research Centre of the Fryske Akademy. They were accompanied by Hans van der Velde (Utrecht University, the Netherlands)
The main goal of this visit was to echange experiences and ideas on the subject of multilingualism. The official language in China is Han
Chinese, but China's many different ethnic groups speak 56 (officially recognised) different languages.
During their visit presentations were given by prof.dr. René Jorna, head of the Department of Social Sciences at the Fryske Akademy, on the new Academic Master on Multilingualism, Cor van der Meer spoke about Mercator research and European language minorities and Tseard de Graaf gave a presentation
on Endangered Languages and Archives in Eurasia.
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Language Rich Europe has kicked off
 Language Rich Europe, a project funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union (KA2 Languages, Network), has kicked off on the first of November. The network consists of lead partner the British Council and 22 partners, including the Fryske Akademy/ Mercator Research Centre.
Language Rich Europe addresses the problem that in spite of initiatives by the EC and the Council of Europe to promote multilingualism and support linguistic diversity in Members States, results vary. Read more...
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Survey on Frisian in education
 The Dutch national inspectorate of Education has published a survey on the position and the actual functioning of Frisian in primary and secondary education as well as at schools for children with special needs. As a rule, the inspectorate carries out a survey every four years. The 2010 report does not show very much progress compared to the report of 2006. Frisian keeps a stable but marginal position in most of the schools with a minimum of one hour Frisian lessons per week and, in addition, one or two lessons with Frisian as a medium of instruction. Read more...
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New blog on Arpitan (Francoprovençal) language
Some language enthusiasts in Catalonia have recently created “Amics d'Arpitània” (“Friends of Arpitania”), a blog devoted to the Arpitan (Francoprovençal) language. Arpitan is spoken by some 200,000 people, mainly in Savoy (France), Aosta Valley (Italy) and the Romandy cantons (Switzerland).
This blog aims to disseminate information of this widely ignored language. It includes weekly updates. It can be read in Catalan on http://amicsdarpitania.blogspot.com/.
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Presence Castillian language (Spanish) on World Wide Web
Although English remains the first language of international communication on the Internet, it has lost weight over the past 10 years: it's presence used to be 74% and is now 45%. Meanwhile, the Castilian language, which is the third language on the internet, went from 3 to 4%. A minimum increase compared to the number of speakers: 440 million people. If Latin American countries would have access to technological development similar to that of the Anglophones, the presence of Castilian on the Internet would now be 16%.
Source: El Pays
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Expolingua Berlin 2010 comes to a successful close
 Expolingua Berlin, Germany’s international fair for languages and cultures, was brought to a successful end on Sunday November 21st. During the three-day fair at the Russisches Haus der Wissenschaft und Kultur, a total of 13 086 visitors got acquainted with the subject of language learning and teaching. 182 exhibitors from 26 countries presented their services, which included languages schools from Germany and abroad, language travel agencies, exchange organisations, cultural institutes and publishing houses. Read more...
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Neglected and forgotten words
 Languages are constantly getting in new words, but they also loose words. People no longer use them or loathe them, although often those words have led a meaningful life. On the Internet there are several initiatives to protect forgotten words. There is the British Save the Words, where neglected English words literally scream for help when you click them. In the Dutch language there is the Society for Promoting the Use of Threatened Dutch Words and Expressions and Neerlandsch Society to promote the Aged Word.
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Bilingualism in Canada: OLBI
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| Richard Clément (left) and Hilaire Lemoine |
The Canadian Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute (OLBI) is an integral part of the University of Ottawa’s vision for the future, where teaching excellence and innovation complement the institution’s commitment to bilingualism.
As a new Canadian standard bearer for official languages and bilingualism, OLBI strengthens and promotes education and research in the fields of teaching, evaluation and language policy design. It also brings together the University of Ottawa’s experts in official languages and bilingualism in four areas: Teaching; Research; Testing and evaluation; Development and promotion.
Richard Clément and Hilaire Lemoine, representatives of OLBI, visited the Mercator Research Centre last month to exchange experiences. The Regional Dossiers Series of the Mercator Research Centre for example, could very well be applied in Canada. They were also interested in the Academic Master on Multilingualism that was mentioned before in this newsletter.
Both parties see good opportunities for a sustainable cooperation in the near future.
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Croatian to become 24th EU language
Croatian will become the European Union's 24th official language when the country joins the EU.
(Source: EUObserver)
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Seen and Heard...
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funded by:
Lifelong Learning
Programme
European
Commission
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7-8 April 2011:
