English
In the 21st century all European citizens live in a multilingual environment. In their daily lives they come across many different languages. Consequently there is a growing interest in multilingualism and an increasing need for language communities to exchange experiences and to cooperate. The Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, part of the Fryske Akademy, meets this need by collecting, researching and studying, circulating, and applying knowledge in the field of language learning and use at school, at home and through cultural participation. The Mercator Research Centre is an independent and recognised reference centre for policymakers and professional workers in the field of multilingual education and language learning. The Mercator Research Centre brings Europe to Fryslân and Fryslân to Europe.
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Piet Van De Craen studied Dutch, English, and neurolinguistics. In his doctorate, he emphasises the interactive aspects of discursive analysis, which he advocated a hermeneutic language analysis (unlike the, at that time, dominant method of Chomsky). He applied this theory to three research areas:1) The domain of theoretical linguistics, 2) the domain of multilingual research and 3) the level of discursive analysis, focusing on 'particles'.
Van De Craen is full-time professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he teaches Dutch linguistics and general linguistics. He supervises a large number of licensed trades in the above research areas. Since 1997 he has been secretary of the European Language Council, and in 2003 he became vice-president of the Association belge de Linguistique Appliquée. He is a member of the Comité Taalkunde from the (Nationaal) Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (National Fund for Scientific Research). Within FOST ( Social & Cultural Food Studies) he was supervisor of the doctoral research of Steven Van den Berghe (source).
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The Regional dossiers describe the position of lesser-used languages in education, give information on national and regional education systems, and include the latest statistics regarding lesser-used languages in education in Europe.
The work on Endangered Languages (Phonetics and Ethnolinguistics) at the Fryske Akademy and the Mercator Research Centre is focused on the study of language contrasts, language contact and language change. We investigate the phonetic aspects of languages and dialects of minority and regional languages, in particular those of the Russian Federation and neighbouring countries. This work is supported by grants from the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Organisation INTAS of the European Union, the British Library, Japanese Foundations and Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd.
The Network of Schools' mission is to create a platform for multilingual schools in minority regions within Europe in order to facilitate the exchange of information and experiences.
