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A summary of the news for December.
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The mayor of Vilanòva de Magalona, Noël Ségura |
Hundreds of people demonstrated, Sunday 12th, in the Occitan municipality of Vilanòva de Magalona (Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone, in French) to call for respect for Occitan and the mayor of the commune Noël Segura. Segura refused to comply with a court decision compelling him to withdraw signposts with the Occitan name of the village. According to AFP, the mayor said he is “ready to take all the consequences” to win the court battle for Occitan road signs, and if necessary, he will appeal in high court. “Regional languages are far from being dead”, he added.
The court battle was initiated by Robert Hadjadj, a member of the Mouvement Républicain de Salut Public (Republican Movement of Public Health). The organisation, which is against language diversity in the French Republic, lodged a lawsuit against the road signs because the organisation believes drivers can misinterpret them. A court backed the MRSP in October, but the mayor said he would not withdraw the signposts.
Segura is not alone in his struggle. Members of the Institute of Occitan Studies (the Occitan language academy), the Calandretas (Occitan-medium schools), Europe Ecology MEPs François Alfonsi and Catherine Grèze, as well as other Occitan councilors and mayors gave him their support last Sunday in Segura’s town. Only a few weeks ago Grèze questioned the European Commission about France’s attitude on language diversity and called for France to “implement European principles on minority languages”.
In France, Occitan senator Roland Courteau is trying to take the reins of the issue. He filed a bill in the Senate on November 26 allowing bilingual signposts at the entrance and exits of urban areas.
Source: Nationalia
The MELT project – Multilingual Early Language Transmission – has held its mid-term meeting in Helsingfors/Helsinki on Santa Lucia Celebration Day, 13 December. Santa Lucia brings the new light to the children every year during the dark and cold winter in Scandinavia.
The four partners within the MELT project, Brittany, Fryslân, Wales, and the Swedish Community in Finland, have finished the translation of the Guide Book for practitioners into 8 languages. Currently the book is used and evaluated in practice in day care centres. Practitioners and their trainers will add to the five chapters of the book with traditional and new rhymes, songs, stories, and games from the various regions, as well as with theoretical notions which are of special interest for the respective language communities. Once completed, the Guide Book will be published in 4 bilingual editions: Breton-French; Frisian-Dutch; Welsh-English and Swedish-Finnish. Furthermore the PDF documents will be published on the MELT website, and made available for further translations and adaptation into other languages as preferred by the associate partners of the project.
In addition to the Guide Book for practitioners a Guidance Pamphlet for parents will be published. This pamphlet will consist of a reference summary of a number of information leaflets and promotion booklets that have already been developed over the past few years in the regions of the partners. The Guidance Pamphlet for parents will contain essential information on the bilingual upbringing of children in order to prepare them for making an “informed choice” for the next step in their children's language career: primary school with mono-, bi- or trilingual education.
For the coming months, the MELT project is planning meetings in all four partner regions with local and regional decision makers on the pre-school period and the provisions for the youngest children: board members and directors of day care centres. The aim is to raise their awareness of the importance of early language transmission as such, but also of the importance of the “informed choice” for primary schooling. In this respect, special attention will be given to the interaction between practitioners of day care centres and teachers of primary education.
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Prof. Itesh Sachdev |
Ethnolinguistic Vitality in Multiethnic Societies: Some empirical data amongst British-born Bangladeshis & Cantonese-Chinese in London (UK)
On 14 December 2010 Itesh Sachdev, professor of Language and Communication, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, United Kingdom, paid a working visit to the city of Leeuwarden in connection with the SOAS-UCL/CETL/Mercator Research Conference ‘Languages of the Wider World’: Understanding Resilience and Shift in Regional and Minority languages.
In addition, he took the opportunity to make a presentation at the Fryske Akademy. This presentation focussed on issues of ethnolinguistic vitality, language attitudes and language use of minorities in modern urban settings. Following a general introduction focussing on key conceptual issues, some exploratory empirical data were provided amongst British-born adolescents of Bangladeshi and Cantonese-Chinese background in London using a survey methodology amongst 154 participants (73 Cantonese, 83 Bangladeshi).
In accordance with previous research, participants reported realistic vitality perceptions in that English was perceived as having higher vitality than own-group languages. Participants also reported having highest contact with English speakers, though identification with heritage languages and English was high for both groups.
Findings also revealed important differences between groups. Specifically, Bangladeshi adolescents reported more positive own-group language attitudes and identifications than Cantonese-heritage adolescents. Additionally, whereas Cantonese-Chinese placed greater value on English than on Cantonese for their identities, Bangladeshi participants reported that Bengali and English were equally important to their identities. These findings and others in the study suggest that the impact of English vitality on Cantonese for the second-generation Chinese adolescents maybe ‘subtractive’ and could lead to substantial reduction or even loss of own-group languages and cultures amongst the Cantonese-Chinese in the UK. In contrast, Bangladeshi adolescents in London appear to have a strong-enough base in terms of own-group vitality that probably has an ‘additive’ impact on their use of English without being threatened by the vitality of English in the UK. Overall, such findings reinforce the importance of valuing minority own-group languages and identities in multicultural and multilingual societies.
In a milestone vote on December 6th, the National Assembly of Wales declared Welsh as the official language of Wales for the first time. The measure states that “the treatment of the Welsh language” has to be carried in a way “no less favourably than the English language”. It also confers “a right to speak the Welsh language in legal proceedings in Wales” and creates a new post, “the Welsh Language Commissioner, with functions that include”, among other things, “promoting” and “facilitating the use of the Welsh language”.
Both First Minister Carwyn Jones and Plaid Cymru's deputy leader in the Assembly, Helen Mary Jones, said that the vote was “historic”. According to Carwyn Jones, “this measure provides us with some of the tools we need to ensure that the Welsh language can continue to prosper into the 21st Century, alongside the English language”. Helen Mary Jones said that “the fact that this piece of legislation declares, unequivocally, that the Welsh language has official status in Wales is a giant and historic leap forward”.
Nevertheless, activists for Welsh language were not that happy. Although welcoming the fact that “for the first time in the history of our country, the Welsh language is an official language in Wales”, Cymdeithas yr Iaith rights group spokesperson Catrin Dafydd critised the measure: “This law empowers officials, not people, and the flaws in the measure will demonstrate that in future. We have serious concerns about the difficulty that will be faced in implementing it for the benefit of the language and the people of Wales”. Dafydd warned that Cymdeithas “will call for new legislation in the next assembly to empower citizens and deliver rights for everyone to be able to hear, see, learn and use the language in their communities, across the whole of Wales”.
