English
A summary of the news for January.
The target of the Province of Fryslân has been reached! On December 31st 2010 there were at least one hundred Frisian playgroups and nurseries, as agreed with The Centre for Frisian Childcare, SFBO. Chairman Sikko de Jong of SFBO (Sintrum Frysktalige Berneopfang) said: “We are proud, a milestone must be celebrated, but we will continue to certify bilingual preschools and kindergartens”
Frisian Commissioner of Culture, Mrs Jannewietske de Vries, has announced the hundredth bilingual pre-school at a ceremony organized by SFBO (The Centre for Frisian Childcare). De Vries said: “The practitioners from the pre-school are the pioneers; they must implement bilingualism in the workplace.”
SFBO executes of the practical part in Fryslân of the MELT (Multilingual Early Language Transmission) project. This centre has a partnership with the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning (hosted by the Frisian Academy). Mercator is responsible for scientific research and is also overall project leader of the MELT project.
MELT
Four European language communities cooperate in the MELT project: Fryslân (Frisian in The Netherlands), 
Swedish speaking municipalities of Finland (Swedish in Finland), Wales (Welsh in Great Britain) and Brittany (Breton in France). The project aims to:
• Identify and share best practices in immersing children in a minority language
• Improve the skills of early years practitioners
• Provide young children with a strong educational foundation
• Provide information to parents on bilingualism
• Strengthen language communities and promote cultural and linguistic diversity.
The MELT project is a two year Comenius Multilateral Project co-funded by the EU’s Lifelong Learning Programme. The project proposal comes from a co-operation between regions on this topic within the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD).
Research paper
Folkhälsan (the Swedish-speaking municipalities in Finland) is responsible of the development of a toolkit in eight languages. The toolkit is still being tested at the participating pre-schools in the four regions. The toolkit is a key component of the MELT project. It gives structure and creates a language rich environment. The toolkit will offer them guidelines to support that process. A pamphlet will also be made that makes parents aware of the benefits of a multilingual upbringing. The research paper, developed by Mercator, will have a more theoretical approach, looking at models and completed with examples of good practice in the participating regions and will give recommendations.
Helsinki
As part of the MELT project there was a seminar in Helsinki to share experiences on ways of developing minority language skills among children between six months and four years old, on December 13th 2010. The aim of this seminar was to evaluate the work that has been done so far; the four regions all have their own role within the project. There were presentations and a visit to a Swedish-medium nursery in Helsinki.
Brussels Congress 2011
The project, funded by the European Commission, will run until the end of 2011, with a final congress in Brussel on October 6th 2011. The Regional Council of Brittany will organise this. The products of the MELT-project are not only meant for the four participating regions but also for the eleven language communities of the NPLD and later on for all multilingual regions in Europe.
Participants from all major research centers in The Netherlands came to the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam in order to attend the kickoff meeting of the Language Portal. Prof. Hans Bennis recounted briefly how the proposal for a Language Portal competed against proposals from all sciences and was ultimately awarded this most prestigious project grant. He emphasized that the same proposal should also be submitted by our Flemish partners to the Belgian authorities, as Dutch is one of Belgium's two standard languages. Dr. Eric Hoekstra (Frisian Academy) showed that the comparative Dutch-Frisian edge generates new and unexpected differences between the two language. Dr. Liesbeth Koenen and dr. Bieke van der Korst presented a format for the Language Portal's homepage (see picture).
Presenting the teams for Dutch and Frisian grammar
The chief aim of the project is to provide a complete parallel description of Dutch and Frisian grammar, that is, phonology, morphology and syntax. The Dutch team consists of:
Jenny Audring (morphology)
Hans Broekhuis (syntax)
Crit Cremers (syntax)
Björn Köhnlein (phonology)
Ton van der Wouden (morphology and project manager)
The Frisian team consists of three staff members of the Frisian Academy
Sybren Dyk (morphology)
Eric Hoekstra (syntax)
Willem Visser (phonology)
Arjen Versloot (manager)
Programming tasks will be taken care of by a team led by dr. Roderik Dernison and dr. Carole Tiberius of the Institute of Dutch Lexicography of Leiden University.
Major grammatical project
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) had decided in 2010 to subsidize this project with 1,7 million euro's, payable from the special NWO budget for prestigious proposals. This is the first time that the subsidy has been granted to a linguistic project, and it is only the second time that it has been granted to a project from the humanities.
A delegation of Frisian politicians and NGOs spoke in Strasbourg to a crowded European Parliament Intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages on Thursday 20 January, to discuss the problems arising over the Dutch Government’s lack of implementation of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Talks focused on the current situation for Frisian, the lack of protection from linguistic discrimination, the prospects for Frisian language legislation, and the need for greater decentralisation of powers to the Frisian Provincial Government.
The Intergroup put Frisian on the programme following the letter regarding Frisian in the Netherlands that was sent by 17 Frisian organisations, united in the Europeeske Buro foar Lytse Talen (EBLT), to the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. EBLT and the Steatekomitee Frysk (Provincial Council committee Frisian) of the Provincial Council of Fryslân - in which every political party of the Provincial Council is represented - were invited to explain their letters and views. As far as we know it was the first time the Frisian language was on the agenda of a meeting of a committee of the European Parliament.
The Frisian representatives also spoke to several Dutch members of the European Parliament. They were surprised by the lack of attention to the Frisian language in the Netherlands and promised to try to convince their colleagues in both the European Parliament and the Dutch Parliament to put the issue higher on the agenda.
Picture
From left to right: Mrs Jannewietske de Vries (member of the Executive of the Province of Fryslân), Mrs Richt Sterk (representative of EBLT) and Mrs Corrie Hartholt-Van der Veen (chairwomen of the Steatekomitee Frysk in the Council of the Province of Fryslân) explained the current situation of the Frisian language in the Province of Fryslân and The Netherlands.
