Mercator Network Newsletter 121

Number 121 - April 2016

First translations of the LEARNMe Whitepaper published

By: Jorrit Huizinga

In April, the Mercator Network published the following three new translations of the LEARNMe White Paper on Linguistic Diversity (abridged version):

• Hungarian / Magyar
• Dutch / Nederlands
• Frisian / Frysk

The LEARNMe White Paper on Linguistic Diversity is a key document of the LEARNMe project, which officially ended in February of this year. The translations are the project’s last products to be delivered. In the coming months, we expect further translations in Catalan, Spanish, Welsh, French, Finnish and Hungarian Sign Language. Of course the original English abridged version, as well as the full version, can still be found on the Mercator Network website

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Mercator Network members at OSCE/HCNM high level meeting The Hague

By: Cor van der Meer

On 20 & 21 April two representatives of the Mercator Network were invited to participate in the OSCE/HCNM high level meeting to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Hague Recommendations Regarding the Education of National Minorities in the Hague, Netherlands. A two-day meeting with many interesting speeches and presentations combined with panel discussions and workshops.

During the meeting Jarmo Lainio and Cor van der Meer of the Mercator Network presented the final report of the LEARNMe project to OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Astrid Thors.

Read more about The Hague Recommendations
Read more about Ljubljana guidelines

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Mercator presents Papiamentu in Perspectief

On May 3 the report Papiamentu in Perspectief, was presented by Mercator Research Centre team members Richt Sterk and Cor van der Meer to Christopher Frans, advisor to Bonaire representative Dirksz. Dirkz himself was unable to attend, due to the local government on Bonaire being recently resigned.

The report Papiamentu in Perspectief, commissioned by the Province of Fryslân, analyses an earlier report by the Dutch TaalUnie (language untion): Nederlands op z’n BESt, commissioned by the Dutch State Secretary of Education. The TaalUnie report offered a set of recommendations to stimulate the use of the Dutch language on the island Bonaire. However, this report received much criticism and many agreed that it was written too much from a Dutch prespective.

Download Papiamentu in Perspectief, een kritische analyse van het rapport Nederlands op z'n BESt.

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#TIML: Tweet in your minority language!

April 21st was Là na Gàidhlig (Gaelic Twitter day), and also Fryske Twitterdei (Frisian Twitter day). Thousands participated by sending thousands of Gaelic and Frisian tweets out into the world .

This year, the two organising parties, the Scottish Social Media Alba, and the Frisian Afûk, teamed up to extend these two regional events to all minority languages, by urging minority language speakers around the world to tweet in their mother tongue using the hashtag #TIML (Tweet in your minority language).

Frisian Twitter Day was set up five years ago to create awareness of minority languages and to promote the use of written Frisian online. Gaelic Twitter Day followed several years later in 2014. Hopefully, the tags #Gàidhlig, #Frysk, and #TIML (these tages may be used all year round!) will become increasingly popular.

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Regional Interest Group for Northern Eurasia in the making

The Foundation of Endangered Languages aims to set up a Regional Interest Group to support, document, protect, and promote endangered languages in the arctic and subarctic regions between Fennoscandia and the Pacific Rim. At present, the numerous and linguistically diverse indigenous languages in this area are highly vulnerable and may even face extinction if no effective measures are taken soon.

To set up this Regional Interest Group and bring together knowledge about the area, a symposium will be held on 25 and 26 November 2016. This symposium is made possible by the combined efforts of academic institutions based in Russia and the Netherlands: specifically the Murmansk Arctic State University and the Mercator Research Centre of the Fryske Akademy, the Department of Frisian Language and Culture and the Centre for Russian Studies of Groningen University.

Abstracts for the symposium are welcome until July 31th and may concern endangered language documentation, preservation and revitalization in the northern Eurasian area.

More information may be found here.

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Mercator Research Centre publishes the second edition of Galician in Spain

The second edition of Galician in Spain has been compiled by Xosé-Henrique Costas (Universidade de Vigo) and Andrea Expósito-Loureiro.

Download the dossier here: Galician in Spain 2nd

Mercator's Regional Dossiers concern education of minority languages in Europe. Topics under discussion include a country's education system in general, a country's policy with regards to education of its minority languages, language use in schools, difficulties faced by teachers and policy makers, and the solutions they have come up with. All dossiers are written by experts in Mercator's network and edited by the research centre in Ljouwert. All dossiers can be found on the Mercator Research Centre website.

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Expert in the Spotlight in May: Robert Teare

Since 2012 Robert Teare is Manx Language Officer in the Department of Education and Children at the Isle of Man Government, Isle of Man. He also is the author of the Regional Dossier Manx, The Manx language in education in the United Kingdom which will be published in 2016.

"We are currently working on a new, sixty lesson, interactive course for learners. There will be a workbook to go with the course and we expect that the content will help adult learners as well as school pupils."

Read more here

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Pointing at the sun : In Nheengatú it seems gestures instead of words are used to indicate time of day

Oxford Global Languages: new initiative by Oxford Dictionaries to find answers online to language questions.

Roma institute being set up: press release from The European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) on the 45th International Roma Day.

1 Million euros to foster Occitan language, as announced by The Public Office of the Occitan Language (ÒPLO).

The catalogue of the library of Mercator Research Centre can be searched in the catalogue of Tresoar: http://katalogus.tresoar.nl/

The database with bibliographic data consists of more than 6500 entries, both books and articles. They deal with minority languages, bilingual and multilingual education, language learning, language policy and related subjects.

First language acquisition / Eve V. Clark – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016 – isbn 9781316507605 – signatuur Merc100Gsla272

Language, identity and migration / [ed. by] V.Regan, C.Diskin and J.Martyn – Peter Lang AG, 2016 . – signatuur Merc100Gsg289

Participation in Public and Social Media Interaction / [ed. by] Marta Dynel and Jan Chovanec – John Benjamins, 2015 – isbn 9789027256614 – signatuur Merc100Gsg284

Towards Openly Multilingual Policies and Practices: Assessing Minority Language Maintenance across Europe, Laakso, Joanna [et al] – Multilingual Matters, 2016– isbn 9781783094950 – signatuur Merc100MLG401

The Multilingual City – Multilingual Matters, [ed. by] Lid King and Lorna Carson, 2016 – isbn 9781783094769 – signatuur Merc100Gsb245

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, [ed. By] Farzad Sharifan – Routledge, 2014. – isbn 9780415527019 – signatuur Merc100Gsl108

Policy and Planning for Endangered Languages, [ed. By] Mari C. Jones – Cambridge University Press, 2015 – isbn 9781107099227 – signatuur Merc100MLG403

Multimodale Kommunikation im Social Web : Forschingsansätsze und Analysen zu Text-Bild-RelationenSiever, Christina Margrit – Peter Lang AG, 2015 – isbn 9783631651612 – signatuur Merc100Gsg285