Mercator Network Newsletter 124

Newsletter focusing on multilingual regions dealing with regional or minority languages, but also immigrant languages and smaller state languages, with emphasis on language needs arising from migration and globalization. Submit your subscription request, comments or suggestions to: Johanneke Buning (Fryske Akademy).

LEARNMe project scores 8/10 in official evaluation

By: Jorrit Huizinga

The Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission has awarded the LEARNMe project an 8 out of 10 score in its final review of the project. The project formally ended in February 2016 and the agency was provided with all products, outcomes and supporting documents in April.

The EACEA evaluation process focuses both on the process of the project and on the quality of its outcomes. Reviewers were especially positive about the quality of the papers and discussions at the various LEARNMe events, the management and quality assurance of the project, and the strength of the Mercator Network partnership.

Needless to say the project partners are very pleased with these results. The agency’s conclusion that LEARNMe’s “final outcomes are of value and need to be widely shared” is an extra stimulus to continue the dissemination of the LEARNMe White Paper, especially as new translations are still being made (see elsewhere in this newsletter).

top

LEARNMe White Paper now available in Catalan

By: Jorrit Huizinga

The abridged version of the LEARNMe White Paper on Linguistic Diversity has now been translated into Catalan and Spanish. As you have read in previous editions of this newsletter, the White Paper is a key product of the Mercator Network’s LEARNMe project, containing it’s most important outcomes. Aside from the two new editions, the abridged White Paper is now available in English, Frisian, Dutch, Hungarian, and Hungarian Sign Language. Translations into French, Welsh and Finnish will be finished as soon as possible. All versions of the full and abridged White Paper can be found here.

top

The sooner the better?

By: Evelyn Bosma,
researcher at the Fryske Akademy

It is often said that for learning a second language, it is best to start as soon as possible. But is an early age of onset always better?

We investigated the Dutch language skills of five and six year old Frisian-Dutch bilingual children in relation to their age of onset to Dutch. They had been exposed to Frisian from birth and had started to learn Dutch between the ages of zero and four. The results showed that ‘the sooner the better’ does not hold in this case. For the correct use of grammatical morphemes, it doesn’t really matter whether children start at age zero or four. For receptive vocabulary, a later age of onset may actually be better. As older children have more cognitive, linguistic and social resources available, they learn the vocabulary of a new language more rapidly than younger children.

The results of this study were published in: Blom, E. & Bosma, E. (2016). The sooner the better? An investigation into the role of age of onset and its relation with transfer and exposure in bilingual Frisian-Dutch children. Journal of Child Language, 43, 3,581-607.

top

Constitutional court of Spain decides preparations for independent Catalonia are unlawful

July 7th - The constitutional court of Spain has declared the preparations by Catalonia to separate from Spain are unlawful. The judges prohibited, amongst other things, setting up a Catalonian tax service, and a Catalonian weather station.

In a referendum in 2014 a small majority of the Catalan people chose to separate from Spain. The Spanish government had forbidden this referendum and did not recognize its outcome. Since then, the Spanish government has repeatedly insisted that it will not allow Catalonia to become independent and will put a stop to it in whatever way possible.

Source: It Nijs

top

France rejects Corsica's demands over its language

July 5th - French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has rejected requests by Corsican nationalist parties to give the Corsican language a "co-official" status alongside French: "The Republic has only one official language, French, because it is used by everyone," Valls said during a speech to the Corsican Assembly, "We will not go back on that principal".

The French Prime Minister also rejected demands for an amnesty for "political prisoners" and for the creation of a favourable "resident" status for locals on the island.

Corsican nationalists have won a historic and unexpected victory in France’s regional elections, gaining two seats short of an outright majority on the island. The Pè a Corsica (For Corsica) list won more than 35% of the votes in the second round of polls on July 3rd, giving it 24 of the 51 seats in the local authority council.

Source:

• The Local
• The Guardian

top

Save the date: LangOER symposium September 26, 27

The event is co-organised by the LangOER project (Coordinated by Mercator Research Centre and supported by the Lifelong Learning Programme) with the Educational Repositories Network? - EdReNe, and will bring together experts in open education and digital content repositories with educational researchers and a variety of policy makers concerned with language learning and teaching. In this forum, discussions will focus on the pedagogical uses of ICT, social integration and inclusion, and, in particular, key issues related to the uptake of less used languages.

Register here. Registration is open till 5 September 2016

top

Mercator Research Centre publishes two new Regional Dossiers: Aragonese and Irish

The Regional Dossier Aragonese: the Aragonese language in education in Spain, was compiled by Iris Orosia Campos Bandrés, Research Fellow at the Department Didactics of Languages and Didactics of Human and Social Sciences from the University of Zaragoza, Dr. Juan Pablo Martinéz Cortés, from the University of Zaragoza and Santiago J. Paricio Martín, Secondary Education Teacher. The second edition of the Regional Dossier Irish in Ireland was compiled by Helen O Morchu.

Download the dossiers here:

• Aragonese: the Aragonese language in education in Spain
• Irish, the Irish language in education in the Republic of Ireland, 2nd Edition

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. They are free to download from the Mercator Research Centre website.

top

Expert in the Spotlight July-August 2016 Dr. Michael Rießler

Dr. Michael Rießler is a linguist working at the Department of Scandinavian Studies at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany. He holds an MA degree in Northern-European Studies from HumboldtUniversity of Berlin, a PhD in General Linguistics from the University of Leipzig and is an Adjunct-Professor in Finno-Ugric/Uralic Studies at the University of Helsinki.

Michael Rießler will be the author of two Regional Dossiers to be published by Mercator Research Centre in 2016/2017:

• Skolt Saami: The Skolt Saami language in education in Finland
• Komi: The Komi language in education in the Komi Republic in the Russian Federation

Read more on the Mercator Research website.

top

Bilingual education for young children: review of the effects and consequences: article by Ellen Bialystok, in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.

World Language Mapping System (WLMS), provides geographic dataset of the point and area (polygon) locations of the world's 7,100 living language groups.

Working Paper: Sami languages in education in Sweden and Finland: comparison between Swedish and Finnish language policies with regards to Sami education.

Position paper on language and technology, by NLPD and ENFIL, calling the European Union to reaffirm its commitment to linguistic diversity.

Langscape, gateway to language diversity, by Maryland Language Science Center.

Call for Abstracts for ALTE 6th International Conference, open until 15 October 2016. Contributions are welcome from across the language assessment community: academics, researchers, teachers, policy makers, regulators and language education experts

4-5 August 2016, Potsdam (GE): Sentence Processing in Multilingual and Other Less Commonly Studied Populations, international workshop on sentence processing in multilingual and other less commonly studied populations.

5-6 August 2016, Fukuoka (JP): The Globalization of Second Language Acquisition and Language Education, international conference. Deadline for abstracts: May 20, 2016.

29 August - 4 September, Lviv (UA): ECMI Summer School 2016: The European Minority Rights and Minority Protection Regime, Summer School hosted by Ukrainian Catholic University. Application deadline: 15 May.

31 August - 3 September 2016, Naples (IT): 49th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, hosted by the University of Naples.

1-3 September 2016, Budapest (HU): 1st International Conference on Sociolinguistics (ICS-1), hosted by Eötvös Lorónd University.

• 1-3 September 2016, Vienna (AT): The Xth International Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Multilingualism, hosted by the University of Vienna.

11, 13 September 2016, Ghent (BE): Conference on Multilingualism 2016, hosted by Ghent University.

14-15 September 2016, Innsbrück (AT): Language, Region and Identity in Secondary and Tertiary Education, hosted by the University of Innsbruck.

15-17 September 2016, Innsbrück (AT): Forms of Multilingualism in Secondary and Tertiary Education, International Conference, Innsbruck, hosted by the University of Innsbruck.

16, 17 September 2016, Zadar (HR): Perspectives on Language Sustainability: Discourses, Policies and Practices, conference dedicated to the presentation and examination of theoretically and empirically founded approaches to language endangerment. Call deadline 15 April 2016

16 September 2016, Vienna (AT): Creating Bimodal Bilingual Good Practice in Schools in Europe, conference hosted by the University of Vienna

19, 20 September 2016, Tromsø (NO): Heritage Language Acquisition: Breaking New Ground in Methodology and Domains of Inquiry, workshop hosted by the Arctic University of Norway. The purpose of the workshop is to bring together researchers from around the world who work on heritage language acquisition and processing from any theoretical linguistic perspective.

22-23 September 2016, Stockholm (SW): Explorations in Ethnography, Language and Communication, biannual conference for the Linguistic Ethnography Forum affiliated with the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL). Call deadline: 1 April 2016

27-30 September 2016, Koblenz (DE): GAL-Kongres 2016, conference organized by the University of Koblenz

7-8 October 2016, Belgrado (RS): Early and Beginners' Foreign Language Learning in Primary Formal Education, conference organized by the University of Belgrade, the Association for the Serbian/French Cultural Cooperation, and the Association for Foreign Languages and Literatures of Serbia

21-23 October 2016, Durham (UK): Education and Migration: Language Foregrounded, hosted by Durham University.

25-26 November 2016, Murmansk (RU): Documentation, Standardization and Teaching of Endangered Languages in Northern Eurasia, symposium organized by the Foundation for Endangered Languages. Call deadline: July 31

2 December 2016, London (Unitedk): Information Structure and Discourse in the minority languages of the Russian Federation, , call deadline 2 May 2016

2-5 December 2016, London (Unitedk): Information Structure and Discourse in the minority languages of the Russian Federation, , call deadline 2 May 2016

14–15 December 2016, El Jadida (MA): Cultures and Languages in Contact, call deadline 14 September 2016

top