January 2021
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Resolution Minority SafePack Initiative adopted by EP

A large majority in the European Parliament – with 524 out of 694 votes – adopted a resolution in support of the Minority SafePack Initiative (MSPI) on 17 December 2020. "With today’s vote (...) the European Parliament gave the strongest possible signal for the European Commission to initiate the legislative process based on the proposals of the MSPI. This is a great victory!", stated MEP Loránt Vincze, president of the FUEN. According to the resolution, the European Parliament "expresses its support for this European Citizens’ Initiative and calls on the Commission to act on it and to propose legal acts based on the Treaties." The European Parliament’ resolution is the next-to-last step in the MSPI’s road in the European institutions: the European Commission will present its communication on the actions it aims to propose on the initiative before 15 January 2021.

Read more at FUEN

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CoE recommendations to protect minority languages

The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has published recommendations on the protection and promotion of minority languages in Armenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Sweden. The recommendations are based on recent reports by the Committee of Experts under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

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€5.6M for sign language machine translation

The SignON project received Horizon 2020 funding of €5.6M by the EU. SignON wants to develop a mobile solution for automatic translation between sign and oral (written and spoken) languages. It targets the Irish, British, Dutch, Flemish and Spanish sign and English, Irish, Dutch, Spanish oral languages. They still have PhD/PostDoc vacancies!

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INTERESTING LINKS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EUROPE

● How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected Minority Language Media (MLM)? The findings from a series of expert interviews

● Catalan Language Public Office: the first public body for language policy in favor of Catalan in France

● The place of English in the post-Brexit EU raises questions

● Guardians of the Maltese language

● Article: 'Language use and Islamic practices in multilingual Europe' by Shahzaman Haque

● The French Senate is examining a bill on so-called regional languages [Radio interview - French]

● Crédin: an online academy for the Gallo language

● 'AINA' is born, to guarantee Catalan in the digital age

● Greek in Ukraine, Gronings and Bildts in the Netherlands, and Griko in Italy added to Wiki on Minority Language Learning

● The Office for the Defense of Linguistic Rights in the Balearic Islands comes into operation

● Article: "Are we in Fryslân yet? On the (in)visibility of Frisian in the linguistic landscape" by H. Kuipers-Zandberg and R. Kircher

● Spotify apologises for omitting Scots language option

● Corona vaccine Q&A in five South Asian languages in UK

● Are language and political autonomy correlated in the Celtic world?

Reflective practices in language education & research

ENROPE is an Erasmus+ project building a European network for junior researchers in the field of plurlingualism and education. As part of the project, several events are organised in different countries. On Friday, January 29th, the University of Istanbul (İstanbul Üniversitesi-Cerrahpaşa) hosts the ENROPE multiplier event 'Reflective Practices in Language Education & Research: Towards a Shared Culture of Professional Identity Development'. The lectures are about, among other things, the designing of multilingual games and apps, teaching English in multilingual contexts, and multilingualism in the classroom. Read the complete programme here. Time: 14:00-18:00 IST / 12:00- 16:00 CET. Registration is free, but required by January 25.
The next ENROPE event takes place at 15 and 16 March, 2021: you can join the ENROPE Online Study Phase (1.5 day online learning event) or drop by at the Tuesday afternoon Multiplier Event on research and biases.
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Linguistic emergency: "Will Catalan become extinct?"

Only 19% of young people in the city of Barcelona speak Catalan regularly. On Ibiza and Formentera, only 2.9% of young people usually speak Catalan. Overall, only 32.5% of the inhabitants of all Catalan-speaking territories use Catalan regularly, what makes it a seriously threatened language, according to La Plataforma per la Llengua.

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‘I’ll care for my patients in their mother tongue'

With increasing migration numbers throughout Europe, a lot of newcomers settle in bilingual regions and end up working in the healthcare sector. Mercator researchers Ramziè Krol-Hage and Ruth Kircher wrote an article about promoting minority language skills among these migrants to help improve patients' quality of care.

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African languages

History of African languages and its influence on the world today

ASL or BSL?

Nakia Smith (22) explains Black Sign Language
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Over 130 podcasts available in Welsh language

Y Pod is a minority language audio journalism and podcast project aiming to create an economically sustainable service for languages unsupported by the major podcast providers. On Y Pod, the Welsh language Podcast service, there are now over 130 podcasts available in the Welsh language. Statistics show that 37% of the audience is under the age of 34.

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Testing phase multilingual AR game for pupils

The Erasmus+ project VirtuLApp is almost starting the testing phase of BabelAR the game. Pupils (7-12 y/o) work together in this collaborative-multiplayer AR-game, which aims to show them the value of the language(s) they possess and to activate their language knowledge. On Jan 7, the game is shown in the online event ‘Multilingual Classrooms’. Teachers who want to help in the testing phase are welcome!

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Call: Conference on multilingualism in education

The research group Multilingualism on My Mind (MoMM) at the University of Bergen in Norway organises a two-day virtual conference on multilingualism in education from 18-19 March 2021. The MoMM 2021 conference welcomes contributions from all across the globe and the Call for Papers deadline is January 20, 2021.

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Call: International Symposium on Bilingualism

The International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB13) will take place online from 10-14 July, 2021, streamed from the University of Warsaw in Poland. The conference theme, 'Bilingualism in Flux', presents bilingualism as a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon existing on a continuum. The Call for Papers is still open (deadline: 15 January 2021).

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INTERESTING LINKS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORLD

● Australia's Wallabies sing anthem in indigenous language [Australia]

● Transcending monolingualism: the implementation of translanguaging pedagogy in higher education [World]

● 'Protecting indigenous languages is protecting biodiversity' [USA]

● The web must change its business model if it wants to become truly global and multilingual [WWW]

● World Arabic Language Day: theme, significance, history [World]

● Remembering the stories of us: Preserving our linguistic heritage [South Africa]

● As language issues heat up, a new year's wish [Canada]

● A Catawba man is working to save the language and history of South Caronlina’s only native tribe [USA]

● Home schooling in Covid-19: challenges for migrant families [Australia]

Hungarian and Sámi Regional Dossiers

'The Hungarian language in education in Slovakia' and 'The Sámi language in Swedish education' are the two latest publications in the Mercator Regional Dossiers series. Both are fully updated editions: Dr. Ildikó Vančo from the Slovakian university Konštantína Filozófa v Nitre updated the Hungarian dossier with the latest figures, Lieuwe Jan Hettema and Hanna Outakosk (Sámi University of Applied Sciences/ Umeå University) updated the Sámi dossier. The Regional Dossiers focus on the educational system in European regions that have an autochthonous lesser-used language, and on how the lesser-used language is embedded in this system. The Regional dossiers are written according to a fixed structure, so that they can be used for comparative research.
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INTERESTING EVENTS

2021, NEW DATES T.B.A., Zurich (Switzerland)
Symposium on Research Methods in Language Attitudes
Organised by the University of Zurich

2021, NEW DATES T.B.A., Valetta (Malta)
International Conference on Multilingualism and Multilingual Education 2020 (ICMME4)
Organised by the University of Malta.

ONLINE: 29 January 2021, Istanbul (Turkey)
ENROPE Multiplier Event: Towards a shared culture of professional identity development (seminar & workshop)
Organised by the ENROPE consortium, hosted by the İstanbul Üniversitesi-Cerrahpaşa.

ONLINE: 15 - 16 March 2021, Siegen (DE) and Leeuwarden (NL)
ENROPE Online Study Phase & Multiplier Event
Organised by the ENROPE consortium, hosted by the University of Siegen and the Mercator European Research Centre.

ONLINE: 18 - 19 March 2021, Bergen (Norway)
Multilingualism On My Mind 2021 (MOMM2021): Exploring Multilingualism in Education
* Deadline Call for Papers: 15 January 2021.
Organised by the University of Bergen.

24 - 26 March 2021, Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain)
18th International Conference on Minority Languages (ICML XVIII)
Organised by the University of the Basque Country.

5-7 May 2021, Murcia (Spain)
13th International GLAT Congress: Le monde connecté et les approches interculturelles: vers un nouveau paradigme des frontières ?
Organised by the University of Murcia

10 - 12 May 2021, Paris (France)
Minority languages spoken or signed and inclusive spaces
Organised by INSHEA.

26 - 28 May 2021, Zadar (Croatia)
New Contexts for the Use of Minoritized Languages/Varieties (NEWCON 2020)
* New Call for Papers: 1 November 2020 - 15 January 2021.
Organised by by the Linguistics Department of the University of Zadar,the SOAS World Languages Institute, Mercator European Research Centre and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Social and Language Documentation (CIDLes).

June 2021, Groningen (Netherlands)
TABU - International linguistics conference
Organised by Center for Language and Cognition, University of Groningen.

ONLINE: 9 - 11 June 2021, Brighton (United Kingdom)
Approaches to Migration, Language & Identity 2021
Deadline call for papers: 15 February 2021.
Organised by University of Sussex.

30 June 2021 - 3 July 2021, Barcelona (Spain)
30th Conference of the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA)
Organised by University of Barcelona/ EuroSLA.

5 - 8 July 2021, Athens (Greece)
14th Annual International Conference on Languages & Linguistics
Hosted by the Athens Institute for Education and Research.

ONLINE: 10 - 14 July 2021, Warsaw (Poland)
International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB13)
* Deadline Call for Papers: 15 January 2021.
Organised by the University of Warsaw.

15 - 20 August 2021, Groningen (the Netherlands)
AILA 2020: World Congress of Applied Linguistics
Organised by the University of Groningen, Multilingual Matters and others.

6 - 8 September 2021, Graz (Austria)
Language Teacher Psychology Conference 2021 (LTP)
Organised by the University of Graz.

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