September 2021
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FUEN Assembly of Delegates 2021                           

From the 9th until the 12th of September the FUEN Annual Congress 2021 took place in Trieste/Trst, Italy. During the FUEN Assembly of Delegates on Saturday, a main resolution was adopted on the future of autochthonous national and linguistic minorities in the European Union. The resolution asks the Conference on the Future of Europe to expressly include in the Treaties of the European Union the protection of national and linguistic minorities and their cultures and languages as an unambiguous competence and also that the respect of the Copenhagen Criteria is not limited to accession countries but is an obligation for all Member States.

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New book: Languages and Social Cohesion

A Transdisciplinary Literature Review. In their book, Gaby Meier and Simone Smala give a critical and systematic review of existing research located at the crossroads of sociology, social psychology and applied linguistics. It offers valuable insights for social contexts in which decision makers and researchers grapple with questions of social cohesion in the presence of linguistic diversity.

 

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Holi-Frysk project’s closing meeting

On October 6, the team of the Holi-Frysk project is inviting you to join their final meeting. The meeting is particularly interesting for professionals in secondary education. The project focused on how to approach the growing contact between regional and minority languages and migrant languages in the context of secondary education in the bilingual region of Friesland.

 

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INTERESTING LINKS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EUROPE

● Sporting advertising for minorities: Team Grænzland rides 1000 kilometers on a bicycle to Berlin and Copenhagen

● Unique Script for the Albanian Language Receives Unicode Recognition

● AI: The robot tour guide that speaks 33 languages

● Repeat university entry exams in Catalonia: Students decide whether to take them in Catalan, Spanish or Aranese

● Language, culture and identity in an Irish primary school

● Welsh showing other languages how to avoid ‘extinction’ says bestselling American science magazine

● Is a revival of Tatar selfhood possible despite Russia's identity politics?

● University of Exeter students help to show multilingual pupils the value of their language skills

● Welsh learner launches digital channel to teach Welsh through the medium of Chinese

● Blog post about raising a trilingual child: With my child, I had to fight for my language [in Dutch]
Click here to register

National Hispanic Heritage Month 2021

In the period from September 15 until October 15, the contributions and influence of Hispanic Americans to the US’s history, culture, and achievements are recognised and celebrated in the USA. For this occasion, different teaching resources are made available, including materials to teach Spanish to learners new to the language as well as heritage speakers.

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VirtuLApp's Final Multiplier Event!

VirtuLApp has its final multiplier event in Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. It covers topics such as linguistic diversity and technology in the classroom, language awareness and multilingual approaches and the VirtuLApp tools to welcome multilingualism in any classroom are presented. More information will follow here. Already Interested? E-mail us!

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Minority Talks with FUEN

Episode 3: the Danish high school in Germany

Webinar

Integration in minority languages

Statement of support for the Minority SafePack Initiative by the regional government of the province of Fryslân

In a Statement of Support issued on 7 September 2021 the regional government of the Province of Fryslân expresses its support for the European Citizens' Initiative "Minority SafePack — one million signatures for diversity in Europe" and particularly welcomes the legal action brought by the MSPI Citizens' Committee against the European Commission in this regard.

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Supporting language learning in Early Childhood Education and Care

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) participation can support the development of children’s competences in the language of education while also taking into account and respecting their first language. A curriculum for ECEC can take a holistic approach to support the child’s development, including opportunities for language development.

 

 

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INTERESTING LINKS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORLD

● Disputes over Russian language in Central Asia [Central Asia]

● Hmong speaker creates language app to preserve her native Hmong dialect [www]

● First South African film in Cape Town's Afrikaans dialect [South Africa]

● One of the newly added languages to the omniglot encyclopedia: Misantla Totonac [Mexico]

● Taiwan opens Chinese language learning centres in the US [USA]

● International Day of Sign Languages on September 23 [www]

● The first-ever dictionary of South Africa’s Kaaps language has launched [South Africa]

● Open access publication: Language Activism-Imaginaries and Strategies of Minority Language Equality [www]

Report about minority youth by the Youth of European Nationalities (YEN)

“Minority Youth in Europe: A State of Play” is a report calling attention to the long-standing challenges faced by minority youth. It provides insight into issues that minority youth are facing in their daily lives, like the lack of minority language representation, and explains the mechanisms behind it.

 

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Portugal signs the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

On 7 September 2021, the Permanent Representative of Portugal to the Council of Europe signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The signing is to be followed by Portugal’s ratification of the Charter. The Charter has been ratified by 25 states. A further nine states have now signed, but not yet ratified it.

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INTERESTING EVENTS

27 - 29 September 2021, Online
CLARIN Annual Conference 2021
Organised by CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure)

6 October 2021, Leeuwarden (Netherlands)
Final Meeting of Holi-Frysk project
Organised by NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences

14 - 15 October 2021, Flensburg (Germany)
International conference: Multi-platform and Connecting Communities: Contemporary Challenges for Minority Language Media
Organised by the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)

2-3 November 2021, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden (The Netherlands)
Final Multiplier Event VirtuLApp
Organised by the Erasmus+ project consortium VirtuLApp, hosted by Mercator

11 - 13 November 2021, Online
International Conference on Community/Heritage Language Education
Sydney Institute of Community Languages Education at Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney

18 November 2021, Wolvega (Netherlands)
‘Symposium erkende talen’: taalemancipatie
Organised by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties)

26 November 2021, Online
Mercator Multilingualism Lecture. We talk, they listen: The role of language exposure in early multilingual development
Organised by Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning

29 - 30 November 2021, Paris (France)
2nd International Symposium on Family Language Policy
Organised by the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco)

15 - 16 December 2021, (Online)
The Value of Languages in a Multilingual World
Organised by Multilingualism Research Centre (MRC)/ Macquarie University Sydney (Australia)

16-19 December 2021, Tirana (Albania)
Conference 'Endangered Languages and Diaspora'
Organised by the Foundation for Endangered Languages and the Center for Research and Publication on Arbëresh

Spring 2022 (postponed), TBA
International conference: Multi-platform and Connecting Communities: Contemporary Challenges for Minority Language Media
Organised by Europa Universität Flensburg, European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) and the University of the Basque Country

27-29 June 2022, Warsaw (Poland)
World Congress of Modern Languages and the Annual Conference of the Polish Association of Modern Languages
Organised by the International Federation of Language Teacher Associations, the Polish Association of Modern Languages and the Faculty of Modern Languages, University of Warsaw

13-16 July 2022, Ghent (Belgium)
Sociolinguistics Symposium 24 - Inside and beyond binaries
Organised by Ghent University

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