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Mercator Network Newsletter 118

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Number 118 - January 2016

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The Mercator newsletter informs you about the news of the five Mercator Network partners:
Mercator Research Centre of the Fryske Akademy
Mercator Media Mercator Legislation / CUSC-UB
Stockholm University Research Institute for Linguistics
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 globalisation. Submit your subscription request, comments or suggestions to: Johanneke Buning (Fryske Akademy).
NEWS
LEARNMe project in final stage – White Paper to be published soon
Proceedings of LEARNMe Conference now available
Discussion paper: an invitation to join efforts in the sharing online of knowledge on minority languages
Call for proposals for the LangOER Conference 2016
French National Assembly rejects bill to protect minoritised languages
Council of Europe report: minorities in Georgia are being marginalized
Regional and minority languages in Spain: Council of Europe issues new evaluation report
Expert in the Spotlight: Roland Verra
Interesting Links
EVENTS

NEWS

LEARNMe project in final stage – White Paper to be published soon

LEARNMe, the current project of the Mercator Network, has entered its final stage. Because this stage is crucial to the project’s success, we would like to take this opportunity to inform you of the most important remaining item on our agenda. Within the coming weeks, a White Paper on Linguistic Diversity will be published, the project’s key publication. The White Paper will be available in an abridged and a full version. It will contain a review of the project and a number of considerations and recommendations related to Linguistic Diversity. These reflect the consensus of the Mercator Network on what needs to be done to ensure a strong future for linguistic diversity in Europe. The full version will also include an analysis of the fundamental debates in contemporary research on Linguistic Diversity. These debates have resurfaced time and time again during the LEARNME workshops and conference, and the analysis will provide ample material for future discussion. While the main document is in English, the abridged version will – in a later stage – also be made avalaible in some of the working languages of the Mercator Network partners. The White Paper will of course be a topic of next month’s newsletter, but will also be presented – either by letter or personally – to a number of key stakeholders on the regional, national and European levels.

If you know of any person or organisation who should receive the White Paper, do not hesitate to contact us!

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Proceedings of LEARNMe final Conference now available

The proceedings of the LEARNMe final conference, which was held in Budapest on 18-19 September 2015, are now finished and can be downloaded here or found on the LEARNMe website. The document contains a full transcripts of the conference’s opening speeches – including one by Tibor Navracsics, European Commisioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport – and summaries of all presentations and workshops. The conference was highly appreciated by attendants, and the proceedings clearly show why. Because the document reflects the wide range of topics and speakers at the conference, it can be recommended to anyone interested in minority languages and linguistic diversity.

Download the Proceedings of the LEARNMe final Conference

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Discussion paper: an invitation to join efforts in the sharing online of knowledge on minority languages

Mercator Research Centre has published the discussion paper: An inventory of best practices and potential partners for exchanging information on minority languages.

The paper provides a list of initiatives that currently share online their knowledge on minority languages. It considers options for Mercator research Centre to share online its own knowledge, and, finally, it invites other initiatives to take part in these efforts: to work together towards a new online language atlas, filled with the shared knowlede of those that concern themselves with the lesser used languages of the world.

The paper can be downloaded here. If the reader finds the list of initiatives to be incomplete, he or she is encouraged to contact the Mercator research centre, so that the list might be extended.

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Call for proposals for the LangOER Conference 2016

On 26 & 27, 2016 LangOER will hold its final seminar in Brussels: “Open Education: Promoting Diversity for European Languages”. The seminar is organised together with EdReNe, the Educational Repositories Network. Proposals for the seminar can be submitted up untill March 1st, 2016!

Topics under discussion at the seminar include: how Open Educational Resources (OER) and Practices (OEP) can be optimally transferred to language communities where there are limited financial resources and political support, and how new policies and initiatives can address existing roadblocks for OER/OEP adoption.

LangOER is a network of European partners supporting the enhancement of teaching and learning of less used languages through OER/OEP. The network, which is supported by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme, runs from January 2014 to December 2016.

For more information on submitting proposals, visit the Conference website

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French National Assembly rejects bill to protect minoritised languages

January 15, 2016 – A proposal by Breton ecologist parliamentarian Paul Molac to have bilingual education widely recognized and to protect linguistic immersion in schools, was rejected by an almost deserted French National Assembly: of the 27 members present, 13 members voted for, 14 against.

Molac filed the bill the previous year, when the ratification by France of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages had failed. Many French lawmakers oppose moves to strenghen the position of minority languages, because the Constitution states that French is the only language of the French Republic. Thus, such moves would be unconstitutional.

On January 26, Some 60 Breton civil society groups responded to the bill's rejection by sending a letter to each of Brittany's members of the French Parliament asking them to ensure the approval of a framework law for the promotion of endangered languages and cultures before the end of the current term.

Source: Nationalia

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Council of Europe report: minorities in Georgia are being marginalized

January 15, 2016 - Over the past five years, Georgia has made important progress in protecting national minorities, the report states. It also notes however, that national minorities remain marginalized, language barriers still exist, and the quality of teaching at minority language schools is low. In addition hate speech and inter-faith tensions are on the rise.

The committee writes, that while education in minority languages (Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian) is offered in some 300 schools, adequate standards are yet to be developed and high-quality education materials, in particular with respect to bilingual learning, remain scarce.

Experts warn that the introduction of Orthodox religious practices at schools, often accompanied by intolerant attitudes of teachers and school administration, can result in the alienation and humiliation of students belonging to national minorities with different beliefs.

Georgia signed and ratified the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in December 2005, it entered into force in Georgia in April 2006. About 84 percent of its current population of 4,661,473 consists of Ethnic Georgians. The remaining 16 percent include Abkhazians, Ossetians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Pontic Greeks, Jews, and Russians.

Source: Georgia Today

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Regional and minority languages in Spain: Council of Europe issues new evaluation report

January 21, 2016 - The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has issued six recommendations to the Spanish authorities on the application of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It has also published a Report by a committee of experts that assesses Spain´s compliance with the Charter.

In this report, the Committee of Experts acknowledges that Spain provides a high level of protection for co-official languages. It also notes that in the last years the implementation of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages has improved considerably. However, the report, which is the fourth prepared by the committee on Spain, also identifies some significant problems. The legislation to ensure that proceedings before judicial and state administration bodies can be conducted in the relevant regional language, has not been changed. In its current state, this legislation does not allow for this right to be exercised at the request of one party. In addition, the use of regional languages in some areas of the state administration and in public services, particularly in health care, is hampered by the lack of staff who can use them.

Read more here

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Expert in the Spotlight: Roland Verra

Roland Verra is director of the Ladin School Office in Bolzano, Italy. He also is the author of the Regional Dossier Ladin: The Ladin language in education in Italy. This Regional Dossier has been revised by Roland Verra and will soon be published by Mercator Research Centre (approximately February/March 2016).

"The major challenge in my field of work is safeguarding the position and chances of Ladin language in a multilingual school system, where German and Italian (and also English) are perceived as more important."

Read more here

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Interesting Links


Nationalia News, collected by the CIEMEN institute, devoted to issues concerning stateless nations, minorities, and minoritised languages, indigenous peoples and so on.

Look@learngealic, is a series of videos aimed at learners of Scottish Gaelic. It features interviews with experts and Gaelic learners, monologues and conversations.

What’s APPening? Our five fave Welsh language apps Dysgwyr Caerdydd, a community for Welsh learners in Cardiff blogs about the best smartphone apps to learn Welsh.

APiCS Online, a website funded by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, that maps pidgin and creole languages.

The California Language Archive is a well executed catalog and online archive of the indigenous languages of California, western North America, and the Americas.

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EVENTS

17-18 February 2016, Frankfurt am Main (DE): Multilingual CALL: Multilingual Language Learning with Digital Media in Primary and Secondary Classrooms, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.


18-20 February 2016, Tbilisi (GE): The Impact of Socio-Political Transformations on Language and Identity, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia.


17-18 March 2016, Riga (LV): Grammatical and Lexical Variance in Language System. 52nd Prof. Arturs Ozols Conference, latvijas Universitate, Riga, Latvia.


30 March-1 April 2016, Strasbourg (FR): The Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants: Lessons from Research. Symposium organised by the Language Policy Unit of the Council of Europe.


8-9 April 2016, Nottingham (UK): Diachronic Corpora, Genre, and Language Change International conference, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.


6-8 June 2016, Glasgow (UK): SOILLSE Conference 2016: Small Language Planning: Communities in Crisis International conference, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom.


22-25 June 2016, Bangkok Thailand: 15th International Conference on Language and Social Psychology (ICLASP15) Hosted by the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC).


30 June-1 July 2016, Lancaster (UK): BAAL Language Learning and Teaching SIG conference, hosted by Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Lancaster.


1-3 September 2016, Budapest (HU): 1st International Conference on Sociolinguistics (ICS-1), hosted by Eötvös Loránd University. Deadline to submit abstracts has been extended to 15 February 2016!


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With the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union.

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  This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.