Linguistic diversity
It’s never too late ...
Attractive language promotion with Language Diversity.
Multilingualism and linguistic diversity are fundamental values of Europe. This is enshrined in Article 22 of the Charter for Fundamental Rights of the European Union: “The Union shall respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity.”
The EUROMOSAIC study, which was commissioned by the European Commission, found that the critical threshold for the survival of a language lies at 300,000 speakers.
Among the large stateless languages is Catalan with around 6 million speakers. Welsh, Basque, West Frisian, Breton and some languages in Russia like Bashkir and Chuvash have more than the critical number of speakers. Below this threshold are the large majority of regional and minority languages, like Ladin, Rhaeto Romansh, Upper and Lower Sorbian, North Frisian and Kashubian.
The preservation and promotion of their own language, is for every minority one of the most important areas of activity. Attractive language promotion has to adapt to new demographic challenges and to new media-related requirements. What is needed are reliable framework conditions.
FUEN puts its trust in initiatives on language policy and promotion, cooperation in European bodies such as the European Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism and networking with other actors, such as the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD).
In particular, FUEN promotes linguistic diversity and multilingualism with its Language Diversity team. With a campaign with the slogan: “It’s never too late ...”, actions for a wide public and the recently awarded MiLaS-language-prize, the project sets the right course. The project, which is funded by the European Commission and other partners, creates awareness equally amongst minority and majority.
More information:
www.language-diversity.eu
www.rml2future.eu
