Read more
The European linguistic diversity goes far beyond the official national languages of the present 27 member states of the European Union. In every country several languages of smaller or larger groups of speakers are used besides the official language or the languages of the majority population. These languages are autochthonous languages that have been used for a long time in the individual country as well as allochthonous languages of different groups of migrants and their descendants. The sometimes complicated relations between national, regional and minority languages within various countries are discussed in this volume. Besides reports on several countries, the general sociolinguistic and legal conditions are dealt with in overview contributions. In addition, the Dublin Declaration on the relationship between official languages and regional and minority languages in Europe is presented in 24 languages.
List of contents
Contents: Ferdie Mac an Fhailigh: Welcome address - Éamon Ó Cuív TD: Aire Gnóthaí Pobail, Tuaithe agus Gaeltachta - Konrad Fuhrmann: Opening speech - Gerhard Stickel: Oscailt/Opening - Miquel Strubell: When sticking out your tongue is even ruder! - Robert Dunbar: Successful cohabitation: What contribution can the law really make? - Peter Hilpold: Das Sprachenregime der Europäischen Union - Michel Alessio : Les relations entre les langues nationales officielles et les langues régionales ou minoritaires - István Kenesei: Minority languages in Hungary - Nicoletta Maraschio/Cecilia Robustelli: Minoranze linguistiche: la situazione in Italia - Elena Jolanta Zabarskait : Multilingualism in Lithuania - Lena Ekberg: The national minority languages in Sweden - their status in legislation and in practice - Ulrike Haslinger: Zur sprachlichen Situation in Österreich - Anna Lazarova/Vasil Rainov: On the minority languages in Bulgaria - Pádraig Ó Riagáin: The Relationship between official national languages and regional and minority languages: Ireland - Walery Pisarek: The relationship between official and minority languages in Poland - Slavomír Ondrejovic: Sprachsituation und Sprachpolitik in der Slowakei und die Novellierung des Gesetzes über die Staatssprache der Slowakischen Republik - Manuel Casado Velarde: Spain, a plurilingual state: Spanish and other official languages.
About the author
Gerhard Stickel is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Mannheim. From 1976 to 2002 he was Director of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache, the central research institution for German. He was co-founder of the European Federation of National Institutions for Language (EFNIL) and has been president of this network of central language institutes of the EU states since 2003.
