[Mercator-Education] [Mercator-Legislation] [Mercator-Media]

---

First Common Newsletter
From now on Mercator-Education, Mercator-Legislation and Mercator-Media will send out a common newsletter to inform its contacts. You will be informed of developments in the field of minority languages regarding Legislation, Education en Media.

Mercator Symposium [ 8/4/2003 - 10/4/2003 ]
First Mercator International Symposium on European Minority Languages and Research: Aberystwyth 8-10 April 2003

News

Legislation

Italian public radio and television (RAI) commits itself to protecting linguistic minorities

Croatia adopts constitutional law on minorities (Eurolang)

Spanish legislation discriminates regional languages in Spain (El Triangle)

There will be no minority representatives in the new minority committee at the German parliament (Eurolang)

Eblul opens an info point in Dublin (Press release)

The Basque public terminological database will be updated (Gara)

Media
New Scottish Gaelic Computer Products
Occitan Radio left out of Frequency Allocations

New CD-rom teaches Cornish

Education
Regional dossiers

Network of Schools

Survey on the position of minority languages in education in new memberstates

Publications

Some interesting books

 

 

 

---

Nordeste (http:www.jornalnordeste.com), a weekly regional paper in Bragan? Portugal has begun to dedicate a page to the Mirand?language, giving readers an opportunity to learn the language. According to sources involved with the project, the first section exclusively in Mirand?was to be included in an issue appearing on 21st January. The stated aim is to spread the language and encourage the people of Miranda to write in their own language which has hitherto been confined more or less to oral discourse. The official status which has been accorded to Mirand?has allowed the publication of orthographic conventions and written norms which will be of assistance with the new section in the newspaper. The page is to include pieces about research on the language, poems and an anecdote. The creation of this section is to have the support of the Mirand?scholar Amadeu Ferreira, a native of the Bragan?district and president of an association for the development of Mirand?culture. The page is, according to its producers, open to the involvement of all those concerned with the protection of the language.

 

New Scottish Gaelic Computer Products

?etec, a computer solutions company based on ?e (Islay) in the Hebrides has recently developed, among other Gaelic IT products, a Gaelic keyboard for PC and Mac (see www.gaelic-keyboard.co.uk). The keyboard facilitates the production of certain Gaelic accented characters, prioritising them over other letters on the standard keyboard which are not generally used in the language. Another product in the pipeline is a Gaelic speaking clock for the computer desktop. It is expected this will be launched shortly.

 

Occitan Radio left out of Frequency Allocations
The Conseil Sup?eur de l?Audiovisuel, the authority responsible for the allocation of frequencies to independent radio stations in France, has this month (January 2003), after a two year process of inviting applications, selected the radio stations to which it wishes to allocate available frequencies in the region of Languedoc Roussillon. Of the projects for Occitan stations, only the one in Narbonne has been accepted. The projects in Castelnaudary and Carcassonne, as well as R?o Lengadoc (www.radiolengadoc.com) in Seta ? Montpelher (S? - Montpelier) have been rejected. The implications of this for the media use of the Occitan language are particularly grave given the general lack of Occitan on public radio in the region.  In Seta, the relevant frequency has been allocated to a France-wide commercial station. R?o Lengadoc was founded in July 1999 by the Association Son e Resson Occitan.  It had been broadcasting on air on a temporary frequency between 18.00 and 22.00 and 24 hours a day on the internet. Since the decision not to grant a permanent frequency it now broadcasts on the internet only.

 

New CD-rom teaches Cornish
Today (Friday 24th January 2003) is the launch of a new CD-rom by the company Eurotalk. They have created this computer programme to teach the language in schools, at home, and elsewhere. The idea behind the project is to help schools teach the language even if there are not enough Cornish teachers around. The voices are those of Pol Hodge and Frances Bennett. Both Common Cornish and Unified Cornish Revised are used on the CD-rom. To hear an excerpt from the CD-rom click here.

 

Regional dossiers
A new regional dossier has been produced on Turkish in education in Greece. We are grateful to the author Konstantinos Tsitselikis for his effort. A revision was done by Dominico Morelli (Eblul, Italy). We have not covered all language communities in our regional dossier series. If your language community has not yet been included in our series and you or someone else is interested in compiling a report on the position of your language in education, please contact Alie van der Schaaf.

 

Network of Schools
Mercator-Education is setting-up a European Network of bi- and/or trilingual pre-primary and primary schools. Currently we are in the first stage of the project. In this stage we are trying to make an inventory of basic information on the bi- and trilingual schools in the European minority language community. The first stage will approximately take until summer 2003. In the future we would like to initiate and stimulate contact between the different participating schools and their pupils so they are able to learn from each other in a direct way. More information >>

 

Survey on the position of minority languages in education in new memberstates
In the framework of the enlargement of the European Union with ten new memberstates, Mercator-Education is drafting a basic inventory on the position of the minority languages in these states, with the emphasis on education. There a more than 90 different language groups in Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Malta, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Hungary. Mercator-Education plans to make Language FactSheets about a number of the minority languages in the new memberstates. For next year we are planning to compile regional dossiers about the Kashubians in Poland, the Poles in Lithuania and the Germans in Hungary. For more information please contact Tsjerk Bottema.

 

 

Council of State Decision regarding the bilingual education system 2002 France

Council of State Decision allowing under public regulations the Diwan institutions 2002 France

Organic law regulating the right to petition 2001 Spain

 

The ratification by the United Kingdom of the European charter for regional or minority languages - By Robert Dunbar, Senior Lecturer in Law of The School of Law at the University of Glasgow. (Soon available in Catalan)

You can also order:

These are paper publications. If you want to purchase a copy (cost: ?9 + post expenses), please contact: mercator@ciemen.org
For more information about linguistic rights and legislation, visit Mercator-Legislation.

 

Some interesting books