III Mercator International Symposium
"Linguistic diversity and education: challenges and opportunities"

Ljouwert/Leeuwarden
(Fryslân, The Netherlands)
25 - 27 November 2004

Media News - MM

September 2004 - ML

August 2004 - ML

July 2004 - ML

Bulletin 59 - ML

Working Paper 16 - ML

Next Working Paper - ML

II Mercator Symposium's Papers - ML

New maps of languages - ML

New titles 2004 - ME

III Mercator International Symposium
"Linguistic diversity and education: challenges and opportunities"

MERCATOR-EDUCATION

The website of the symposium has been updated again. The preliminary programme with the abstracts is now available on our website www.mercator-education.org. As more information comes available the website will be updated in due time.

The III Mercator International Symposium will take place in Ljouwert/Leeuwarden (Fryslân, The Netherlands) from 25 - 27 November 2004. This conference "Linguistic diversity and education: challenges and opportunities"examines new issues and developments in the field of education, minority languages and learning within the European Union.

Key issues of the forthcoming symposium will be:

• Comparison of educational systems
• Minority languages and policy
• Information and infrastructure
• Linguistic diversity in the new EU member states
• Media & education
• Mother tongue and 2 other languages

On Saturday the 27th of November there will be a special plenary session: “towards an European digital library for minority languages”. In this session the pilot project “Digibyb” of Mercator – Education will be presented and demonstrated as well as options and future plans for the European portal for minority languages.

The symposium is organised by Mercator-Education in collaboration with the other two Mercator centres; Mercator-Media and Mercator-Legislation. It will be the third symposium in a row. The first Mercator International Symposium was organised in Aberystwyth on 8-9 april 2003 with as theme: "Shaping an agenda for the global age", and the second Mercator International Symposium in Tarragona on 27-28 February 2004 with as theme: "Europe 2004: a new framework for all languages?".

Mercator-Education
Fryske Akademy
Postbus 54
Tel: +31 (0)58-2343063
8900 AB Leeuwarden
http://www.mercator-education.org/

• Welsh Language Regional Newspaper Faces Uncertain Future [+]
• Partido Popular Prevents Television Channel from Broadcasting Children’s Programmes in Catan Only [+]
• New sports journal in Galician? [+]
• Romansh gains additional media coverage [+]
• Radio Finland continues to broadcast – for now [+]
• Gaelic Language Bill Introduced to the Scottish Parliament [+]
• Map of Hungary Published with German Place Names [+]

September 2004 - ML

• Greek school in Turkish Cyprus reopens 30 years later (CoE) [+]
• Spain “wishes” to make Basque, Galician and Catalan, but also Valencian, EU official languages (Avui) [+]
• Town signs in Low German for the first time (Plattdütskbüro) [+]
• Turkey fails to protect its minorities according to a recent report (Minority Rights Group) [+]
• The Catalan government fines Spanish post for using only Spanish [+]
  

August 2004 - ML

• Minorities in Armenia sceptical about new draft law aiming to protect them (www.iwpr.net) [+]
• MPs of national minorities ask for a minority law in Romania (Divers Bulletin) [+]
• Maltese Language Act adopted [+]
• Basque government presents the third normalisation language plan [+]
• EU official status for Welsh requested [+]
• Catalan / Valencian: The Spanish government’s policy contradicts several Valencian higher court decisions [+]
  

• CoE: Last recommendations and reports on Hungary, Sweden, Slovenia, Denmark and others [+]
• OSCE denounces linguistic cleansing in Transdniestria, Moldova [+]
• UN Human Development Report 2004 centres on cultural diversity [+]
• Ireland will seek official and working language status for Irish in the EU (Irish Times) [+]
  

Welsh Language Regional Newspaper Faces Uncertain Future

There are reportedly plans for Yr Herald, a Welsh language weekly newspaper established in 1855 and serving the north-western region of Wales, to cease publication. It has been proposed that a Welsh-language supplement should take its place in an English-language title, the Daily Post, which is owned by the same group, Trinity Mirror, the largest newspaper group in the UK. However, it seems unlikely that a supplement of this sort will carry the same type of content as a fully-fledged newspaper. There has, at the time of writing, been little comment from the paper’s owners and discussions are apparently ongoing. A request has come from the Welsh Language Board, the statutory body charged with the promotion of the Welsh language, to meet with the company and it remains to be seen what may come out of their discussions.

A situation such as this serves to demonstrate the precarious position of the Welsh language press when owned by English-language newspaper groups. Investment in the Welsh language press cannot be expected to be a major priority for such groups. It is for this reason that the project, housed at the Mercator Centre in Aberystwyth, to produce a new Welsh-language daily newspaper, to be know as Y Byd, has established the principle that the paper should have wide ownership among those who speak or are supportive towards the Welsh language.

Partido Popular Prevents Television Channel from Broadcasting Children’s Programmes in Catan Only

The Spanish right-wing Party Partido Popular has blocked a proposal that the soon to be established Balearic channel IB3 should use Catalan alone in its programmes for children, as a means of integration of all children living in the islands. The proposal had originally been put forward by the left-wing Esquerra Unida and the Greens.

Also, the future director of the Channel for the Autonomous Community of the Balearic islands has recently been named; Arturo Orrico has previously worked for the Valencian channel Canal 9. It is intended that broadcasting by IB3 should begin on March 5 2005. News on the channel is to be privatised (4 hours per day produced by the same company as on the local channel Canal 4). The language model for use on the channel will be determined by the University of the Balearic Islands, which will proabably mean the use of the variants recognised by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (Institute of Catalan Studies) which has its seat in Barcelona. However, it is likely that some oral dialect features will be used.

New sports journal in Galician?

One of the aims of the Plan for the Linguisitc Normalization of Galician is to create a new sports journal in Galician. The Plan, which aims to develop and promote the Galician language, was drawn up by the Xunta or regional government of Galicia. The Plan’s targets also includes an increase in the use of Galician in journals up to 30% by 2015. Implementers of the Plan also aim to dub 10 films a year.

The Plan has long been awaited, as it was a requirement of the1983 Law on the Galician language. Not everyone is happy about the new journal however. Some feel that the use of public funding to promote Galician in the media could be used covertly to finance pro-government journals.

Romansh gains additional media coverage

Swiss television has announced that additional media coverage will be made available for Romansh language programming. Overall an extra 2 million Swiss Francs will be spent.

The news in Romansh “Telesguard” will be screened on Swiss German Television at an improved timeslot of 5:45pm and will be extended from six to ten minutes duration. In addition, the programme will be screened six days a week instead of its current five, with a Saturday broadcast to be added in March 2005.

There will also be improvements with “Radio Rumantsch”, the radio station which broadcasts exclusively in Romansh. The station will be on air for almost 24 hours from January 1st 2006. Currently Radio Rumantsch broadcasts an average 14 hours a day.

The additional funds will be made available through minor budget cuts for German and French language programming. (Eurolang)

Swiss Media News, article in German http://www.persoenlich.com/news/show_news.cfm?newsid=46061

Radio Finland continues to broadcast – for now

The Finnish state-owned radio channel Radio Finland will continue to broadcast at least until the end of year 2006. However, Heikki Peltonen, the Director of Programming foresees that in the future options that are economically more efficient will be considered.

Radio Finland is a radio channel broadcasting in Finnish, and serves particularly the Finnish speaking population in Sweden. Although its programming is going to continue at least until the end of 2006, the format and way of broadcasting the programmes is under consideration. Paula Selenius from the Finnish Society (Suomi Seura) interprets this to mean that in practice there are plans to reduce programming even before the end of 2006.

Selenius says that talks with YLE, the Finnish state-owned broadcasting company, have covered issues such as reducing the programming to cover just news and current affairs programmes, and making listeners pay a fee through mobile phone operators, which has brought into question YLE’s role as a provider of public services.

On one hand there is disagreement about whether the broadcaster has a duty to also serve expatriates, and, on the other hand, whether the expatriates have a right to listen to the programmes even though they don’t pay a licence fee like people in Finland. An advantage in a fee-paying scheme would be that YLE would receive much needed income which could be used to keep the radio channel broadcasting.

Paula Selenius however believes that there are bigger plans behind the talk of reducing the services. She believes that the ultimate plan is to slowly cease broadcasting.

Gaelic Language Bill Introduced to the Scottish Parliament

The Scottish Executive conducted a public consultation on a draft Gaelic Language Bill between October 2003 and January 2004 and The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill was introduced to the Scottish Parliament on 27 September and published on the Parliament web-site on the following day. The Bill and accompanying documents are available at the following address:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/bills/billsInProgress/gaelicLanguage.htm
Requests for hard copies should be directed to Parliamentary authorities in the first instance. It is expected that the Parliament's Education Committee will consider the terms of the Bill, and its progress can be followed from the Parliament's web-site.

The public consultation has resulted in some ‘toughening up’ of the Bill’s language protection measures. It is hoped that the legislation will be enacted by the summer of 2005.

The main amendments made to the Bill following the consultation were that Bòrd na Gàidhlig (the Gaelic Language Board) will have powers to issue statutory guidance on Gaelic education to specify entitlement to Gaelic Medium Education. Bòrd na Gàidhlig’s advisory role will be expanded to allow it to advise all public, private and voluntary sector bodies on Gaelic issues.

Bòrd na Gàidhlig will also decide where to focus Gaelic language development and determine which bodies should produce language plans. A system has been introduced to give the Bòrd and Ministers powers to monitor the implementation of public bodies' language plans and issue directions whenever necessary.

However, not all Gaelic supporters expressed approval of the new measure. Alex Neil, a member of the Scottish Parliament representing the Scottish National Party, said the bill weakens the language regeneration effort by removing ministerial responsibility over Gaelic. He also descried the lack of concrete provisions for language protection. "It is absolutely pointless to have a bill that does not clearly illustrate how we will save the Gaelic language, and that is what we have," Neil said. He cited the failure to address the shortage of Gaelic teachers as an example of lack of specific measures to support Gaelic-speaking communities.

Map of Hungary Published with German Place Names

A map of Hungary with the German place names and much information about the Germans of Hungary has been published in a second revised edition. It is for sale priced 950 Ft from Neue Zeitung, a weekly newspaper serving the German-speaking minority in Hungary. Neue Zeitung was founded in 1956. It receives financial assistance from the Institution for Ethnic and National Minorities of Hungary. The Neue Zeitung Stiftung (the Institution of the Neue Zeitung) also publishes German books.

 Bulletin 59 - Mercator-Legislation

• Turkey: Regulation on the teaching of the different languages and dialects traditionally used by Turkish citizens in their daily lives
• Turkey: Regulation concerning radio and television broadcasts in languages and dialects used traditionally by Turkish citizens in their daily lives
• Finland: Act 766/2004 Amending the Act on Upper Secondary School
• Council of Europe: Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers on the application of the Charter by Denmark
• Council of Europe: Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers on the application of the Charter by Slovenia
• Last bibliography highlights
• Last links highlights
  

Working Paper 16 - Mercator-Legislation

In September 2004 we have published a new Working Paper in our Publications section. This document is available in English and Catalan.

• Language Planning in Estonia: Past and Present
• La planificació lingüística a Estònia: passat i present
  

As recently announced, Mercator-legislation has been publishing online the complete texts of the papers submitted by the speakers at the II Mercator International Symposium "Europe 2004: A new framework for all languages?" These papers are now available in our website.

New features have been included in the new "Languages and Legislation" section, which we presented in our last newsletter. Mercator-Legislation has now updated all the maps showing minority languages in Europe. You will find the new images under "General Information" for each language, when searching the information both by language and by state.

This updating has been carried out on the basis of a poster-map entitled "Approach to the Europe of Languages", published by CIEMEN (2003), and the book National Minorities in Europe, by Cristoph Pan and Beate Sibylle Pfeil (2003).

• Balans van het Engels aan het einde van de basisschool 2 : Uitkomsten van de tweede peiling in 1996 / Peter Edelenbos, Frank van der Schoot en Huub Verstralen. – Arnhem : Citogroep, 2000. – 96 p. – signature 100Gsla55
• Minority languages in Europe : Frameworks, status, prospects / ed. by Gabrielle Hogan-Brun and Stefan Wolff. – New York [etc.] : Palgrave MacMillan, 2003. – 238 p. – isbn 1403903964 – signature 100MLG258
• Growing up with two languages : A practical guide / Una Cunningham-Andersson and Staffan Andersson. – 2nd ed. – London [etc.] : Routledge, 2004. –1st. ed. 1999. – 159 p. – isbn 0415333326 – signature 100Gbe153
• O Proceso de normalización do idioma galego 1980-2000 : Vol. III : Elaboración e difusion da lingua / [coord. par] Henrique Monteagudo e Xan M.Bouzada Fernández. – Santiago de Compostela : Conseloo da Cultura Galega, Sección de Lingua, 2003. – 492 p. – isbn 8495415860 – signature 100Gal39
• From East Europeans to Europeans: Shifting identities and boundaries in the new Europe / Piotr Sztompka. – Wassenaar : Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS), 2004. – 20 p. – isbn 9071093468
• Gaelic medium education / [ed. by] Margaret Nicolson and Matthew MacIver. – Edinburgh : Dunedin Academic Press, 2003. – 79 p. – isbn 1900376534X – signature 100Sco40
• Taal, attitude en onderwijs in Brussel / [red.] Alex Housen, Michel Pierrard en Piet Van de Craen. – Brussel : VUBPRESS, 2004. –336 p. – isbn 9054873671 – signature 100Gbe154
• Legal language / Peter M.Tiersma . – Chicago [etc.] : the University of Chicago Press, 1999. – 314 p. – isbn 0226803023 – signature 100Gsg211
• Language policy / Bernard Spolsky – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2004. – 250 p. – isbn 0521011752 – signature 100Gsp49
• Onderwijskansen in het groen : Verslag pilots onderwijskansen op het platteland (Zeeland, Oost-Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe) / Anne Luc van der Vegt en Jaap van Velzen . – Middelburg : Scoop; Utrecht : Sardes, 2003. – 50 p. – signature 100Ge215
• Minority rights in Europe / Patrick Thornberry and María Amor Martín Estébanez. – Strasbourg : Council of Europe Publishing, 2004. – 682 p. – isbn 9287153663 – signature 100MLG260