European language policy:Why is it so difficult?

Jacomine NortierUtrecht Institute of LinguisticsDpt. of Dutch language & culture

Outline

The official situation: complex but understandable

The actual situation: almost impossible to handle

My aim is NOT to solve this, but only to sketch.

Literature :

- Official languages (based on Abram de Swaan: Words of the World (2001, Polity)

Indigenous vs imported minority languages Guus Extra & Durk Gorter (eds): The other languages of Europe (2001, Multilingual Matters)

http://europa.eu/languages/nl/home

2007: The European Union has 27 member states

and 23 official languages:

1. Български (Bălgarski) - BG - Bulgarian

2. Čeština - CS - Czech 3. Dansk - DA - Danish 4. Deutsch - DE - German 5. Eesti - ET - Estonian 6. Elinika - EL - Greek 7. English - EN 8. Español - ES - Spanish 9. Français - FR - French 10. Gaeilge - GA - Irish 11. Italiano - IT - Italian 12. Latviesu valoda - LV -

Latvian

13. Lietuviu kalba - LT - Lithuanian

14. Magyar - HU - Hungarian 15. Malti - MT - Maltese 16. Nederlands - NL - Dutch 17. Polski - PL - Polish 18. Português - PT -

Portuguese 19. Română - RO - Romanian 20. Slovenčina - SK - Slovak 21. Slovenščina - SL -

Slovene 22. Suomi - FI – Finnish23. Svenska - SV - Swedish

De Swaan’s book:

First: general Later : focus on Europe

Although the languages of the world differ extremely from each other, the speakers are tied together by bilinguals in a tightly organized system: the language constellation.

The position of individual languages in the world system can be expressed by their Q-values (a measure of communicative value).

The language constellation:

English (connecting the supercentral languages)

Supercentral languages (long-distance and international communication) [such as Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese]

Central languages (national) [such as Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Dutch, Iranian]

Peripheral languages (oral) (98% of the world’s 5/6000 languages

Q-value of a language:

“... the proportion of those who speak it among all speakers in the constellation and the proportion of multilingual speakers whose repertoire includes the language among all multilingual speakers in the constellation.” (i.e. as an L2)

Value versus attitude René Appel (Appel, 2002): AdS holds an

extreme instrumental view on language tool.

The political economy of language constellations

Language: hypercollective goods Economic goods: the more they are

used, the less there is left of them Language: the more you use it, the

more valuable it becomes, both collectively and individually

Conditions - in order to be a collective good:

1- nobody can be excluded (true for languages)

2- Maintenance: collaboration of many but not all is required (true for languages)

3- The efforts of a single person are not sufficient (true for languages)

4- Utility does not diminish as new users are added (true for languages).

Consistently, AdS consideres language as a“hypercollective” good.

Why is there stable multilingualism in Euope (according to AdS)? It costs a lot of trouble and effort to

learn a new language But also (my addition): attitudes,

affective values attached to different languages; different levels of importance.

Outside-value (status) versus inside-value (solidarity)

Europe: “The more languages, the more English”

Initial, shortly after World War 2: French

Why not Italian? Or German? Or Dutch?

With the UK and Ireland: English

Europe versus other parts of the world: the average speaker in Europe is relatively rich and well-educated.

Languages in Europe: robust. Support from own government and European Parliament; taught in school, used in court, politics, governments: prestige, standardization, function in education

As far as the official languages are concerned! And within, not necessarily between countries

1987: 17% of the European citizens reported to be able to converse in English;

1997: the number has doubled. Increase mainly caused by young

people.

Nr 2 in popularity was German, except for the Dutch where Fench was second best.

Some countries: officially multilingual (e.g., Belgium). But common practice in Europe: societal monolingualism

Europe: State = nation = national language

States are the protectors of the official languages.

Law, regulations, administration, education, business, prestige and mass media are all associated with that single language.

Q-values in Europe:

English: number one French and German: second Again: only measurable factors.

Irrespective of affective factors & attitudes. Example: Netherlands.

AdS: Dutch prefer French because of communicative value (!)

European linguistic dilemma:

Maintenance of the languages

Effective and sucessful communication

In the European language constellation four levels of communication can be distinguished:1. Domestic communication (central and peripheral

languages). Threatened: by (1) the supracentral Ls for communication across borders and (2) minority languages within the borders.

2. The level of transnational communication, where English competes with French and German.

3. The level of the European Parliament and the European Commission, all official languages of the members of the Union have the same status. Decisions should be translated into all official Ls.

4. The level of the Commission’s internal bureaucracy where there are more or less informally adopted a few working languages.

Four levels of communication (repeated)1. Domestic communication: powerful relation

nation-state language: maintenance2. Transnational communication: 1: English; 2:

French and German3. European Parliament: all languages will keep

their position4. European Commission internal

communication: English and French (Spanish: world wide more important than

F/G but within Europe spoken in only one country)

Minority languages in Europe (based on Extra & Gorter) In short, there are three groups of

languages:

Official languages (‘robust’) Non-official indigenous (‘regional’)

languages with lower status Imported languages with low status

Regional languages restricted to one state: Breton 300,000 France

Corsican 160,000 France

North-Frisian 8,000 Germany

Saterfrisian 2,000 Germany

Sorbian 60,000 Germany

Friulian 550,000 Italy

Ladin 35,000 Italy

Sardinian1,000,000 Italy

Frisian 450,000 The Netherlands

Mirandes 15,000 Portugal

Galician 2,300,000 Spain

Aragonese 30,000 Spain

Asturian 450,000 Spain

Scottish 67,000 UKGaelic

Scots 1,500,000 UK

Ulster Scots 100,000 UK

Welsh 500,000 UK

Cornish 200 UK

Regional languages spoken in more than one state: Basque:

565,000 Spain

70,000 France Catalan:

6,376,000 Spain

102,000 France

20,000 Italy Occitan:

4,000 Spain

3,500,000 France

50,000 Italy

Sami:

18,000 Sweden 3,000 Finland

Low-Saxon:

1,800,000 Netherlands

8-10,000,000 Germany Limburgian:

1,000,000 Netherlands and

Belgium

Exceptional positions:

Luxemburgish: national language but it doesn’t have the status of an official working language in the EU.

Romani and Yiddish are non-territorial minority languages.

Regional indigenous languages always function as an L1 for children. Usually they are not learned as L2 (de Swaan would call them peripheral Ls).

Most official Ls are minority Ls outside their own nation-state

Examples: Croatian in Italy; German in Belgium and Denmark; Swedish in Finland; Finnish in Sweden.

Official languages, but without the protection as in ‘their’ nation states

Immigrant languages (from outside Europe): immigrant workers and their

descendants; refugees; ex-colonials. 1993: 368 million people in Europe;

4.8% (18 mln) were not citizens of the countries they lived in

Exact numbers: difficult Sometimes no data Illegals Nationality and country of birth? Residents of former colonies

BCPMF: Birth Country Criterion of Person and/or Mother/FatherProblems: what would we want to call the grandchildren

of e.g. Chinese immigrants: Chinese or Dutch? What to do with people with different

ethnicities from one country (such as Kurds) or the opposite:

same ethnic groups from different countries (Chinese from China and Vietnam)?

And ethnocultural groups without territorial status? (Roma)

Immigrant languages in the Netherlands:Groups BCPMF criterion Nationality

criterion

Dutch 12,872,000 14,768,000

Turks 272,000 154,000

Moroccans 225,00 150,000

Surinamese 282,000 15,000

Antilleans 94,000 -

Greeks 11,000 5,000

Italians 32,000 17,000

Former Yugoslavs 56,000 34,000

Portuguese 13,000 9,000

Spaniards 29,000 17,000

Capeverdians 17,000 2,000

Tunisians 6,000 2,000 Based on CBS 1997

Conclusion:

How can we talk about European language policy when we don’t even know how to carry out initial fact finding?