Albisteak
Le catalan, la langue de 10 millions d'européens
Every year around the month of February a large-scale fair is held in Paris expo Porte de Versailles, by the Porte de Versailles. Expolangues is an important event which has been a showcase for the linguistic market, both for professionals and the general public, for the past 25 years. New courses, academies, teaching methods and technology all vie with each other for attention.
According to their website, last year the fair attracted over 10.800 professionals and over 11.700 persons. 30 countries and over 80 languages were represented there. The Catalan language always has an institutional presence at the rair, through the Institut Ramon Llull.
Each year a country is invited as a Guest of Honour. Naturally the organizations representing the Guest of Honour have the spotlights on their activities at the fair. In recent years the guests are been the Russian Federation (2007), the People's Republic of China (2008) and, exceptionally, the European Union (2009).
This year, however, the Institut Ramon Llull, alongside other organizations from the Catalan-speaking territories, will have more work to do than previously. For the 2010 Guest of Honour is another exception to the general rule, instead of a country being invited, it is a language: the Catalan language.
Under the heading Le catalan, la langue de 10 millions d'européens (The Catalan, the language of 10 million Europeans), the presence of Catalan will be used to signal its considerable demographic scale (much larger than that of many of the official and working languages of the institutions of the European Union, for instance), and a status that in many ways places it in a category of its own. Unlike Dutch, Italian or Danish, for instance, it is spoken natively in four European countries, yet the introduction of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) will prevent, overnight, hundreds of thousands of viewers from being able to see the main Catalan-language channel, TV3, which broadcasts from Catalonia. Catalan is the language of all announcements at the FC Barcelona football stadium, yet Catalan Members of Parliament cannot use their language in the Spanish Parliament.
It is to be hoped that this occasion, which follows on from a similar experience at the 2008 Frankfurt International Book Fair, will help to increase still further the number of students of the language at universities in France. There are Chairs in the language at two universities: Sorbonne (Paris IV) and Montpellier. It is also taught at a number of others, including, of course Perpinyà.
The author of this contribution has accepted an invitation from the European Commission to take part in a special session optimistically entitled Catalan et gallois: deux langues, deux histoires réussies (Catalan and Welsh: two languages, two success stories).
Miquel Strubell
Professor of Languages and Cultures Studies of Open University of Catalonia
