News

21/01/2012 - 18:46

The vitality of the Basque language in the Northern Basque Country

A special group of experts on endangered languages from the UNESCO presented a report in 2003 entitled Language Vitality and Endangerment. The objectives of the report were to define the level of erosion of the languages and establish the evaluation criteria for the danger of being lost.

03/01/2012 - 19:05

Lagundromoa and the simpletons of Saint Sebastian

«No, Marije, no!» I recalled myself saying. Like every Monday, we were returning from Leioa, from the umpteenth session of the Linguistic Planning Diploma, the first result of Hiznet, in the 1993-1994 course.

14/12/2011 - 17:38

Re-domesticate Basque, in the hands of parents

Many of the minority languages, over time, lose their areas of use and their number of speakers; this is why we have seen their survival run great danger. The languages which have ceased to be spoken in the home-family-neighbourhood circles and find it difficult to take root again in those circles, as a consequence, new generations do not acquire the adequate conditions to socialize in a normal manner in these languages.

06/12/2011 - 10:34

The current status of the Russian language in the post-Soviet era

The dissolution of the Soviet Union, which occurred in the summer of 1991, led to the establishment of new states in the territory of the old superpower. 15 new states occupy said area, to which another four entities would have to be added, self-proclaimed states which have little or no international recognition (Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia).

22/11/2011 - 08:12

Catalan and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Spain

On September 16th the Observatory of the Catalan Language sent its report, in English and Catalan, on the application of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in the Spanish state -with regard to the Catalan language, to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

17/11/2011 - 15:15

The Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa obtains Bikain certification

The Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa has been awarded middle-grade certification in the Bikain quality in linguistic management certificate assessment.

14/11/2011 - 13:57

Sister languages and linguistic diversity

For all the talk in favour of linguistic plurality that argument carried forth by all supporters of cultural diversity, when it comes down to measuring multilinguistic progress very little seems capable of stemming the overflowing tide of English language predominance and the role of English as the sole real voice of the globalized world. In such a context all efforts aimed at increasing multilingual usage and comprehension should be welcome and made known. One of the most recent among such efforts is the launch of a textbook titled EuRom5, which took place at a linguistics congress in Rome on October 20-21, 2011.

16/10/2011 - 14:09

Against school immersion

As you know, the Supreme Court of the Kingdom of Spain has ruled against the Catalonian school linguistic immersion model because, according to the members, the linguistic regime derived from the Spanish Constitution establishes freedom of choice on the co-official language in which the students or parents want to be educated. With this ruling the High Tribunal obligates the Catalan Government to (re)introduce Spanish as a teaching language. The militants of Spanish cultural nationalism who initiated the legal process against immersion stated that, «we will go before the European Court if the courts here chicken out before political power».

29/09/2011 - 16:53

Speaking in Basque is more ecological

In addition to being true, a biologist friend recommended me to talk about it, to spread the idea and to take it to society.

14/09/2011 - 16:42

Creating an alphabet for an unwritten language

The first written documents date back to more than 5000 years ago, and yet not all of the present-day 5000 languages have a common way of encoding the speech in written symbols. The spread of writing involved as much analogy and imitation as innovation; thus, the script of Phoenician traders is at the origin of almost all modern alphabetic writing systems including Arabic and Indic scripts, Greek, Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, and dozens of derived alphabets spread across the five continents.

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