Linguae Europaeae

by Eda Derhemi | Editor: Jessica Nicholas (PhD Candidate in French); photos: Kathryn Nicholas This is Part Two of a two-part series.  Click here to read Part One! Bio: Eda Derhemi (PhD in Communication, 2003) is a lecturer in the department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, and an adjunct assistant professor of Communications in the ICR. She completed her undergraduate studies in Linguistics and Literature at the University of Tirana, Albania, and her graduate studies in Illinois. She has extensive teaching and research experience in Italian Language, Linguistics and Media Studies. She worked as a correspondent journalist for Deutsche Welle, and is a regular writer of opinion pieces in the main Albanian media. Her interests are: linguistic endangerment and language death, minority languages and ethnicity in the EU, language of the media and propaganda, Balkan and Mediterranean studies, Arbëresh and Arvanitika. Breathless, I enter in the main area of Hydra’s p...

by Alexandra Gecas | Image source: worldatlas.com Our world is in a perplexing situation when it comes to linguistics: many more people are becoming fluent in several languages while multiple minority languages are facing an uncertain future. Alexandra Jaffe acknowledged various aspects of any minority language (truly any language) such as the difference between “native”, “partial”, and “learner” as well as the differences between a language learned traditionally and a language taught in school. Her focus was on Corsica and Corsican is influenced both by the French and Italian language. She noted that Corsican, a polynomic language, is no longer the first language acquired and has been replaced by French or English. It is not the mother tongue or the foreign language, but rather “a creative source of identity.” In an effort to preserve the language, Corsican is now offered at all levels of public schooling in Corsica and is seen as a “passport to other romance languages.” Im...

Escrito por Kevin P. Scannell | ¿Qué pasaría si todo ese tiempo que pasas frente a la pantalla de la computadora usando los medios sociales con tus amigos pudiera utilizarse para destacar algo del Patrimonio Cultural de la Humanidad? El Profesor Kevin P. Scannell del Departamento de Matemáticas e Informática de la Universidad de San Luis está proponiendo un proyecto cuyo objetivo es el de animar a grupos que hablen una lengua indígena a que la usen en los medios sociales. ¡Esta innovadora iniciativa implica la traducción de la interfase en Facebook! Con el permiso del autor, estamos reproduciendo aquí el acceso al blog del Profesor Scanell desde Alzando las Voces ( presiona aquí ) titulado: “Facebook en tu Lengua Indígena o en tu Lengua en Peligro de Extinción”. ¡Te einvitamos a que lo leas y te sumes al proyecto! Nota de Rising Voices: Este artículo es republicado en este espacio en colaboración con Indigenous Tweets. Lea el original aquí [en]. El proyecto Indigenous T...

by Zsuzsanna Fagyal-Le Mentec | "Commemorating is remembering the first step of a journey of a thousand miles…" (Unknown) Twenty years ago on November 5th 1992, an important step was taken towards protecting small languages in Europe. The Council of Europe’s landmark international convention, called the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages was opened for signature, calling on the Council’s member states to protect and promote the small languages that have been spoken in their territories for centuries. The European Union Center and participating centers and units on the Urbana campus organized a one-day symposium on November 5, 2012 to reflect on the progress in implementing and monitoring the Charter, and discuss the effects of lack of protection of languages in greater Europe.    1 .    Here is why we did it… Not speaking a language on a daily basis increases the risk of losing it forever. Words start coming slowly, stylistic nuance...

What if those long hours spent in front of the computer screen using social media with friends and family could be used to highlight some of the world’s cultural heritage? Professor Kevin P. Scannell from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Saint Louis University is proposing a project aimed at encouraging indigenous language groups to use their languages in social media.  The newest initiative involves translating Facebook's interface! With the author’s permission, we are reproducing here Professor Scannell’s blog entry from Rising Voices titled: Facebook in your Endangered or Indigenous Language. Read on and join in! by Kevin P. Scannell The Indigenous Tweets project is still going strong, and the number of languages we're tracking on Twitter continues to grow - we added the 138th and 139th languages ( Inari and South Saami ) to the site a couple of weeks ago.  Last week, the team at Twitter was nice enough to feature Indigenous Tweets on their ...