Linguae Europaeae

Lauren Woodward is an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, majoring in Italian. She wrote this blog entry on attitudes towards English and the role of English as a language of choice in higher education in Italy in the EUC sponsored ‘Language and Minorities in Europe’ (ITAL 418) course in the spring of 2013. by Lauren Woodward Poiché sono una madrelingua inglese che abita negli Stati Uniti penso che sia facile per gli Americani, in un mondo dove Inglese è una lingua franca globale , immaginare che tutti parlino almeno un po’ di Inglese o che l’Inglese sarà utilizzabile all’estero. Penso anche che diamo per scontata la diffusione di una lingua in altre culture. L’Inglese è in crescita, particolarmente nell’ultimo secolo, e più un mondo è globalizzato più l’Inglese è integrato in altre culture e società.  Se l’atteggiamento verso una lingua è positivo poi la richiesta di quella lingua aumenterà e sarà accettata socialmente e linguisticamente in...

by Mike Nelson I will begin with a riddle. Most people know the famous phrase “a dime a dozen.” Keeping that phrase in mind, the European Union will soon have twenty cents. What is the meaning of this riddle? A plaque in Croatian The answer is twenty-four official languages. When Croatia joins the EU on July 1, 2013, Croatian will become the twenty-fourth official language. Croatia is the first country to accede to the EU since Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. With two dozen official languages, there are many questions regarding the efficiency and practicality of so many languages, as well as the expense. In particular, there was a tense debate on whether or not Croatian should become an EU official language. According to an article in EU Observer , the main concern of adopting Croatian as an official language is the similarity between the various Western Balkan languages. Augustin Palokaj, the author of the article, notes that the United Nation's International Criminal Tribu...