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Happy Birthday, Linguis Europae

by Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Eda Derhemi, Jessica Nicholas, Jui Namjoshi, and Alessia Zulato, bloggers and editors of this site

 Latin is not a dead language, Croatian is the newest official state language of the European Union, there are many sides to Catalan identity in Spain, Albanian is still spoken in some villages in Italy and Greece, and Maltese is also a language, not just a type of dog!

In case you’ve ever wondered where all this kind of information can be found and how they fit together, you’ve just found the ideal blog site: log on to read us every other week!

Today, on European Multilingual Blogging Day, we have the privilege of writing about ourselves, as Linguis Europae is celebrating its one-year anniversary. The idea of this site was born from the stubborn determination of getting students to write something fresh and new about European languages and cultures in the foreign language that they study. We are grateful to the EUC for the Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum grant that we received for trying our luck with blog posts because they did the job: students did want to write in a language other than their native language
! What we found to be challenging is that blog posts are a genre that is not necessarily practiced with equal skills and frequency by all those bright students who come to learn more about languages in Europe from us. So, we’ve asked ourselves the question: “How are we going to teach this”?

After more than forty selected blog posts written in five languages in the first year, we can share our trade secret: we did not teach anyone how to write a good blog post because just like writing any other genre from poetry to an inauguration speech, there is no single recipe for it. “Keep it short and lively (pictures and all)” and “Having fun writing the blog is a sign that others might like it” are the best pieces of advice we could give them. The contributing editors of this site (from left to right) on this picture, Eda Derhemi (Italian), Jui Namjoshi, Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Alessia Zulato, and Jessica Nicholas (French) invite *you* to submit comments to our site and wish to thank all of you who have been able to contribute with their insights and questions. Matt, Sebnem, Mike, and Lauren at the EU Center: thank you for your continued support!

Happy Birthday, Bon Anniversaire, Feliz Cumpleaños, Buon Compleanno, Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Boldog Születésnapot, Gëzuar Ditëlindjen, Linguis Europae!

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