Linguae Europaeae

by Chase Krebs Chase Krebs is a graduate student in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. She composed this blog entry on the techniques and esthetics of discourses of independence in Catalonia in the ‘Language and Minorities in Europe’ (SPAN 418) course in the spring of 2013.     Cuando escuchas la palabra Cataluña, ¿en qué piensas? Si sabes algo de la historia de Cataluña, la comunidad autónoma en el nordeste de España, quizás vas a pensar en el sentimiento independentista que ha sido tan prevalente en esta región a través de los siglos.     De hecho, se podría argumentar que este deseo para la autodeterminación ha culminado en el llamamiento a la independencia que los catalanes han demostrado en las últimas décadas.     Es verdad que se puede encontrar las raíces del movimiento independista en la época medieval de la historia de Cataluña, pero ese no es el objetivo aquí. El propósito de este post es hablar de la actualidad...

by Laís Kiehl Laís Kiehl is a Linguistics major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He composed this blog entry on Irish language teaching and language revival in the ‘Language and Minorities in Europe’ (LING 418) course in the spring of 2013. Image Source     As we all know, English is the vast majority language spoken in the Republic of Ireland. But did you know that Irish Gaelic, even being considered a minority language, is actively taught in schools?     Irish enjoys a prestige status in Ireland, as it is the national and first official language of the Nation. However, it is not the first language spoken by a long shot -- only 3% of the population, located in the Gaeltachtaí, an Irish language speech community, speak Irish as a first language (O Laoire, 2012).     Merely looking at that little percentage may cause you to think that Irish is a dead in the water language. You would be mistaken.     The ardent prote...