Linguae Europaeae

by Delvan Willis Delvan Willis is a junior in Political Science at the University of Illinois. He is planning on attending law school after graduation and is interested in International Relations, especially in regards to the Middle East. He wrote this piece while enrolled in 418 ‘Language and Minorities in Europe.’ Image Source In case you couldn’t grasp the meaning of the title, this blog is about the struggles and triumphant revitalization of the Welsh language. First a little background on the Welsh language is important! It is the official language (along with English) of Wales, but that is a big problem since only a little more than half a million of the population of about 3 million of Wales can speak the language! To have an official language that such a small percentage of the population is able to speak fluently seems problematic. Consider, however, that this small percentage of speakers is actually an improvement on past times. According to the 1911 census, at the be...

by Barbara L.W. Myers Barbara Myers is a graduate student in European Union Studies at the University of Illinois. She is planning on continuing her studies of Dutch, Swedish, literary translation, and the EU. She is interested in the work of immigrant writers in Benelux and Scandinavia. She wrote this text as a student in 418 ‘Language and Minorities in Europe.’ Image Source It would have been easy to conduct the conversation in English—the customer service representative at the ticket desk for the Rijksmuseum was certainly accustomed to dealing with tourists in the lingua franca (ELF). I had heard him speak it clearly with the couple in front of me in line and I had heard it all around Amsterdam in restaurants, on trams, and along the pathways at the Keukenhof. But by beginning the conversation in Dutch, I set the tone for a Nederlands exchange. The guidebooks I read before my first trip to Amsterdam four years ago (Frommer’s) and my return trip this March (Rick Steves and ...