Linguae Europaeae

Image by MLbay by Dalton Ascone Dalton Ascone is a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, majoring in Linguistics, and minoring in Teaching English as a Second Language. Upon graduating, he hopes to remain in academia to pursue his research interests, which include bilingualism, second-language acquisition, and language maintenance in diaspora communities. He wrote this blog post for 418 “Languages and Minorities in Europe” in Spring 2023. The names of the participants have been altered in order to protect their anonymity. The Iranian diaspora is diverse and widespread, but if one were to try to describe one trait that unites all its members, it is this: they live their daily lives between a rock and a hard place. Between the broken immigration systems of their nations of residence, the endless coils of red tape they are forced to dance through, and the delicate geopolitical situation of their homeland, for some, the stress is so overwhelming that it becomes mund...

by Erin Trybulec Erin Trybulec is a Master’s Student in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Illinois. Erin's future plans include pursuing a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics. She wrote this blog post in 418 'Language and Minorities in Europe' in Fall 2021. Note: Research in Progress Puerto Rico or “ La isla del encanto ” (the island of enchantment) as it is lovingly known in Spanish, is relatively small in terms of its physical size, measuring around 100 miles by 35 miles (Telemundo PR, 2018); however, the island is home to an immense amount of culture and rich history, which also happens to include influence from Italy and Corsica, two nations with an intertwined past and linguistic mutually intelligibility (Blackwood, 2008). Although the topic of immigration in Puerto Rico is less discussed, a careful look at historical figures and buildings around the island reveal some remnants of their influence. Italo-Puerto Rican and/or Corsican-Puerto Rican roots can most commonly ...

By Robin Wilson Adapted from Wikimedia The debate about the feminine form of certain words of profession in the Italian language, specifically job titles, was brought back to the fore with the election of Virginia Raggi, the newly-elected mayor of Rome. She is, in fact, the first ever female mayor of Rome. With her election came the question of whether the word sindaco ‘mayor’ would be used to describe her as occupying the position of the major. Until recently, sindaco had no widely recognized feminine form in the Italian language. The dominant use of masculine words for titles and professions within the Italian language, however, is not a new phenomenon. Attitudes and inequalities associated with such a dominance was raised as early as 1987 by the researcher and activist Alma Sabatini in her influential treatise Raccomandazioni per un uso non sessista della lingua italiana ‘Recommendations for a non-sexist use of the Italian language’. Although Sabatini’s recommendations we...

By Victoria Bauer and Zsuzsanna Fagyal-Le Mentec At first glance, the European Union has the most liberal language regime in the world: all twenty-four of its official languages are considered equal and can be used by EU citizens to communicate with their institutions. The EU’s strong commitment to multilingualism holds despite the formidable costs associated with the enormous translation flow. Consider, for instance, that the European Commission's Directorate General reportedly spends over 330 million euros per year on translation ( Translation in the EU ) and the total costs of language services within the Union are estimated to be close to a billion euros. However, EU language regimes are much more constrained than they might appear. Source: Wikipedia In principle, the Council of Europe determines the rules governing language use (Article 342, Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union ), but EU institutions “may stipulate in their rules of procedure which of the la...

Image: Erin O'Malley on Flickr By Elizabeth Lorentzen Elizabeth Lorentzen is a senior from Arlington Heights, Illinois, studying Speech and Hearing Sciences. She is also completing a minor in Italian Studies. With approximately 5 million speakers, the Sicilian language is vigorously used throughout Sicily and its satellite islands (Lewis, 2016). However, there are still numerous people who believe Sicilian is merely a dialect of Italian, not its own distinct language; the Italian parliament has failed to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and Sicilian is not recognized by the national law 482 which recognizes and protects 12 languages and dialects spoken in Italy. Additionally, Sicilian is not standardly used in schools, nor is it commonly written or read by the people who use it in daily life. According to the UNESCO rankings, Sicilian is a vulnerable language, meaning there is limited language use at home by a portion of the population; me...