Linguae Europaeae

English Usage by Dutch Speakers on Facebook By Andrew Van Marm Andrew Van Marm wrote this blog entry for the course “Language and minorities in Europe” (FR/IT 418) in Spring 2016. He is a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign majoring in Political Science, and has a special interest in the geographic and linguistic history of the European continent. Minority languages are particularly interesting to his work, as they represent the cultures of Europe that were once widespread. Among the countries of the European Union, English holds a special place in the Netherlands. According to the European Commission (2012), "at a national level English is the most widely spoken foreign language in 19 out of the 25 [EU] Member States." Out of these 19, the Netherlands has one of the highest proportions of English speakers at 90%. In comparison, the percentage of English speakers in the United States is 94%. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007) This makes the Netherlands a...

by Johanna Kruisbrink Johanna Kruisbrink is a sophomore in Political Science and French at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is planning on spending the next academic year studying in Paris, France, and is interested in international relations as her future career. She wrote this text as a student enrolled in 418 ‘Language and Minorities in Europe’ in the spring of 2015. Like all Dutch, the Frisians adore ice-skating. These skaters are participating in the Elfstedentochtin 1963, an ice-skating race that only occurs when the canals between 11 Frisian cities freeze. [ Image Source ] On September 18, 2014 the Scottish referendum captivated the world with the drama and intrigue inherent to battles for independence. The drama was only heightened by the widely held view that other minorities of Europe were watching intensely to learn and prepare. The interest Catalonia has expressed in the Scottish independence for their own ambitions of sovereignty is well known, b...

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 ...