Linguae Europaeae

By Jessica Nicholas Jessica Nicholas is a PhD Candidate in the Department of French and Italian. Specializing in French Linguistics with a concentration in Romance Linguistics, she has a particular interest in language ideologies, variation, and education. Map highlighting Lesbos In the past few years, the Greek island of Lesbos has been featured in the international news as a frequent first stop on the path to Europe for refugees fleeing war in the Middle East and North Africa. Lesbos (also spelled Lesvos) is an island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, only six miles from the Turkish mainland. Now a part of Greece, Lesbos has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years, with ruins dating from as long ago as 3200 BCE. Due to its location, it changed hands many times between kingdoms and empires of the Mediterranean, most recently the Ottoman Empire and finally Greece (Mavridis, 2016). This means that the island was routinely multilingual and religiously diverse, at l...

By Christy Nichols and Jessica Nicholas Translated from the French by Jessica Nicholas Christy Nichols was an undergraduate major in biology, minoring in French, when she composed parts of this blog piece on the local language of Alsace-Lorraine, a region of France, in spring 2012 in the European Union Center’s ‘Language and Minorities in Europe (418)’course. Jessica Nicholas is a PhD Candidate in the Department of French, specializing in French Linguistics. She has a particular interest in language ideologies, variation, and education. She is one of the associate editors of the EUC blog site Linguis Europae, and shaped Christy’s blog entry into its current form. The French region of Alsace-Lorraine is one of the most important territories in the European Union, because the region shares its borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Switzerland, and it hosts dozens of international organizations. It possesses a tumultuous history, torn for centuries between Germany and France....

Par Christy Nichols et Jessica Nicholas Christy Nichols était étudiante de premier cycle,  avec une spécialisation en biologie et une concentration en français, quand elle a écrit des parties de cette entrée de blog au sujet de la langue régionale de l’Alsace-Lorraine, une région de la France.  C’était en printemps 2012 pour le cours du Centre de l’Union Européenne, « Langues Minoritaires et Régionales en Europe ». Jessica Nicholas, est étudiante de doctorat dans le Département de Français, avec une spécialisation en linguistique française.  Elle a un intérêt particulier en idéologie, variation, et formation de la langue.  Elle est une des éditrices associées du site-web de blog du Centre de l’Union Européenne, Linguis Europae.  Elle a formulé l’entrée de blog de Christy à son état actuel. La région française de l’Alsace-Lorraine est l’un des territoires les plus importants de l’Union Européenne, parce que la région partage des frontières avec la Belgique,...

by Jessica Nicholas | François Hollande, France’s new President, has promised to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, guaranteeing protection and active support for regional languages in Europe.  Hollande’s campaign had vigorous support from groups advocating for official recognition of regional languages (such as Occitan and Breton ) due to his expressed support for ratifying the Charter during his candidacy.  He did state, however, that the French language should be protected. What is the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and why has this question become a campaign issue? The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ( click here for full text in English) is a convention adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 1992.   (You can read the explanation on the Council of Europe’s website here .) The Council of Europe summarizes it thus: “The Charter is a convention designe...