Giving Minority Languages a Voice

Where does the Breton language come from?

The Breton language is a Celtic language that is categorised as a Brittonic language, like Cornish (British Cornwall) and Welsh (Wales). The Brittonic languages, although similar to Gaelic languages such as Irish or Scottish, differ in certain pronunciations. Together with gastronomy, customs and legends, Breton is an integral part of Breton culture.

Breton as we know it today is derived from the language of the Celtic-Britons who emigrated from the island of Great Britain. With the progressive decline of the Roman Empire in the 5th century and the appropriation of the island by various Germanic peoples (including the Angles and Saxons), a fringe of the Celtic island population left to settle in Armorica bringing with them their culture, language and customs. These “new” Celts mixed with the Celtic (Gallic) tribes already present: the Venetians, the Osismes and the Coriosolites.

Breton today

The Breton language declined sharply during the 19th and 20th centuries, mainly because of the policies of standardization and French national unity undertaken under the Third Republic. It is now considered by UNESCO as a “seriously endangered language”. However, a renewed interest and sense of belonging has been revived since the 2000s thanks to various factors, including the development of the Diwan association schools. The Office Public de la Langue Bretonne estimates the number of active speakers at 225,000 according to a TMO-Regions survey for the Regional Council of Brittany, in addition to the Office’s own figures. According to an opinion poll carried out in 2014 by Bretagne Culture Diversité, the proportion of Bretons who say they speak the Breton language very well or fairly well remains at 6%.

Frisian originated in the early Middle Ages. Then it increasingly became its own language and began to distinguish itself from other related Germanic dialects, such as Old English.

Old Frisian was not only spoken along the North Sea coast, but between Vlie and Weser it was also used in the late Middle Ages, for example in legal texts, as a written language and as an administrative language. In the course of the sixteenth century, Frisian fell into disuse as a written language. But a few still wrote it. In the nineteenth century, Frisian again became a written language. A lively literary climate then arose and the language developed further through the cross-pollination of speaking and writing. The Frisian folk theatre, which flourished from 1860, was especially important in this regard.

Official status

Since 1956, Frisian has had an official status in the province of Friesland that is equal to that of Dutch. In that year a start was made in the Staatsblad 1956, 242 with the formally permitted use of Frisian in legal transactions. An extension of this was established 39 years later in the Staatsblad 1995, 440. Although this has of course been the case for a long time in practice, the Frisians were then legally given the right to use their language in meetings of municipal councils and Provincial Councils. In 1997, the possibilities for using Frisian in court were further extended by law, so that now the Public Prosecution Service and the judiciary there are also allowed to use Frisian.

The inhabitants of Friesland have been able to communicate and correspond in Frisian with municipal and provincial authorities for many years. The province and some municipalities have made it a policy point to use more Frisian when drafting official documents. Due to a number of legislative changes, such Frisian documents are now legally valid in almost all cases. One of the last exceptions to this were association statutes, but since 2002 they can also be drawn up in Frisian. Today, marriage and birth certificates are available bilingually in all Frisian municipalities.

In 2014, the Use of Frisian Language Act came into effect, which brings together various previous provisions. For example, it stipulates that Frisian and Dutch are the official languages of the province of Friesland, and this law also obliges the central government and the Provincial Executive of the province of Friesland to make periodic administrative agreements.

What is the origin of Galician (galego)?
Galician (galego) is derived from the Latin spoken in the northwest of Hispania; as a Romance language it is part of the same family as Castilian (Spanish), Catalan, French, Italian and other Romance languages. It is a language closely related to Portuguese, both of which had virtually the same history until the middle of the 16th century. Despite a divergent history since the Middle Ages, even today Galician and Portuguese are mutually intelligible almost without effort.

Where is Galician (galego) spoken and how many people speak it?
Galician (galego) is spoken in the Autonomous Community of Galicia (Spain), located in the northwest of the Iberian peninsula, and neighboring regions of the provinces of Asturias, León and Zamora. It is also spoken by emigrant communities in America, Europe an Spain. In all, around two and a half million people speak it, being the first language of around one and a half million of these, who use it regulary in their daily lives.

What is the current situation of Galician (galego)?
Two languages are spoken in Galicia. Galician (galego), the land’s own language and Castilian (or Spanish, spoken all over Spain). Historically, Castilian was the dominant social and cultural language. Today Galician (galego) is recognized with the status of oficial language of Galicia, and increasingly present in the educational system, the mass media and public life. It is the first language of the majority of the habitants of Galicia. It is also the most used in daily life.

What is the level of development of Galician (galego)?
Although it had a brilliant literary past in the Middle Ages, Galician (galego) was reduced to a spoken language for centuries. In the 19th century, a shining poetic cultivation began, in the early 20th century an important literary production was developed and in the last few decades an important editorial (1,500 new titles in Galician each year on average) and audiovisual production has grown up. Galician also has a notable presence on the internet.

Where is Galician (galego) studied?
The study of Galician language (galego) and literature is compulsory in Galicia in all levels of pre-university education. The three Galician universities (A Coruña, Santiago and Vigo) offer degrees in Galician language and literature. There are also chairs and departments of Galician (galego) studies in more than forty universities around the world.

“Irish (Standard Irish: Gaeilge), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family.Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population’s first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century. Irish is still spoken as a first language in a small number of areas of certain counties such as Cork, Donegal, Galway, and Kerry, as well as smaller areas of counties Mayo, Meath, and Waterford. It is also spoken by a larger group of habitual but non-traditional speakers, mostly in urban areas where the majority are second-language speakers. Daily users in the Republic of Ireland outside the education system number around 73,000 (1.5%), and the total number of persons (aged 3 and over) who claimed they could speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, representing 39.8% of respondents.”

Number of Irish Speakers (from the CSO web site): 39.8% – The percentage of the population who could speak Irish in 2016 (1,761,420 persons). “The total number of persons (aged 3 and over) who could speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, representing 39.8 per cent of the population. This is a decrease of 13,017 on the 2011 figure of 1,774,437. More females than males identified themselves as being able to speak Irish with 968,777 female speakers (55%) compared with 792,643 males (45%), a pattern repeated from previous censuses (excluding not stated).”

Kven has for centuries lived as an oral language between Kvens on the North Calotte, and the archives show Kven in written communication with the authorities in both Sweden and Norway. From generation to generation, the language has been passed on as an important cultural carrier with its linguistic richness.

The official Norwegian policy (Norwegianization) in the period 1850-1950 did great damage, and today the Kven people are struggling to take back the language.

As an oral language, Kven has survived Norwegianization, and Kven became at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 2000s revitalized as a written language. The harsh Norwegianisation has nevertheless led to many Kvens losing their language. The situation for the different language communities varies. In many places the youngest mother tongue users is in their 60s, in other places they are only a few older language users left. As a language threatened with extinction, Kven is now in a critical phase.

For revitalization, language arenas are crucial also outside the families where the language is spoken. Researchers are clear that revitalization of the language is not possible for the Kven people to manage alone – the development has gone too far.

Ladin, also called “rhaeto-romanic” is a neo-latin or romance language. The term ladin derives from the latin Latinus. The structure of Ladin also shows celtic influences. The name derives from Latin, because Ladin is originally a Vulgar Latin language left over from the Romanized Alps. Ladin is often attributed to be a relic of Vulgar Latin dialects associated with Rhaeto-Romance languages. Whether a proto-Rhaeto-Romance language ever existed is controversially discussed amongst linguists and historians, a debate known as Questione Ladina. Starting in the 6th century, the Bavarii started moving in from the north, while from the south Gallo-Italic languages started pushing in, which further shrank the original extent of the Ladin area. Only in the more remote mountain valleys did Ladin survive among the isolated populations.

Ladin is recognized as a minority language in 54 Italian municipalities belonging to the provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno. It is not possible to assess the exact number of Ladin speakers, because only in the provinces of South Tyrol and Trentino are the inhabitants asked to identify their native language in the general census of the population.

The Sorbian languages (Upper Sorbian: serbska rěč, Lower Sorbian: serbska rěc) are two closely related and partially mutually intelligible languages spoken by the Sorbs, a West Slavic minority in the Lusatia region of eastern Germany. They are classified under the West Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages and are therefore closely related to the other two West Slavic subgroups: Lechitic and Czech–Slovak. Historically, the languages have also been known as Wendish (named after the Wends, the earliest Slavic people in modern Poland and Germany) or Lusatian.

The two Sorbian languages, each having its own literary standard, are Upper Sorbian (hornjoserbsce), spoken by about 20.000–25.000 people in Saxony, and Lower Sorbian (dolnoserbski), spoken by about 7.000 people in Brandenburg. The area where the two languages are spoken is known as Lusatia or Lausitz in German.

Yiddish is the historic language of Ashkenazic (Central and East European) Jewry, and is the third principal literary language in Jewish history, after classical Hebrew and (Jewish) Aramaic. The language is characterized by a synthesis of Germanic (the majority component, derived from medieval German city dialects, themselves recombined) with Hebrew and Aramaic.