Greetings fellow regional language speakers of Europe! I come from the Mirandese speaking region of Portugal to ask you, should regional languages be given more importance? At least in the region they’re spoken I mean.
For example, in Catalonia, Spain, Catalan is very commonly used in education, while in here, there is an optional Mirandese class, which is one/half a class per week.
Should street signs, store products, speeches, sites, etc. be in said regional language? Should it all be bilingual? Should the regional language be kept to the homes of the people only? What are your opinions on this?
Thank you.
25 comments
They should have the same recognition as the statal language. Catalan it’s so widely used because it’s easy to learn but that doesn’t mean that people from outside Catalonia should need to learn it to live if they come from other places of Spain.
Giving it less recognition than the statal language can only kill it, but the opposite would make a serious social exclusion of every non-speaker.
For this topic, mentioning Catalan it’s a bad practice, because an Spaniard wouldn’t be able to maintain a conversation, but could follow simple instructions, but if we give another example like Basque, everything changes.
A few examples:
[EUS] Autobuseen irteera, ez gelditu hemen.
[CA] Sortida d’autobusos, no parar.
[ES] Salida de autobuses, no parar.
[EN] Bus exit, do not stop here.
[EUS] Su-itzalgaikua.
[CA] Extintor d’incendis.
[ES] Extintor de incendios.
[EN] Fire extinguisher
[EUS] Larrialdi irteera.
[CA] Sortida d´emergència.
[ES] Salida de emergencia.
[EN] Emergency exit. (Fire exit)
Coming from a place where the regional language has struggled for the most part of the modern era, yes 100%, although there should be a both a want and reason to promote it.
I’m not sure about other celtic languages, but Gaeilge is guaranteed priority in the constitution, so it’s a mandatory subject in schools, on street signs, etc. Main problem is English is the majority tongue and also has official status, so it’s very easy to just ignore the Irish part of everything and basically anyone can go their whole life without learning a word of Irish. Most people lose whatever little Irish they do have after school.
While we are proud of the language, and there’s tons of support to keep it around, incorporate it into our speech and such, I think the government and especially the people need to make a collective push if we want to ensure its survival.
If it were up to me I’d push for it to be the principal language of schools, politics and work. I admire the model and determination of the Quebecois to enforce French in stores, government offices and signage, and would love something similar here, although I would agree that it is somewhat oppressive and wouldn’t ever be a popular legislation for a government to pass.
Of course. The so called “regional languages” deserve the same rights and positions than the rest. The definition of “regional languages” is just a name for descriving the political reality of those territories, that in many cases were conquered, annexed and assimilated by neighbours. If their languages cannot have the same rights than the rest is perfectly legit to seek independence. Lithuanian, Estonian, Ukranian etc were regional languages 35 years ago. And if Portugal hadn’t achieved their independence on XVII century the reality would be similar than nowadays Catalonia.
What happens in Wales is that some jobs are only open to you if you can speak Welsh – if those jobs involve communicating with people whose Welsh is much better than their English, that sort of “discrimination” is justifiable.
A distant family member has made herself unpromotable in her health service job because getting any higher would require talking to patients about their health issues in Welsh. Which she hasn’t managed to learn properly in ten years. Meanwhile her husband is Polish and she’s learned even less of that. So she has trilingual children who have a choice of two languages Mummy doesn’t understand.
It’s probably suicidal to say this on reddit, but I’m from the southeast of France, and I’ve never met a single Provençal speaker in my life. Even my grandparents who all were born here couldn’t speak Provençal. Making Provençal an official language would mean the state would have to translate all official documents into it, and honestly I doubt anyone would read the Provençal version of all these documents, and I don’t see where they would even find the army of translators needed for this. Investing into something like that seems like a waste.
What the state could do is teach Provençal more in schools, and try to convince students to learn it. But AFAIK this has been tried and people don’t want to learn it… The language has been practically dead for so long that people feel no connection to it. And you can’t really force people to feel like they have a connection with a language.
Before you downvote me, keep it mind that this is probably the opinion of 99% of the population here. Which is why it’s not happening…
Saving Provençal should have happened 100 years ago. Even if you forced everybody to learn it now, they would learn it like a foreign language, and not really know the culture that is associated with it. It sucks but that’s how it is…
To be fair, I’m more upset about the disappearance of Basque, which is a language isolate. Provençal is yet another romance language, i.e., it’s similar to Catalan, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese… It’s sad that we lost it, but I feel like it’s not as great of a loss as what losing Basque would be.
We only have one regional language which is Frisian. It’s recognized as such, signs are bilingual, government services in Frisia are offered in Frisian and our Frisian MP’s are even inaugurated in the Frisian language.
Other dialects are not recognized as a separate language. I do find this a pity, we have many local dialects. Some are spoken less and less, especially among young people. One the one hand it’s a loss when these dialects would die. On the other hand, if nobody bother to learn and speak these dialects maybe nobody cares.
I have to say, sometimes local dialects have somewhat of a comeback once in a while. For example a song in a local dialect was voted in a nationwide song contest for example.
There already is lots of recognition here, but I wish more people outside the region respected the language… I have been called a terrorist simply for speaking it outside of it!
Definitely.
The issue is, that what’s a regional language and what’s a dialect is defined by politicians not by linguists. Slovenia has at least one regional language in the region of Prekmurje, which historically had a parallel literary tradition with Slovenian. However, after unification with the rest of Slovenians, it started to be pushed into the status of a “dialect”, even though Slovenians on average understand significantly more of Croatian than of the Prekmurje “dialect”. The “dialect” is still used in just about every facet of every day life – like, if you’re local, you’re not going to be speaking Slovenian in schools, with the local government officials, in public life, anywhere really. It’s all going to be in the “dialect”.
My opinion changed drastically over the years.
When I was a kid, I was among the many who regarded my local dialect (a dialect of Lombard) as a useless relic that only ignorants were still stubborn enough to speak. It helps that one of the places in Italy with the most dialect speakers, Napoli, has this quality often depicted as a symbol of vulgarity, hence many in other parts of Italy just avoid dialects.
I’ve never cared about learning any of my grandparents or my father’s languages (Sicilian, Venetian, Bustocco) because when I was a “edgy teen” I thought Italian was sufficient for my life and foreign languages were better because they were “real languages”.
That until a few years ago and I started to get way mkre interested in my territory, and since some signs are written in the local dialects, I’ve started to develop some interest in them. My father managed to teach me something but since his death my only possibility of exercising is through a friend that speaks it (other people my age don’t) or when there are cultural events in the province that involve older people.
I now think that realistically we’ll lose many regional dialects and we can’t do much about it, but we can save a lot of others by teaching then in colleges/school, writing signs and things in those languages, having heritage sites present signs in the local autoctone language etc. One tool I think may be used more extensively is Wikipedia. I love the project, I’ve contributed to Wikipedia in different languages, and in my opinion it could be used to write articles about local interest in local languages (nobody is going to care about an article in Letsenburgish about a city in Mongolia, but local literature, local monuments, local history can all be written and spread in a local language, no matter how minor it is).
The Italian state only recognises 12 minority languages, some regions recognise others but can’t or don’t do much about it (apart for special statute regions), but I think that losing a large part of our cultural heritage just because unofficial languages are deemed as “the speech of ignorants” is quite stupid. Because yeah languages can die naturally, but the way ours died (as well as many languages of France) is political.
I still think every Italian should be required to speak a good Italian (and frankly, that’s another problem that exists) as its our national language (I’m quite patriotic and Italian will always be my first identity even before Lombard), the language of our literature, and our lingua franca, bit that doesn’t mean cancelling everything else. If the Catalans can do it, so can we.
A fellow citizen wrote a poem about the disappearence of the dialect in our city, ([Ul dialettu, l’é dré muí?](https://www.bustocco.com/crespi_dialetu.htm)) which he concludes with
>Cerchèm tüci da tegní a menti
che cugnussi e vué ben aa pròpia tèra,
al pròpi dialèttu e aa pròpia cultüa,
a l’é a cundizión necessaria
par capì e rispetà di òltar a suá.
which roughly means “let’s all remember that knowing our own land, dialect and culture is a necessary condition to understand and respect other people’s one”, and I share this sentiment.
Of course!
> Should street signs, store products, speeches, sites, etc. be in said regional language? Should it all be bilingual?
Official signs in the regions of the recognised minority languages are already bilingual.
See here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Bautzen_Ortsschild.jpg
There are also TV and Radio programmes in at least Sorbian available in the public regional broadcasters.
However, both Sorbian languages are endangered and Lower Sorbian is dying out, due to a lack of speakers.
The recognised minority languages in Germany are
North Frisian, Sater Frisian, Sorbian, Danish and Romani.
Danish is a minority language only in Germany and thrives in Denmark, so it is not endangered.
The Frisian and Sorbian languages are seriously endangered, due to the low number of active speakers.
Romani has a larger number of speakers, but is endangered although, since there is not nationstate for Romani and the persecution they and their language face. I am also not aware of any signs set up in Romani and not really sure if the Romani are interested in having their language catalogued.
Of course. They are an important part of European cultural diversity, which is the most important pillar of European identity IMO.
Of course. Not much to discuss.
I think regional accents and languages are pretty cool and is a part of the culture and there could be alittle more effort to keep these things.
A language is a dialect with an army basically. I think they should be recognised and celebrated but stop short of tokenism. There is a push for more Cornish but that is a verifiably dead language, hundreds of years. Modern people have revived it but few could even hold a conversation. It is nice to see translated road signs, some lessons in schools but if people want it compulsory or all announcements translated it just gets a bit pointless.
There should be, but there wont be until the European Union policies and the composition of its bureaucracy changes. Currently it’s promoting an anti-european policy of “Everyone’s a migrant”.
Because of this policy, only Roma are considered native in Europe, and no regional language or culture is considered native, they have “protections” but basically if tomorrow, I was, like Russia (which has a similar policy – a “russian”‘s not a person of an ethnicity or culture, merely a person unquestioningly loyal to the leader and his enforcers ), say settle a population of outside citizen with a different culture in Europe, or say, send 4000 boats with 25 people each and to make them settle in the same region, as “refugees”, they’ll get equivalent or better protection, by the virtue of this legislation. This same legislation allows for presence of what is basically Russian compradores/colonizer settlers living within the EU borders. This enables what basically is genocide – settlement by outside colonisation.
Until that changes, and I have no hope for that, until the RU-UA war enters into a more serious confrontation stage and the fallout of 2024 US elections happen.
> should regional languages be given more importance?
Brussels dialect should definitely be given more visibility. It’s one of the most colourful languages I’m familiar with.
The issue is that Brussels is a 90%+ French-speaking city. Many residents can’t manage to speak Standard Dutch to a tolerable level, never mind a dialect of Dutch.
It would be great if there were more street signs and speeches in *’t Brussels* but so few people speak it that it’s really a moot point.
For my part, I work with kids (teacher) in a Dutch-speaking school. The kids are mostly Francophone and can barely scrape by in Dutch, much less a dialect.
But still – once in a while I toss in some fun words to catch ’em off guard. *”Héla zonneklopper! Gaa moet nie smosjteiren op d’schuul, hé! Anders komt d’gardevil gaa oppakken!*”
Of course they should be more recognized and people should be encourage to use them as much as possible.
Btw, do you know that mirandese IS part of larger language continuum with most speaker in Spain?
I’ve found that many portuguese don’t know that asturian/leonese IS basically the same language under another label.
Kind of like how aranese is a dialect of occitan which just happens to be spoken in Spain, while the rest are spoken in france (and a few in Italy)
And just so you know asturian/leonese doesn’t get any recognition in Spain. I think some schools teach It in Asturias but that’s about It.
So, I think It would be more apropiate to compare mirandese with asturleonese or aranese. catalan IS kind of a beast of its own. There are more catalan speakers than people in Portugal.
If accepted as an oficial EU language, catalan would be upper middle of the table in terms of number of speakers just bellow Greek and above swedish and czech.
Honestly, I really don’t understand why the EU doesn’t Accept catalan, galician and even basque as oficial EU languages. I Guess it’s easy to say “you support regional languages” but a bit harder to commit.
My opinion, and this is MY opinion, IS that the failure of the spanish system lies in the lack of recognition of our other regional languages (which most people have not heard about) like: asturleonese, aragonese, calo (romani) and dhariya arabic.
The situation of catalan, basque and galician, though much more mediatic, is way less precarious. The fact that we endlesly discuss the status of these languages while the others die is IMO a failure. Kudos to Catalonia for protecting aranese.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. When in 2009 the Slovak government made it an offence punishable by fines to sing in Hungarian (another official EU language) in public places, the EU saw nothing wrong with it. Fortunately in 2011 they removed this from the Slovakian law.
Sure if there are languages that need more of it.
Yes, I’m completely in favour of this.
in frisia, people learn frisian and its official, but there have been calls for making low saxon a official language in drenthe, gronings in groningen and limburgish in limburg. i understand but also think especially gronings isnt really a language.
Yes. Norrländska, finnsvenska, tornedalssvenska och samiska deserves more recognition.
No, Sweden shouldn’t be a multilingual Nation. Adding other languages on signs except for English would just be performative gesture. If a person speaks meänkieli or southern Sámi they already know Swedish, and it’s most likely their mother tongue.