Languages, beyond “Babel”

Is it a “Babel” Europe marked by linguistic misunderstandings or is the EU characterized by the enhancement of cultural diversity, including vocabularies and alphabets? These are recurring questions in the history of community integration, since when, in the 1950s, the six founding countries of the Community were called to decide on ways to promote mutual understanding in the framework of their joint commitment for unity.Next appointments. We went a long way since then. In EU27 multilingualism is protected and promoted in concrete terms. A set of initiatives dedicated to the Community building are scheduled to take place next week: on January 30-31 a round table in Brussels will take stock of the situation of CELAN, the EU programme launched a year ago, co-financed by the EU, aimed at increasing the knowledge and the use of languages to boost employment and competitiveness. On January 30 the 25th anniversary of Erasmus, the EU’s flagship education and training programme for formation abroad, based also on the knowledge of foreign languages -three million students and teachers have had the possibility of studying abroad thanks to grants obtained by the EU programme since the programme was launched in 1987 – will be celebrated in Brussels. From February 1-4 the Commission promotes the thirtieth edition of Expolangues, in Paris, where visitors will find information, conferences, stalls and various activities on where and how to learn and practice languages in Europe.Three basic principles. In reality, apart from being a value in itself, multilingualism is also a source of problems addressed in EU seats. 1% of EU budget covers translation of documents (several millions of pages each year) and interpretation during EU meetings (thousands of hours of parliamentary sittings, Commission and Council meetings, debates, conferences, working groups…). Every once in a while arguments break out on the recognition of official and “working” languages (English, French and German) – as in the recent case of the “European patent”. A “strategic framework”launched in 2005 is dedicated to multilingualism, accompanied by an “action plan”. The Commission released to this regard numerous documents, projects and speeches focusing on three principles, namely, the EU intends “to ensure citizens’ access to legislation, procedures and information in their native tongue”; it pledges to “underline the important role played by languages in European economy”; it “encourages all citizens to learn and speak several languages”. States are invited to establish national plans for the promotion of multilingualism.The ongoing situation. The European Union has 23 official languages (with three different alphabets, namely Latin, Greek and Cyrillic). These are: Bulgarian, Czeck, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Greek, English, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, German and Hungarian. The first Community regulation establishing official and working languages in 1958, established that those were to be Dutch, French, German and Italian, spoken in those Member States that formed the EU at the time. Today, any document in one of the “official languages” can be sent to EU institutions with replies in the same languages; while regulation and norms stipulated in Community seats are issued in all EU official languages by the EU Bulletin. “For reasons related to limited time and financial resources – underlines the Commission -a limited number of working documents are EU languages”. For this reason only English, French and German have been adopted by the Executive as “procedural languages”, within EU seats.Curiosities. The Commission acknowledges that “over 60 communities speak autochthonous regional languages, or languages of minority groups, amounting to 40 million people”. Among the “minority” idioms figures Catalan, with a 7 million Catalan-speaking population especially in Spain, in France and in the city of Alghero (Sardinia, Italy). “Saami” is spoken by the indigenous populations in the northern regions of Finland, Sweden and Norway. There are also languages that cross national borders, such as German (spoken in Germany, Austria and other countries, or in limited geographic areas, such as Belgium, France, Denmark, Italy). There are languages that risk becoming extinct, such as Gaelic, Breton, and those spoken by small communities such as Yiddish, as well as the idioms of the Sinti and Roma people.