The Constellation of Languages in Europe: Comparative Perspectives
on Regional Minority and Immigrant Minority Languages
Guus Extra, Tilburg University
September 2013
UPDATED VERSION OF KEYNOTE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LUXEMBOURG, 19 JULY 2013
Introduction
More than a decade ago, Extra and Gorter (2001: 3-4) made the following opening statements in
their edited volume on the Other Languages of Europe:
Despite the possibilities and challenges of comparing the status of regional minority and immigrant
minority languages, amazingly few connections have been made in the sociolinguistic, educational
and political domain. […] Contacts between researchers and policy makers working with different
types of minority groups are still scarce. […] Overall, we see disjointed research paradigms and
circles of researchers which have very little or no contact, although they could learn a lot from each
other.
Against this background, the overall theme of the present conference is most welcome. In this
contribution, the following topics will be addressed:
•
the semantics of our field of consideration
•
the role of language in identifying diversity of population groups
•
regional minority languages and immigrant minority languages across Europe
•
similarities and differences in conceptual issues
•
aims and outcomes of the Language Rich Europe project
•
towards plurilingual education for all children
First, our focus will be on the crossing of demography and linguistics, coined as language
demography (Clyne 2003: 20-69) or demolinguistics (Extra 2010). Demolinguistic research can be
characterized as an empirical approach with a strong fascination for large-scale data sampling and
for the visual presentation of resulting outcomes in tabulated figures and language maps. This is not
to say that the value of small-scale data sampling, common in ethnographic research (Dorian 2010),
should be underestimated. Against the background of increasing linguistic diversity as an effect of
globalization, Vertovec (2007) and Blommaert and Rampton (2011) make a plea for a paradigm shift
in the study of what is referred to as ‘super-diversity’, taking linguistic ethnography as their point of
departure. We believe that there is an ongoing need for multidisciplinarity and complementarity of
approaches or paradigms in the domain of multilingualism in multicultural contexts, as outlined in
Table 1.
1
Table 1: Complementary approaches or paradigms in ethnographic versus demolinguistic research (Extra
2010: 108)
Research
paradigms
Research
methods
Usual data
Informants
Ethnographic research
Demolinguistic research
• Inductive / Heuristic
• (Participating) observation
• Deductive
• Distance between researcher and
informants
• ‘Quantitative’
• Reported data in single contexts
• Selective set of questions in predesigned questionnaires
• Large-scale studies
• Many informants
• ‘Qualitative’
• Observed data in multiple contexts
• Open-ended and in-depth interviews
• (Multiple) case studies
• Single/few informants
Particular validity issues arise in each of these two approaches: in ethnographic research in terms of
representativeness of the data and in terms of making generalizations, in demolinguistic research in
terms of a (mis)match between observed and reported data.
1. The semantics of our field of consideration
Linguistic diversity is conceived as a constituent characteristic of European identity (Arzoz 2008).
However, some languages play a more important role in the European public and political discourse
on ‘celebrating linguistic diversity’, the motto of the European Year of Languages (2001). The
constellation of languages in Europe actually functions as a descending hierarchy (Extra and Gorter
2008; Nic Craith 2006) with the following ranking:
•
English as lingua franca for transnational communication;
•
national or ‘official state’ languages of European countries;
•
regional minority (RM) languages across Europe;
•
immigrant minority (IM) languages across Europe.
In the official EU discourse, RM languages are referred to as regional or minority languages and IM
languages as migrant languages. Both concepts are problematic for a variety of reasons. Whereas
the national languages of the EU with English increasingly on top are celebrated most at the EU
level, RM languages are celebrated less and IM languages least. IM languages are only marginally
covered by EU language promotion programs and – so far – are mainly considered in the context of
provisions for learning the national languages of the ‘migrants’ countries of residence’.
There is a great need for educational policies in Europe that take new realities of multilingualism
into account. Processes of internationalization and globalization have brought European nationstates to the world, but they have also brought the world to European nation-states. This bipolar
pattern of change has led to both convergence and divergence of multilingualism across Europe. On
the one hand, English is increasingly on the rise as lingua franca for international communication
across the borders of European nation-states (Jenkins 2010), at the cost of all other official state
languages of Europe, including French, German and Russian. The upward mobility of English is
clearly visible in such recent European Commission reports as Special Barometer 386 (2012) and
Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe (Eurydice/Eurostat 2012). In spite of many
2
objections against the hegemony of English (Phillipson 2003), this process of convergence will be
enhanced by the extension of the EU to Eastern Europe. Within the borders of European nationstates, however, there is an increasing divergence of home languages due to large-scale processes
of global migration and intergenerational minorization. Although these two processes of convergence
and divergence seem to be contradictory trends, they can actually be counterbalanced (Fishman
1989: 220) and reconciled with each other (see Section 6).
Europe’s identity is to a great extent determined by cultural and linguistic diversity (Haarmann
1995). Table 2 serves to illustrate this diversity in terms of EU (candidate) Member States with their
estimated populations (ranked in order of decreasing numbers) and corresponding official state
languages.
Table 2: Overview of 30 EU (candidate) Member States with estimated populations and official state
languages (EU figures for 2011/2012)
Nr
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
Member States
Germany
France
United Kingdom
Italy
Spain
Poland
Romania
The Netherlands
Greece
Belgium
Portugal
Czech Republic
Hungary
Sweden
Austria
Bulgaria
Denmark
Slovakia
Finland
Ireland
Croatia
Lithuania
Latvia
Slovenia
Estonia
Cyprus
Luxembourg
Malta
Candidate Member States
29 Turkey
30 Macedonia
Population (in millions)
82,0
63,5
62,8
61,0
46,8
38,3
21,4
16,7
11,4
10,8
10,7
10,6
10,0
9,5
8,4
7,4
5,6
5,5
5,4
4,6
4,3
3,3
2,2
2,0
1,3
0,8
0,5
0,4
Population (in millions)
79,7
2,1
(Co-)official state language(s)
German
French
English
Italian
Spanish
Polish
Romanian
Dutch (Nederlands)
Greek
Dutch, French, German
Portuguese
Czech
Hungarian
Swedish
Austrian-German
Bulgarian
Danish
Slovak
Finnish, Swedish
Irish, English
Croatian
Lithuanian
Latvian
Slovenian
Estonian
Greek, Turkish
Luxemb., French, German
Maltese, English
Official state language
Turkish
Macedonian
3
As Table 2 makes clear, there are large differences in population size amongst EU Member States.
German, French, English, Italian, Spanish and Polish belong, in this order, to the six most widely
spoken official state languages in the present EU, whereas Turkish would come second to German
in an enlarged EU. Table 2 also shows the close connection between nation-state references and
official state language references. In 27 out of 30 cases, distinct languages are the clearest feature
distinguishing one nation-state from its neighbors (Barbour 2000), the only exceptions (and for
different reasons) being Belgium, Austria, and Cyprus. This match between nation-state references
and official state language references obscures the existence of different types of minority
languages that are actually spoken across European nation-states (Haberland 1991; Nic Craith
2006). Many of these languages are indigenous minority languages with a regional territorial base;
many other languages stem from abroad without such a base. As mentioned before, we will refer to
these languages as regional minority (RM) languages and immigrant minority (IM) languages,
respectively (Extra and Gorter 2001), in this way expressing both their shared main property and
their major modifying difference. As all of these RM and IM languages are spoken by different
language communities and not at state-wide level, it may seem logical to refer to them as community
languages, thus contrasting them with the official languages of nation-states. However, the attractive
designation ‘community languages’, commonly used in the UK, would lead to confusion at the
surface level because this concept is already in use to refer to the official state languages of the EU.
In that sense, the designation ‘community languages’ is occupied territory, at least in the EU jargon.
The distinction between RM and IM languages is widely used and understood across continental
Europe. A final argument in favor of using the concept of ‘immigrant’ languages is its widespread use
on the website of Ethnologue, Languages of the World, a most valuable and widely used standard
source of cross-national information on this topic.
A number of other issues need to be kept in mind as well. First of all, within and across EU
Member States, many RM and IM languages have larger numbers of speakers than many of the
official state languages mentioned in Table 2. Moreover, RM and IM languages in one EU nationstate may be official state languages in another nation-state. Examples of the former result from
language border crossing in adjacent nation-states, such as Finnish in Sweden or Swedish in
Finland. Examples of the latter result from processes of migration, in particular from Southern to
Northern Europe, such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or Greek. It should also be kept in mind that
many, if not most, IM languages in particular European nation states originate from countries outside
Europe. It is the context of migration and minorization in particular that makes our proposed
distinction between RM and IM languages ambiguous. We see, however, no better alternative. In our
opinion, the proposed distinction leads at least to awareness raising and may ultimately lead to an
inclusive approach in the European conceptualization of minority languages (Extra and Gorter 2008;
Extra and Yağmur 2012).
As yet, we lack a common referential framework for the languages under discussion. From an
inventory of the different concepts in use, we learn that there are no standardized designations for
these languages across nation-states. Table 3 gives a non-exhaustive overview of the nomenclature,
derived from Extra and Yağmur (2004: 19). The presented overview shows that the utilized
terminology varies not only across different nation-states, but also across different types of
education.
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Table 3. Nomenclature of the field (Extra and Yağmur 2004: 19)
Reference to the people
― national/historical/regional/indigenous/old minorities versus non-national/non-historical/nonterritorial/non-indigenous/new minorities
― non-national residents
― foreigners, étrangers, Ausländer
― (im)migrants
― newcomers, new Xmen (e.g., new Dutchmen)
― co-citizens (instead of citizens)
― ethnic/cultural/ethnocultural minorities
― linguistic minorities
― allochthones (e.g., in the Netherlands), allophones (e.g., in Canada)
― non-English-speaking (NES) residents (in particular in the USA)
― anderstaligen (Dutch: those who speak other languages)
― coloured/black people, visible minorities (the latter in particular in Canada)
Reference to their languages
―
―
―
―
―
―
―
―
―
community languages (in EU jargon versus UK in reference to languages other than English)
migrant languages (in EU jargon)
immigrant languages
ancestral/heritage languages (common concept in Canada)
national/historical/regional/indigenous/old minority languages versus non-territorial/non-regional/nonindigenous/non-European/new minority languages
autochthonous versus allochthonous minority languages
lesser used/less widely used/less widely taught languages (in EBLUL context)
stateless/diaspora languages (in particular used for Romani)
languages other than English (LOTE: common concept in Australia)
Reference to the teaching of these languages
―
―
―
―
―
―
―
―
―
―
instruction in own language (and culture)
mother tongue teaching
home language instruction (HLI)
community language teaching
regional minority language instruction versus immigrant minority language instruction
enseignement des langues et cultures d’origine (ELCO: in French/Spanish primary schools)
enseignement des langues vivantes (ELV: in French/Spanish secondary schools)
muttersprachlicher Unterricht (MSU: in German primary schools)
muttersprachlicher Ergänzungsunterricht (in German primary/secondary schools)
herkunftssprachlicher Unterricht (in German primary/secondary schools)
2. The role of language in identifying diversity of population groups
Collecting reliable information about the diversity of population groups in EU countries is no easy
enterprise. What is, however, more interesting than numbers or estimates of the size of particular
groups, is what the criteria are for determining such numbers or estimates. Throughout the EU it is
common practice to present data on RM groups on the basis of (home) language use and/or
ethnicity, and to present data on IM groups on the basis of nationality and/or country of birth.
However, convergence between these criteria for the two groups emerges over time in terms of
5
(home) language and ethnicity, as a consequence of the increasing period of migration and
minorization of IM groups in EU countries. Due to their prolonged/permanent stay, there is strong
intergenerational erosion in the utility of nationality or birth-country statistics (Barni and Extra 2008).
Comparative information on population figures in EU Member States can be obtained from the
Statistical Office of the EU in Luxembourg (EuroStat). An overall decrease of the indigenous
population has been observed in most EU countries over the last decade; at the same time, there
has been an increase in the IM figures. For a variety of reasons, however, reliable and comparable
demographic information on IM groups in EU countries is difficult to obtain. Seemingly simple
questions like How many Turkish residents live in Germany compared to France? cannot easily be
answered. For some groups or countries, no updated information is available or no such data has
ever been collected. Moreover, official statistics only reflect IM groups with legal resident status.
Most importantly, however, the most widely used criteria for IM status – nationality and/or country of
birth – have become less valid over time because of an increasing trend towards naturalization and
births within the countries of residence. In addition, most residents from former colonies already
have the nationality of their country of immigration.
Another source of disparity is the different data collection systems being used, resulting in
different types of databases (Poulain 2008). The following three types of data collection may take
place in various combinations:
•
nation-wide census data, collected at fixed intervals from 5-10 years (in 23 out of 28 EU
countries);
•
regularly (monthly/yearly) updated administrative register data at the municipal and national
level (e.g., in Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands);
•
small- or large-scale statistical survey data among particular subsets of population groups,
collected at regular intervals (e.g., in France or Italy or in the Netherlands on Frisian)
For a discussion of the role of censuses in identifying population groups in a variety of multicultural
nation-states, we refer to Kertzer and Arel (2002). Alterman (1969) offers a fascinating account of
the history of counting people from the earliest known records on Babylonian clay tables in 3800 BC
to the USA census in 1970. In addition to the methods of counting, Alterman discusses at length who
were counted and how, and who were not counted and why not. The issue of mapping diversity
through nationwide periodical censuses by state institutions is commonly coupled with a vigorous
debate between proponents and opponents about the following ‘ethnic dilemma’: how can you
combat discrimination if you do not measure diversity? (Kertzer and Arel 2002: 23–25). Among
minority groups and academic groups, both proponents and opponents of mapping diversity can be
found (cf. Blum 2002 on this debate in France):
•
Proponents argue in terms of the social or scientific need for population databases on diversity
as prerequisites for affirmative action by the government in such domains as labor, housing,
health care, education or media policies;
•
Opponents argue in terms of the social or scientific risks of public or political misuse of such
databases for stereotyping, stigmatization, discrimination or even removal of the ‘unwanted
other’.
Kertzer and Arel (2002: 2) argue that the census does much more than simply reflect social reality; it
plays a key role in the construction of that reality and in the creation of collective identities. At the
same time, it should be acknowledged that the census is a crucial area for the politics of
representation. Census data can make people aware of underrepresentation. Minority groups often
6
make language rights one of their key demands on the basis of (home) language databases (May
2011).
Decennial censuses became a common practice in Europe and the New World colonized by
Europeans in the first part of the 19th century. The USA became the first newly established nationstate with a decennial census since 1790. The first countries to include a language question in their
census, however, were Belgium in 1846 and Switzerland in the 1850s, both being European
countries with more than one official state language. At present, in many EU countries, only
population data on nationality and/or birth country (of person and/or parents) are available. In 1982,
the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs recognized the above-mentioned identification
problems for inhabitants of Australia and proposed including questions in the Australian census on
birth country (of person and parents), ethnic origin (based on self-categorization in terms of which
ethnic group a person considers him/herself to belong to), and home language use. For a discussion
of the concepts of ethnicity and ethnic identity in a variety of multicultural contexts we refer to
Guibernau and Rex (1997), Jenkins (1997) and Verkuyten (2005). Fishman (1989) and Edwards
(1985) are key references on the link between ethnicity and (home) language use. After an extensive
meta-analysis of available definitions of ethnic identity, Edwards (1985: 10) provides the following
operationalisation:
Ethnic identity is allegiance to a group – large or small, socially dominant or subordinate – with which
one has ancestral links. There is no necessity for a continuation, over generations, of the same
socialisation or cultural patterns, but some sense of a group boundary must persist. This can be
sustained by shared objective characteristics (language, religion, etc.), or by more subjective
contributions to a sense of ‘groupness’, or by some combination of both. Symbolic or subjective
attachments must relate, at however distant a remove, to an observably real past.
Given the multiplicity of the concept of identity, in particular in a multicultural context of migration and
minorisation, there is an increasing need for a multidisciplinary (no either/or) approach and for
balanced and complementary perspectives, linking individuals and groups, including societies at
large. Verkuyten (2005:90) made a strong plea for engaging in both social-psychological and
cultural-anthropological debates:
In these debates, adopting one position typically means ignoring or criticizing the other. One’s own
favoured approach is presented as the good one or the one that addresses the ‘real’ anthropological
or social psychological questions. With this, it becomes virtually impossible to engage with other
ideas, and there are few attempts to deal seriously with others’ position. In studying ethnic identity, it
is possible to ask many questions that can be examined from various perspectives and by a range
of different methods.
Against this background, the four criteria mentioned above are discussed in Table 4 in terms of their
major (dis)advantages.
7
Table 4. Criteria for the definition and identification of population diversity
(P/F/M = person/father/mother) (Extra and Gorter 2008: 17)
Criterion
Advantages
Disadvantages
Nationality
(NAT)
(P/F/M)
―
―
objective
relatively easy to
establish
―
Birth country
(BC)
(P/F/M)
―
―
objective
relatively easy to
establish
―
Selfcategorisation
(SC)
―
―
touches the heart of the matter
emancipatory: SC takes into
account person’s own
conception of ethnicity/ identity
―
Home language
(HL)
―
(intergenerational) erosion through
naturalisation or double NAT
― NAT not always indicative of ethnicity/ identity
― some (e.g., ex-colonial) groups have NAT of
immigration country
intergenerational erosion through births in
immigration country
― BC not always indicative of ethnicity/identity
― invariable/deterministic: does not take into
account dynamics in society (in contrast to all
other criteria)
subjective by definition:
also determined by the language/ethnicity of
interviewer and by the spirit of the times
― multiple SC possible
― historically charged, especially by World War
II experiences
HL is significant criterion of
― complex criterion: who speaks what language
ethnicity in communication
to whom and when?
― language is not always a core value of
processes
― HL data are prerequisite for
ethnicity/identity
government policy in areas such ― useless in one-person households
as public information or
education
First of all, Table 4 reveals that there is no simple road to solving the identification problem.
Moreover, inspection of the criteria for diversity of population groups is as important as the actual
figures themselves. Seen from a European perspective, there is a predictable top-down
development over time in the utility and utilization of different types of criteria, inevitably going from
nationality and birth-country criteria in present statistics to self-categorization and home language in
the future. The latter two criteria are generally conceived of as complementary criteria. Selfcategorization and home language references need not coincide, as languages may be conceived to
variable degrees as core values of ethnocultural identity in contexts of migration and minorization.
The top-down development over time, mentioned for the first two versus the last two criteria will
lead to convergence in the criteria for identifying RM and IM groups. Multiplicity is a common
property for three out of four of the criteria mentioned: it holds for nationality, ethnicity and home
language, not for birth country. It should finally be mentioned that the home language question offers
more perceptual transparency and societal utility (e.g., in educational and media policies) than the
ethnicity question.
In 23 out of 28 EU countries, nationwide censuses are held at variable intervals. Scandinavian
countries and the Netherlands rely on yearly updated administrative (municipal) registers in
combination with periodical sample surveys. Questions on ethnicity and language feature in the
censuses of 13 and 17 EU countries, respectively (Extra and Gorter 2008: 18–21). There is,
8
however, wide variation in the operationalization of language questions, which makes cross-national
comparison of the outcomes difficult. The three most commonly asked questions on language use
relate to mother tongue (11 countries), (other) language(s) spoken (frequently) (6 countries), and
language(s) (most frequently) spoken at home (5 countries). While the mother tongue question is
most widely used in Europe, this question has been criticized for its lack of empirical validity in
English-dominant immigration countries outside Europe, in particular in Australia, Canada, and the
USA (Extra and Gorter 2008: 21–24). In these countries, the most widely used language question in
the census refers to language(s) used at home – next to or instead of English. Whereas the focus in
these non-European English-dominant countries is on immigrant languages, the focus in EU
countries – if non-national languages are considered at all – is on RM languages. The UK 2011
Census for the first time had a LOTE question (Languages Other Than English) with an inclusive
perspective on both RM and IM languages.
At this stage, far less empirical data on IM languages are available across European nationstates than in English-dominant immigration countries outside Europe. As a result, language policies
in this domain in Europe are commonly developed in the absence of even the most basic facts on
language diversity (Extra and Gorter 2008).
3. Regional minority languages and immigrant minority languages across Europe
Regional minority languages across Europe
We will present basic information on different RM language groups in the EU. In some nation-states,
there are fairly accurate figures because a language question has been included in the census
several times; in other cases, we only have rough estimates by insiders to the language group
(usually language activists who want to boost the figures) or by outsiders (e.g., state officials who
quite often want to downplay the number of speakers). Figure 1 serves to illustrate our overview
visually and is taken from the Mercator Education website (see Extra and Gorter 2008: 24-28 for
detailed figures).
Figures for numbers of speakers are almost always problematic. In only a few cases they are
based upon recent census or survey outcomes. Many other figures are, due to the lack of other data,
derived from informed estimates by experts (these are sometimes referred to as ‘disputed numbers’).
Also, some languages would perhaps not be included according to certain criteria; others might be
split up further. Figures on RM languages in (mainly Western) Europe can be found in Breatnach
(1998), Euromosaic (1996), Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana (1986), Siguan (1990) and
Tjeerdsma (1998), as well as in the Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com/). Derived from Extra
and Gorter (2008), we will use a simple typology and distinguish between five categories of RM
languages within the EU:
•
unique RM languages, spoken in only one nation-state (e.g., Welsh in the United Kingdom,
Frisian in the Netherlands or Breton in France);
•
RM languages spoken in more than one nation-state (e.g., Basque in Spain and France or Sami
in Sweden and Finland);
•
languages which are a RM language in one nation-state but the national language in a
neighboring state (e.g., Albanian and Croatian in Italy; Polish in Germany or German in Poland);
•
historical non-territorial minority languages, which exist in smaller or larger numbers in almost all
EU nation-states; the most prominent ones are Romani and Yiddish;
9
•
two languages with a special status, being official state languages of the EU but no official
working languages of the EU; these are Luxemburgish, spoken in Luxembourg and France, and
Irish, spoken in Ireland and Northern Ireland (UK).
Figure1. Overview of RM languages across EU nation-states (Mercator Education, Fryske Akademy,
Leeuwarden)
There are many publications on the status and use of RM languages, both in Europe and abroad
(e.g., Gorter et al. 1990). Baetens Beardsmore (1993) focuses on RM languages in Western Europe,
Ó Corráin and Mac Mathúna (1998) present case studies on RM languages in Scandinavia, Britain
and Ireland. Synak and Wicherkiewicz (1997), Bratt-Paulston and Peckham (1998), and Hogan-Brun
and Wolf (2003) focus on RM languages in Central and Eastern Europe. In a number of European
countries a periodical census includes one or a few questions on language and ethnicity, but in other
countries no such questions are asked. An additional tool for obtaining data are sociolinguistic
surveys. There are some RM language communities where such surveys are carried out with regular
intervals. The Euromosaic (1996) project has provided a general overview of 48 language
communities in the EU. In about half of those cases also data were collected through small-scale
10
sociolinguistic surveys. The European Language Survey Network has developed a core module of
28 questions meant as a standard for questionnaires in any RM language community in Europe in
order to obtain a basic overview of the language situation (ELSN 1996; Gorter 1997).
In Ireland and Wales, there is a tradition of both a regular census with language questions and
regular sociolinguistic surveys. Spain has also a tradition of census with questions on the official
languages of the Autonomous Communities in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia. In all
contexts referred to, the focus is on RM languages, not on IM languages. The Netherlands has not
had a census since 1971 and never had a language question; however, regular sociolinguistic
surveys have been carried out on Frisian in the province of Friesland. In the UK, the latest decennial
census was carried out in 2011 with questions on English and languages other than English
including Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, British Sign Language and immigrant languages.
Immigrant minority languages across Europe
As a consequence of socio-economically or politically determined processes of migration, the
traditional patterns of language variation across Western Europe have changed considerably over
the past few decades. A new pattern of migration started in the 1960s and the early 1970s, and it
was mainly economically motivated. In the case of Mediterranean groups, migration initially involved
contract workers who expected – and were expected – to stay for a limited period of time. As the
period of their stay gradually became longer, this pattern of economic migration was followed by a
second pattern of social migration as their families joined them. Subsequently, a second generation
was born in the immigrant countries, while their parents often remained uncertain or ambivalent
about whether to stay or to return to their country of origin. These demographic shifts over time have
also been accompanied by shifts of designation for the groups under consideration – ‘migrant
workers’, ‘immigrant families’, and ‘immigrant minorities’, respectively (see also Table 3).
As a result, many industrialized Western European countries have a growing number of IM
populations which differ widely, both from a cultural and from a linguistic point of view, from the
indigenous population. In spite of more stringent immigration policies in most EU countries, the
prognosis is that IM populations will continue to grow as a consequence of the increasing number of
political refugees, the opening of the internal European borders, and political and economic
developments in Central and Eastern Europe and in other regions of the world.
Within the various EU countries, four major IM groups can be distinguished: people from
Mediterranean EU countries and Mediterranean non-EU countries, people from former colonial
countries, and political refugees. An overall decrease of the indigenous population has been
observed in all EU countries over the last decade; at the same time, there has been an increase in
the immigration figures. Although free movement of migrants between EU Member States is legally
permitted and promoted, most immigrants in EU countries originate from non-EU countries.
At the EU level, comparable cross-national data are available only on non-national population
groups in EU Member States (Poulain 2008; EuroStat 2006). The citizenship structures of foreign
populations in the EU Member States vary greatly. As well as geographical proximity, the
composition of the IM population in each country strongly reflects their history, in particular labor
migration, recent political developments and historical links. For example, the largest IM groups
include Turkish citizens in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands; citizens of former colonies in
Portugal (citizens of Cape Verde, Brazil and Angola) and in Spain (Ecuadorians and Moroccans);
migrants from Albania in Greece; citizens from the former Yugoslavia in Slovenia; Czech citizens in
Slovakia; and citizens from former Soviet Union countries in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
11
There have always been speakers of IM languages in Europe, but these languages have only
recently emerged as minority languages spoken on a wide scale in urban Europe. Turkish and
Arabic are good examples of so-called ‘non-European’ languages that are spoken and learned by
millions of inhabitants of the EU. Given the overwhelming focus on second-language acquisition by
IM groups, there is much less evidence on the status and use of IM languages across Europe as a
result of processes of international migration and intergenerational minorization. Typological
differences between IM languages across EU nation-states do exist, e.g., in terms of the status of IM
languages as EU or non-EU languages, or as languages of former colonies. Taken from the latter
perspective, e.g., Indian languages are prominent in the United Kingdom, Maghreb languages in
France, Congolese languages in Belgium, and Surinamese languages in the Netherlands.
Most studies in Europe have focused on a spectrum of IM languages at the level of one
particular multilingual city (Kroon 1990; Baker and Eversley 2000), one particular nation-state (LMP
1985; Alladina and Edwards 1991; Extra and Verhoeven 1993a; Extra and De Ruiter 2001; Caubet,
Chaker and Sibille 2002; Extra et al. 2002; Dewitte 2004), or one particular IM language at the
European level (Tilmatine 1997 and Obdeijn and De Ruiter 1998 on Arabic in Europe, or Jørgensen
2003 on Turkish in Europe). A number of studies have taken both a cross-national and a crosslinguistic perspective on the status and use of IM languages in Europe (e.g., Husén and Opper 1983;
Jaspaert and Kroon 1991; Extra and Verhoeven 1993b, 1998; Gogolin and Kroon 2000; Extra and
Gorter 2001, 2008; Luchtenberg 2004; Extra and Yağmur 2004).
The rationale for carrying out home language surveys amongst multicultural school populations
derives from the following perspectives:
•
Taken from a demographic perspective, home language data play a crucial role in the definition
and identification of multicultural school populations
•
Taken from a sociolinguistic perspective, home language data offer valuable insights into both
the distribution and vitality of home languages across different population groups, and thus raise
the public awareness of multilingualism
•
Taken from an educational perspective, home language data are indispensable tools for
educational planning and policies (and yet such planning and policies occur in absence of even
the most basic empirical facts)
•
Taken from an economic perspective, home language data offer latent resources that can be
built upon and developed in terms of economic chances
Home language data put to the test any monolingual mindset in a multicultural society and can
function as agents of change (Nicholas 1994) in a variety of public and private domains. Taken from
an educational perspective, it remains a paradoxical phenomenon that language policies and
language planning in multicultural societies often occur in the absence of basic knowledge and
empirical facts about multilingualism. The rationale for a focus on multicultural cities is based on the
following considerations:
•
International migration concentrates in urban settings
•
The same holds for intergenerational and reciprocal processes of acculturation
•
Multilingualism is most prevalent in urban settings
•
Cities are primary spaces where urban planners create local policies on multiculturalism and
multilingualism
•
Cities reinforce translocal and transnational dynamics in responding to population diversity
12
The Multilingual Cities Project (MCP) coordinated by Extra and Yağmur (2004), has delivered a
wealth of cross-national and cross-linguistic evidence on both the distribution and vitality of IM
languages in the homes of more than 160,000 primary school children in 6 European cities at a
European North-South axis from Göteborg, Hamburg, The Hague, Brussels, Lyon to Madrid. Followup studies of the MCP were carried out in Dublin (Carson and Extra 2010), in
Vilnius/Kaunas/Klaipeda in Lithuania (Ramoniène and Extra 2011), and in Vienna (Briziç, Hufnagl
and Extra, to appear).
Similar considerations as mentioned above have led to the mapping of the languages of
London’s schoolchildren by Baker and Eversley (2000) in Multilingual Capital and in Language
Capital by Eversley et al. (2010) (see also Section 4).
4. Similarities and differences in conceptual issues
RM and IM languages have much more in common than is usually thought (Extra and Gorter 2008:
9). We find issues on their sociolinguistic, educational, and political agendas such as their spread,
their domestic and public vitality, the determinants of language maintenance versus language shift
towards majority languages, the relationship between language, ethnicity and identity, and the status
of minority languages in schools, in particular in the compulsory stages of primary and secondary
education.
Both RM and IM languages can be considered as dominated languages compared to dominant
national languages in Europe. The dominant status of the latter becomes visible in such domains as
government, education, the media, and public services and spaces. The argumentation for
promoting the status of RM and IM languages in any of these domains is commonly based on
responsiveness to people’s cultural rights or cultural demands (May 2011). It holds for both RM and
IM languages that there are two major domains in which language transmission occurs: the domestic
domain and the public domain. The home and the school are typical of these domains. At home,
language transmission occurs between (parents and) children; at school this occurs between
(teachers and) pupils. Viewed from the perspectives of majority language speakers versus RM or IM
language speakers, language transmission becomes a very different issue. In the case of majority
language speakers, language transmission at home and at school are commonly taken for granted:
at home, parents usually speak an informal variety of this language with their children, and at school,
the formal variety of this language is usually the only or major subject and medium of instruction. In
the case of RM or IM language speakers, there is usually a much stronger mismatch between the
language of the home and that of the school. Whether parents in such a context continue to transmit
their language to their children is strongly dependent on the degree to which these parents, or the
minority group to which they belong, conceive of this language as a core value of cultural identity
(Smolicz 1980, 1992).
Many RM languages did not become designated as minority languages until the 18th and 19th
centuries, when, during the processes of state-formation in Europe, they found themselves excluded
from the state level, in particular from general education. RM languages did not become official
languages of most of the states that were then established (see Table 2). Centralizing tendencies
and an ideology of one language − one state have threatened the continued existence of RM
languages. The same ideology threatens the continued existence of IM languages, both in the
context of the home and the school. For most RM languages, some kind of educational provisions
have been established in an attempt at reversing ongoing language shift (Fishman 2001). Only in the
13
last few decades some of these RM languages have become relatively well protected in legal terms,
as well as by affirmative educational programs, both at the level of various Member States and at the
level of the EU at large. For most IM languages, educational provisions are much less common and
much more vulnerable in the context of an ideology of one nation − one state, as will be outlined
below.
Apart from similarities in conceptual issues surrounding RM and IM languages across Europe, some
major differences arise as well.
The first major difference relates to spatial distribution, both at the European and at the national
level. At the European level, RM languages have a stronger appearance than IM languages in
Central and Eastern Europe, whereas the reverse picture emerges for most Western European
countries (see also Table 7 in Section 5 for more detailed information). At the national level, RM
languages tend to be commonly more prominent phenomena on the country side, i.e., in rural areas,
whereas IM languages tend to concentrate in urban, in particular in metropolitan and multicultural
areas. The first phenomenon can be demonstrated with the latest 2011 UK census data on Welsh
(Figure 2). The highest proportions of Welsh speakers were found in the least populated areas of
Wales, the lowest proportions in South-Eastern areas.
Large-scale data collection mechanisms across European countries, if available at all, tend to
focus on RM languages, whereas such mechanisms are only in the process of beginning to emerge
for IM languages in some countries. The UK is a front-runner in this regard in the EU with an
inclusive question on languages other than English (LOTE) not reduced to RM languages in its latest
2011 UK Census. Unfortunately, in spite of the UK’s leading role in such data gathering, the UK
question has been about the informant’s main language rather than about the repertoire of
language(s) used at home. A question about the informant’s main language is very ambiguous
because of its lack of domain specification. It will predictably lead to an underestimation of language
diversity and it will make cross-continental comparisons of LOTE outcomes difficult (Extra 2010:
119).
Over time and across Europe, a decrease can be observed in the vitality of RM languages and
an increase and diversification in the vitality of IM languages. The first process can again be
demonstrated with longitudinal UK census data on Welsh. In 1911, almost a million (977,000) Welsh
speakers aged 3 and over in Wales were reported. This decreased over the last century reaching a
low of 504,000 in 1981. The number of people able to speak Welsh increased between 1981 and
2001, but subsequently decreased between 2001 and 2011. The number of people who spoke
Welsh only declined over the last century and by 1981 only very small numbers remained (Figure 3).
14
Figure 2. Proportion of people (aged 3 and over) able to speak Welsh, by local authority, 2011 Census
Source: http://ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/key-statistics-for-unitary-authorities-in-wales/rfttable-ks207wa.xls
15
Figure 3. Number of people aged 3 and over able to speak Welsh, 1911-2011
(Source: http://wales.gov.uk/docs/statistics/2012/121211sb1182012en.pdf)
In contrast to this data, Eversley et al. (2010) present reported longitudinal data collected in 2008 on
the increase of IM languages amongst the pupil population in London compared to data collected in
1998/1999 and presented by Baker and Eversley (2000). The overall outcomes are presented in
Table 5.
Table 5. Reported languages other than English at home in London’s pupil population
Size of minority language group
(number of pupils)
10,000+
1,000 to 9,999
100 to 999
10 to 99
1 to 9
Languages where data not available/ reliable
Total of languages recorded
No. of languages
in 1998/99
8
17
42
56
111
3
237
No. of languages
in 2008
12
30
44
68
76
3
233
Even allowing for the less robust quality of the 1998/99 data, which may have meant an undercounting of minority language speakers, the increase shown by the 2008 data in the size of
language groups with over 1,000 speakers represents a significant phenomenon: the number of
minority languages spoken by large numbers of pupils is rising. Eversley et al. (2010) also present
data on the spatial distribution of the reported languages across 33 London boroughs, including
distributional language maps for the top-10 of reported languages.
Support structures for RM languages, in particular in education, tend to be top-down from the
level of both regional and European authorities. In March 1998, the Council of Europe’s European
Charter for Regional or Minority Languages came into operation. The Charter functions as an
international instrument for the comparison of legal measures and facilities of Member States in this
policy domain (López et al. 2012; Nic Craith 2003), and is aimed at the protection and the promotion
of ‘the historical regional or minority languages of Europe.’ The concepts of ‘regional’ and ‘minority’
languages are not specified in the Charter and IM languages are explicitly excluded from the Charter.
16
States are free in their choice of which RM languages to include. Also, the degree of protection is not
prescribed; thus, a state can choose loose or tight policies. The result is a wide variety of provisions
across EU Member States (Grin 2003).
Top-down support structures for IM languages, both at the European and at the national level,
are much weaker, and support tends to be bottom-up from parents at the local or national level.
Although IM languages are often conceived of and transmitted as core values by IM language
groups, they are much less protected than RM languages by affirmative action and legal measures
in, for example, education. In fact, the learning and certainly the teaching of IM languages are often
seen by majority language speakers and by policy makers as obstacles to integration and as a threat
to the national identity. A rarely addressed paradox in the European vs. national public and political
discourse on diversity of languages becomes visible:
•
linguistic diversity at the European level is commonly conceived of as an inherent property of
European identity and prerequisite for integration, accompanied by such devices as celebrating
linguistic diversity or diversity within unity;
•
linguistic diversity at the national level, in particular with respect to immigrant languages, is often
conceived of as a threat to national identity and obstacle for integration.
Finally, a clash of paradigms emerges in those areas where RM languages and IM languages
appear in strong co-occurrence. Good examples of such areas are Barcelona and Catalonia at large.
As Carrasco (2008: 28) notes:
Ever since the formation of the Spanish state, the people of Catalonia have struggled to maintain
their language against a monolingual and monocultural ideology that privileged Spanish over Catalan.
Paradoxically, this struggle has led to another monolingual ideology in which other languages are
seen as a threat to Catalan. Therefore, in the new context of substantial migration to Barcelona and
Catalonia, there is often a resistance to developing multilingual and multicultural identities.
5. Aims and outcomes of the Language Rich Europe project
The Language Rich Europe project (2010-2013) has been co-financed by the European Commission
and the British Council. The research part of the LRE project has been led by Babylon Center at
Tilburg University (Extra and Yağmur 2013). Derived from key European Union (EU) and Council of
Europe (CoE) resolutions, conventions and recommendations, a survey questionnaire has been
designed to examine European trends in policies and practices for multilingualism across 25
European countries and regions (including 3 non-EU countries, i.e., Switzerland, Ukraine and
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Research partners in each country/region have collected the data and
complemented the resulting database with their own analysis of the findings. The overall objectives
of the LRE project were:
•
to facilitate the exchange of good practice in promoting intercultural dialogue and social
inclusion through language teaching and learning
•
to promote European co-operation in developing language policies and practices across several
education sectors and broader society
•
to raise awareness of the EU and CoE recommendations for promoting language learning and
linguistic diversity across Europe
17
There are obvious limitations to what can be achieved in a survey study like this. However, we
believe that the resulting outcomes go beyond the current state of our knowledge with regard to
language policies and practices in Europe from four different perspectives:
•
the high number of participating countries and regions − 25
•
the spectrum of chosen language varieties in the constellation of languages in Europe: at
foreign, regional or minority, immigrant and national languages, the latter with a special focus on
support for newcomers
•
the range of chosen language domains within and beyond education to include business, public
services and spaces in cities, and the media
•
the open-access publication and dissemination of the outcomes of this study in 20 languages,
including Turkish and Arabic as major languages of immigration in Europe.
Linguistic diversity is a key property of Europe’s identity, and both the EU Institutions based in
Brussels and the Council of Europe based in Strasbourg have been active in promoting language
learning and multilingualism/plurilingualism. The major language policy agencies in these two
institutions are the Unit for Multilingualism Policy within the Directorate-General of Education and
Culture in the European Commission and the Language Policy Unit of the Directorate of Education in
the Council of Europe. The work done by these agencies underpins the important resolutions,
charters and conventions produced by the respective bodies. Baetens Beardsmore (2008) gives an
insightful overview of both EU and CoE language promotion activities in the past. Rindler Schjerve
and Vetter (2012) offer current perspectives and challenges.
A search for multilingualism publications on http://europa.eu/ yields key EU documents in a
range of languages organized under five headings: EU policy documents, information brochures,
reports, studies, and surveys. On the CoE site, http://www.coe.int/lang, publications are offered in
the domains of policy development, instruments and standards, languages of school education,
migrants, conference reports and selected studies. The CoE makes a distinction between
plurilingualism as a speaker’s competence to use more than one language and multilingualism as
the presence of various languages in a given geographical area. The EU uses multilingualism for
both (sometimes specifying ‘multilingualism of the individual’).
Within the EU, language policy is the responsibility of individual Member States. EU institutions
play a supporting role in this field, based on the ‘principle of subsidiarity’. Their role is to promote cooperation between the Member States and to promote the European dimension in national language
policies. Within the three constituent bodies of the EU, that is the Council of the European Union, the
European Commission (EC), and the European Parliament, multilingualism has been a key area of
focus for a number of years. EU language policies aim to protect linguistic diversity and promote
knowledge of languages, for reasons of cultural identity and social integration, but also because
multilingual citizens are better placed to take advantage of the educational, professional and
economic opportunities created by an integrated Europe. Multilingualism policy is guided by the
objective set by the Council of the EU in Barcelona in 2002 to improve the mastery of basic skills, in
particular by teaching at least two additional languages from a very early age.
The following language varieties are addressed in the LRE project:
•
National languages: Official languages of a nation-state
•
Foreign languages: Languages that are not learnt or used at home but learnt and taught at
school or used as languages of wider communication in non-educational sectors
18
•
Regional or minority (RM) languages: Languages that are traditionally used within a given
territory of a state by nationals of that state who form a group numerically smaller than the rest
of the state’s population
Immigrant minority (IM) languages: Languages spoken by immigrants and their descendants in
the country of residence, originating from a wide range of (former) source countries
•
Table 6 gives an outline of the language domains covered by the LRE Questionnaire.
Table 6.
Composition of LRE Questionnaire across language domains
Nr.
Language domains
1
2
3
4
5
Languages in official documents and databases
Languages in pre-primary education
Languages in primary education
Languages in secondary education
Languages in further and higher education
15
34
58
60
30
6
7
8
Languages in audiovisual media and press
Languages in public services and spaces
Languages in business
14
31
18
Total of questions
N questions
260
The first domain is a meta-domain which looks at the availability of official national/regional
databases on language diversity. Domains 2-5 focus on education and domains 6-8 go beyond
education. Data analysis for domains 1-5 is based on available secondary data, and data analysis
for domains 6-8 on new/primary data collected in three cities in each of the participating
countries/regions. Here, we will focus on the outcomes of the first meta-domain.
Legislation on national and RM languages is provided in almost all countries/regions, on foreign
languages in 14 countries/regions, and on IM languages in only five countries/regions. Official
language policy documents on national and foreign languages are available in almost all
countries/regions, on RM languages in 19 countries/regions and on IM languages in only four
countries/regions. An overview of official educational provision in RM languages in all 18 LRE
countries is given in Table 7.
The largest numbers of officially provided RM languages in education emerge in South-Eastern
and Central European countries. In Western Europe, Italy and France are the clearest exceptions to
this general rule. In Western European countries, IM languages often have a more prominent
appearance than RM languages but are less recognized, protected and/or promoted. Greece is the
only participating LRE country in which no specific RM language is officially recognized or taught,
although Turkish is actually provided for Turkish-speaking children at primary schools in the region
of Thrace.
19
Table 7: RM languages officially provided in nation- or regionwide education in 18 countries
IN CAPITALS: EDUCATIONAL PROVISION MENTIONED BY OFFICIAL COUNTRY DOCUMENTS ONLY
In italics: educational provision mentioned by official country documents as well as by ECRML
Country
RM languages officially taught in nation- or regionwide education
N Total
Austria
Burgenland: Croatian, Hungarian, Romani; Slovene in Carinthia
4
Bosnia and
Herzegovina
Albanian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Italian, Jewish languages (Yiddish and Ladino),
Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Romani, Romanian, Rusyn, Slovak, Slovene,
Turkish, Ukrainian
17
Bulgaria
ARMENIAN, HEBREW, ROMANI, TURKISH
4
Denmark
German
1
Estonia
VÕRU LANGUAGE
1
France
BRETON, BASQUE, CATALAN, CORSICAN, CREOLE, FRENCH SIGN LANGUAGE,
GALLO, OCCITAN, REGIONAL LANGUAGES OF ALSACE, REGIONAL LANGUAGES
OF THE MOSELLE DEPARTMENT.
10
Greece
–
–
Hungary
Croatian, German, ROMANI, BOYASH, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene
8
Italy
ALBANIAN, CATALAN, CROATIAN, FRANCO-PROVENÇAL, FRENCH, FRIULAN,
GERMAN, GREEK, LADIN, OCCITAN, SARDINIAN, SLOVENE
12
Lithuania
BELARUSAN, HEBREW, POLISH, RUSSIAN
4
Netherlands
Frisian in Friesland only
1
Poland
Armenian, Belarusan, German, Hebrew, Kashubian, Lemko, Lithuanian, Russian,
Slovak, Ukrainian, Czech, Karaim, Romani, Tatar, Yiddish
15
Portugal
MIRANDESE in the region of Miranda do Douro
1
Romania
Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romani,
Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Tartar, Turkish, Ukrainian
15
Spain
Aranese-Occital, Basque, Catalan, Galician, Valencian
4
Switzerland
Italian, Romansch
2
UK
Cornish, Irish, Gaelic, Welsh
4
Ukraine
Belarusan, Bulgarian, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, German, Greek, Hungarian, Moldovan,
Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Yiddish
13
Most LRE countries/regions are familiar with language data collection mechanisms and most of them
address three types of languages: national languages, RM languages and IM languages. Five out of
24 countries/regions have no language data mechanisms at the national level at all: Austria (recently
terminated), Bosnia and Herzegovina (in spite of its many RM languages in education), Denmark,
Greece and the Netherlands (only for Frisian). Portugal only collects data on the national language.
Over half of the LRE countries/regions surveyed ask a home language question. The language
questions asked in Switzerland are most remarkable, in particular the first one on main language in
terms of: Which language do you think in and know best? Additional questions on language skills are
asked in only 11 out of all 24 countries/regions, that is in yes/no terms of Can you…? and/or in
scaled terms of How well can/do you….? The availability of official databases and data collection
mechanisms shows strong variation across European countries/regions. Taken from a European
perspective, there is a need for further development and knowledge exchange in this domain in
order to raise awareness of multilingualism, to provide evidence-based data for language planning
and education provision, and to carry out comparative European research.
20
In terms of educational provision in RM and IM languages, huge differences emerge in the LRE
outcomes between these two types of languages. Whereas Table 7 refers to educational RM
language provision in 17 out of 18 countries, some type of IM language provision in (pre-)primary
education is offered only in 5 countries (Austria, Denmark, France, Spain and Switzerland). In the
context of the LRE project, six RM languages are focused upon in particular, i.e., three in the UK
(Welsh, Gaelic and Irish), two in Spain (Catalan and Basque), and one in the Netherlands (Frisian).
As Table 8 shows, minimum group size requirements (at least 5 or 10 pupils) hold for Gaelic and
Irish, not for any of the other RM languages. Status differences between each of the languages do
not only emerge in the diversity of educational arrangements but even more clearly beyond
education. Although no equal sampling took place in the surveyed cities across regions, Catalan and
Basque emerge with the strongest appearances.
Table 8:
Provision of RM languages beyond education in their own region of reference
Languages
Surveyed cities
Newspapers
Public
services/spaces
Business
Welsh
3: Cardiff, Swansea, Newport
4
76
17
Gaelic
3: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen
0
17
0
Irish
1: Belfast
0
10
0
Catalan
3: Barcelona, Tarragona, L’Hospitalet
24
77
91
Basque
3: Bilbao, San Sebastian, Vitoria-Gasteiz
16
85
49
Frisian
1: Leeuwarden
0
21
10
6. Towards plurilingual education for all children
For various reasons, the development of an educational policy regarding RM and IM languages was,
and continues to be, a complex and challenging task. In view of the multicultural composition of
many schools, this task involves the organization of plurilingual rather than bilingual education
(Coelho 1998; García, Skutnabb-Kangas and Torres-Guzmán 2006). Experiences with, and the
results of research into, an exclusively bilingual context are therefore only transferable to a limited
degree. Bilingual education in majority languages and RM languages has been an area of interest
and research for a long time (Baetens-Beardsmore 1993; Baker 2006). More recently, local and
global perspectives are taken into consideration that go beyond bilingualism for RM groups and
focus on plurilingualism and plurilingual education. Apart from majority and RM languages, the focus
is commonly on the learning and teaching of English as a third language from a perspective of
glocalization, and in this way on promoting trilingualism from an early age on in the context of, e.g.,
the Basque Country and Catalonia in Spain or Friesland in the Netherlands (Cenoz and Genesee
1998; Cenoz and Jessner 2000; Beetsma 2002; Ytsma and Hoffmann 2003).
It is remarkable that the teaching of RM languages is generally advocated as a matter of course
for reasons of fairness, social cohesion, group identity or economic benefit, while such reasoning
rarely is an argument in favor of teaching IM languages. The 1977 guideline of the Council of
European Communities on education for ‘migrant’ children (Directive 77/486, dated 25 July 1977) is
has become nowadays completely outdated. It needs to be put in a new and increasingly
multicultural context and it needs to be extended to pupils originating from non-EU countries who
21
form the large part of IM children at European primary schools. Besides, most of the so-called
‘migrants’ in EU countries have taken up citizenship of the countries in which they live, and in many
cases they belong to second or third generation groups. Against this background, there is a growing
need for overarching human rights for every individual, irrespective of their ethnic, cultural, religious
or language background. For similar inclusive approaches to IM and RM language rights we refer to
Grin (1995), Nic Craith (2006) and May (2011).
The call for differentiation of the monolingual habitus (Gogolin 1994) of primary schools across
Europe originates not only bottom-up from IM parents or organizations, but also top-down from
supra-national institutions which emphasize the increasing need for European citizens with a transnational and multicultural affinity and identity. Plurilingual competencies are considered prerequisites
for such an affinity and identity. Both the European Commission and the Council of Europe have
published many policy documents in which language diversity is cherished as a key element of the
multicultural identity of Europe – now and in the future. This language diversity is considered to be a
prerequisite rather than an obstacle for a united European space in which all citizens are equal (but
not the same) and enjoy equal rights (Council of Europe 2000). The maintenance of language
diversity and the promotion of language learning and plurilingualism are seen as essential elements
for the improvement of communication and for the reduction of intercultural misunderstanding.
The European Commission (1995), in a so-called Whitebook, opted for trilingualism as a policy
goal for all European citizens. Apart from the ‘mother tongue’, each citizen should learn at least two
‘community languages’. At this stage, the concept of ‘mother tongue’ was being used to refer to the
official languages of EU Member States and overlooked the fact that for many inhabitants of Europe
‘mother tongue’ and ‘official state language’ do not coincide (Tulasiewicz and Adams 2005). At the
same time, the concept of ‘community languages’ referred to the official languages of two other EU
Member States. In later European Commission documents, reference was made to one foreign
language with high international prestige (English was deliberately not referred to) and one so-called
‘neighboring language’. This latter concept always referred to neighboring countries, never to nextdoor neighbors. UNESCO adopted the term ‘multilingual education’ in 1999 (General Conference
Resolution 12) for reference to the use of at least three languages, i.e., the mother tongue, a
regional or national language, and an international language in education.
In a follow-up to the European Year of Languages in 2001, the heads of state and government
of all EU Member States gathered in March 2002 in Barcelona and called upon the European
Commission to take further action to promote plurilingualism across Europe, in particular by
promoting the learning and teaching of at least two additional languages from a very early age
(Nikolov and Curtain 2000). A more recent initiative, supported by the Council of Europe and
coordinated by the European Centre for Modern Languages in Graz (Austria), has been the Valeur
project 2004–2007. Its ambitions were to bring together information on educational provisions for
non-national languages in more than 20 European countries, to focus on the outcomes of these
provisions for students by the time they have left school, to identify good practices and draw
conclusions about how provision can be developed, to promote a greater awareness of the issues
involved, and to create a network for developing new initiatives (McPake et al. 2007).
More recently the EC’s thinking has developed in this area and paragraph 4.1 of the EC’s wellknown 2008 Communication is entitled Valuing all languages:
In the current context of increased mobility and migration, mastering the national language(s) is
fundamental to integrating successfully and playing an active role in society. Non-native speakers
should therefore include the host-country language in their ‘one-plus-two’ combination.
22
There are also untapped linguistic resources in our society: different mother tongues and other
languages spoken at home and in local and neighboring environments should be valued more highly.
For instance, children with different mother tongues – whether from the EU or a third country –
present schools with the challenge of teaching the language of instruction as a second language, but
they can also motivate their classmates to learn different languages and open up to other cultures.
With a view to allowing closer links between communities, the Commission’s advisory Group of
Intellectuals for Intercultural Dialogue (2008) developed the concept of a ‘personal adoptive
language’, which should usefully benefit from further reflection.
In particular the plea for the learning of three languages by all EU citizens, the plea for an early start
to such learning experiences, and the plea for offering a wide range of languages to choose from,
based on the principle of personal adoption by parents/children, open the door to the abovementioned inclusive approach. Although this may sound paradoxical (Phillipson 2003), such an
approach can also be advanced by accepting the role of English as lingua franca for transnational
communication across Europe. Against this background, a number of principles are spelled out for
the enhancement of trilingualism at primary school level in continental European countries in which
one language functions as official state language (see also Extra and Yağmur 2004: 406; Extra and
Gorter 2008: 45):
1
2
3
4
5
In the primary school curriculum, three languages are introduced for all children:
• the official standard language of the particular nation-state (or in some cases a
region) as a major school subject and the major language of communication for the
teaching of other school subjects;
• English as lingua franca for international communication;
• an additional third language, based on the principle of personal adoption by
parents/children.
The teaching of these additional languages is part of the school curriculum and subject
to educational inspection.
Regular primary school reports contain information on the children’s proficiency in each
of these languages.
National working programs are established for the languages of personal adoption
referred to under (1) in order to develop curricula, teaching methods and teacher training
programs.
Some of these languages of personal adoption may be taught at specialized language
schools, depending on the spread of need and demand.
This set of principles is aimed at reconciling bottom-up and top-down pleas in Europe for
plurilingualism, and is inspired by large-scale and enduring experiences with the learning and
teaching of English (as L1 or L2) and one Language Other Than English (LOTE) for all children in
the State of Victoria, Australia (Extra and Yağmur 2004: 99–105). The Victorian School of
Languages in Melbourne has led to an internationally recognized break-through in the
conceptualization of plurilingualism in terms of making provision feasible and mandatory for all
children (including L1 English-speaking children), in terms of offering a broad spectrum of LOTE
provision (in 2012, more than 60 languages were taught), and in terms of government support for
this provision derived from multicultural policy perspectives.
23
When in the European context each of the above-mentioned languages should be introduced in
the curriculum and whether or when they should be subject or medium of instruction, has to be
spelled out according to particular national, regional or local demands. Moreover, the increasing
internationalization of pupil populations in European schools requires that a language policy be
introduced for all school children in which the traditional dichotomy between foreign language
instruction for indigenous majority pupils and home language instruction for IM pupils is put aside.
Given the experiences abroad (e.g., the Victorian School of Languages in Australia), language
schools can become centers of expertise where a variety of languages are taught, if the students’
demand is low and/or spread over many schools. In line with the proposed principles for primary
schooling, similar ideas could be worked out for secondary schools where learning more than one
language across European nation-states is already an established curricular practice. The abovementioned principles would recognize plurilingualism in an increasingly multicultural environment as
an asset for all youngsters and for society at large. The EU, the Council of Europe, and UNESCO
could function as leading transnational agencies in promoting such concepts. The UNESCO
Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity (updated in 2002) is very much in line with the views
expressed here, in particular in its plea to encourage linguistic diversity, to respect the mother
tongue at all levels of education, and to foster the learning of more than one language from a very
early age.
Other principles need to be worked out for the UK in which English functions as official state
language and for those European countries in which more than one language functions as such.
According to Table 1, presented in Section 1, the latter holds for the following EU countries: Belgium,
Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg and Malta. Luxembourg’s traditional institutionalized trilingualism in
Luxembourgish, French and German is put into practice in school for all children (Horner and Weber
2008). At pre-school level, the curricular language is Lëtzebuergesch, a Germanic Moselle
Franconian variety. In primary school, German is used as the language for reading and writing in
Grade One. German becomes progressively the main curricular language as children move through
primary school, while French is taught as a subject from Grade Two onwards and Luxembourgish is
used in subjects such as arts and crafts, for musical and physical education, and for communicating
in informal contexts (Portante and Max 2008). While around 60% of the school population are
Luxembourgish citizens by law, language use within families shows a far more complex picture.
A national survey focusing on the languages that 3 to 9-year-old children use at home found
that Lëtzebuergesch is the most frequently used home language in 51% of the family contexts,
Portuguese in 19% and French in 14%. Other languages present 3% or less (Maurer et al. 2007).
The survey also revealed the linguistic complexity of the home contexts in which the large majority of
children live. Most are exposed to two or more languages. In contexts outside the family, most
children use Lëtzebuergesch with their peers. At home, many siblings of Portuguese origin also
interact in Lëtzebuergesch or French. A minority of Luxembourgish parents use French with their
children, and Luxembourgish children come into contact with German early through the use of audiovisual and print media. In 1991, local schools started offering classes in Portuguese and Italian.
Since then, these courses, taught in parallel with the official curriculum, have been replaced by
‘integrated mother tongue courses’ at primary school level. They give children the opportunity to
develop Portuguese or Italian language skills while also maintaining contact with Portuguese or
Italian culture. It remains to be seen how Luxembourg will respond to the increasing linguistic
diversity within its educational settings in the future (see Horner 2009 and De Korne for further
details).
24
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