European parliament working paper
PART TWO: AN OVERVIEW OF THE MINORITY LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE EU
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PART TWO: AN OVERVIEW OF THE MINORITY LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE EU:GREECE, SPAIN, FINLAND, FRANCE, IRELAND, LUXEMBOURG, UNITED KINGDOMIntroductionThis part of the Report contains brief analyses of the present state of the minority language communities in seven of the Union’s member States, namely Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. Wherever possible each individual report is structured in the following way: (1). Introduction: In this section a brief presentation of the language and the community that speaks it is followed by sufficient history of the language, and its socio-economic context, to be able to comprehend the remainder of the report. The legal status, if any, of the language, is also referred to. (2) The use of the language in various fields: The present level of use of the language is described in the following fields: Education; The courts; Public authorities and services; Mass media and information and communication technology; The Arts; The business world; Family and social use of the language; and, where appropriate, Transnational exchanges. In many of the smaller communities, the available valid data is insufficient to warrant the breaking down of this section into paragraphs. In some cases several paragraphs are coupled together. (3) Conclusion: Where deemed necessary, a brief summary reflecting on the vitality of the language brings reports to a close. For reasons of space, in Member States with more than one minority language community (that is, Greece, Spain, Finland, France and the United Kingdom), a short introduction to that State precedes the individual community reports, thus reducing the need for repetition. Though every effort has been made to depict as exactly as possible the present situation of the minority language communities studied, the lack of legal recognition, in some cases, means that the data is often scant, unreliable (not to say biased) and outdated. The scarcity of information can sometimes be explained simply because in particular functions or domains, such as the courts, public services or education, the use of the language is not legally contemplated. Sometimes it is merely due to the lack of recent sources: census data may date back to the 1950s or even earlier, and to a time when many citizens were loathe to publicly admit their allegiance to a minority language community in any case. In the choice of minority language communities, the authors have done their best to follow the criteria of the European Charter for Lesser-Used Languages150, as defined in Article 1 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: “‘regional or minority languages’ means languages that are: (i) 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; and (ii) different from the official language(s) of that State; it does not include either dialects of the official language(s) of the State or the languages of migrants […]” The borderline between official languages and dialects of the official languages is extremely fuzzy in some cases. Wherever the line is drawn there is bound to be a number of groups that feel left out. The same dialect may have some degree of official recognition on one State, and none whatsoever in a neighbouring State. Whoever believes that the distinction between a language and a dialect can be drawn in linguistic terms is mistaken, for the issue has more to do with political power: it is been claimed that a language is merely a dialect with an army behind it! Unfortunately it has proved impossible to include all the cases planned, largely on account of the practical problems encountered in bringing together the information required. The seven EU Member States for which reports have been requested are as follows: Greece (EL), Spain (ES), Finland (FI), France (FR), Ireland (IR), Luxembourg (LU), and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). General bibliographyEBLUL website. Background information about specific language groups: http://eblul.org/browse.htm. Euromosaic website: http://www.uoc.es/euromosaic/. Extra, Guus & Durk Gorter (eds.) The Other Languages of Europe, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon (UK), 2001. Nic Shuibhne, Niamh, EC law and minority language policy, Kluwer, forthcoming, January 2002. Nelde, Peter; Miquel Strubell & Glyn Williams, Euromosaic: The Production and Reproduction of the Minority Language Groups in the European Union. Luxembourg, Commission of the European Communities, 1996.
(Various authors) Les nouvelles legislations dans l’Union Européenne / Le nuove legislazioni linguistiche nell’Unione Europea. Ciemen / Editorial Mediterrània, Barcelona, 2001. Wright, Sue, Community and communication. The role of language in nation state building and European integration, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon (UK), 2000.
IntroductionIn the newly founded Greek State (1830-31), Turkish and Albanian were spoken as well as Greek. The annexation of Thessaly (1881), Crete (1912), New Territories (1913, 1920) and Dodecanese (1947) incorporated Greek citizens speaking other languages: Turkish, Albanian (Arvanítika), Aromanian (Vlach), Romani, Bulgarian, Armenian and Judeo-Spanish. The exchange of population with Bulgaria (1919) and Turkey (1923) transformed the linguistic map of Greece. The Treaties of Sevres (1920) and Lausanne (1923) dealt with the issue of minorities in Greece. The latter (art. 37-45) is still in force, as regards the Muslims exempted from the exchange of population. Several minority language-planning projects from the period are worth mentioning. Between 1913 and World War II, Romanian-medium schools and churches operated for the Vlachs, supported by the Romanian government. In 1925, there was an aborted attempt to open Slavophone schools in Greek Macedonia. Under the Metaxas dictatorship (1936-1941) and the German occupation (1941-1944) ethnic diversity began to be persecuted: the Judeo-Spanish-speaking Sephardic Jews of Thessalonika were massacred by the German occupation forces, and later, during the politically-motivated civil war (1946-9), the Albanian-speaking Muslims of Epirus (Chams) and the Slavophone population of Macedonia were subjected to persecution. In recent decades, assimilation of minority language-speakers has considerably reduced their numbers. No accurate figures exist, but probably less than 5% of the population now speak such languages; all are fluent in Greek, except for many Turkish-speaking Muslims in Thrace. The censuses of 1928, 1940 and 1951 (when language items were lasting included) gave data on the following: Albanian, Armenian, Bulgarian or Pomak, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Koutsovlach, Romani, and Slavomacedonian or Slavic. In Greece only the educational and religious rights of the Muslim minority in Thrace are legally recognised. Armenian and Hebrew are taught in certain private schools. Macedonian/Bulgarian/Pomak, Vlach and Albanian/Arvanítika are all on the decline. Significantly, the names given to some of these languages are polemical. Legislation applicable to speakers of minority languages in Greece deals with the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of language; some provisions safeguard the citizen’s right to use his/her own language in civil and penal procedures. There are at last some incipient signs of political interest in aligning with international minority protection standards. Greece’s legal order has recently incorporated provisions, which could cover minority languages: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (in 1997) and the International Convention on Children’s Rights (in 1992). The ratification of the Framework Convention on National Minorities (signed in 1998) would strengthen the weak legal protection of minority languages in Greece and could activate a fertile political discourse. General referencesEuromosaic website: http://www.uoc.es/euromosaic/. KEMO, The linguistic alterity in Greece, (in Greek), Alexandreia Pub. /Minority Groups Research Centre, Athens 2001. Tsitselikis, K. The international and European status of linguistic minority rights and the Greek legal order, (in Greek), A.N. Sakkoulas, Athens Komotini 1996.
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