Saluton,

still a stony way for esperanto remaining. But promoting to set up a "local" dialect to official EU language status seems to be possible.

ĝp,

NOVALanguages (twitter)

Plaid MEP, Jill Evans heralds Historic day for Welsh language in the European Parliament

"The Welsh language takes another step to becoming an official language of the EU today (Thursday) with Welsh translation being used for the first time at the European Parliament.

Plaid MEP, Jill Evans will be speaking in Welsh, with translation, in a seminar on language policy.

The event, called Language diversity: A Challenge for Europe, is organised by the European Free Alliance Group in the European Parliament, of which Jill Evans MEP is President. "

I'm not European, but I'll still throw in my two cents anyway. Maybe our UK friends would care to comment.

I have mixed feelings on this. I'm glad that the Welsh language is getting more and more recognition. I would like to see the number of speakers grow. However, I'm not sure what is accomplished by having Welsh translation added to the already burdensome cacophony of languages that is the current European Parliament. Isn't the purpose of all this translating to aid in communication? How does adding a new language, which many Welsh cannot even speak and struggle to learn, help this goal?

andogigi:How does adding a new language, which many Welsh cannot even speak and struggle to learn, help this goal?

I only mentioned that because due to this incident it seems to be possible to add a minorities group language to the official EU language pool. Something that was denied very often in the past. That's a way that the esperanto minority language could go, too. (In fact, the esperanto community is a worldwide scattered but lively language minority community.) Maybe that has to happen inside a national state body like the welsh language inside the UK state body. So, if I would trust the en.wikipedia.org entry welsh language is spoken by around 750,000 people. Okay, nobody knows excactly. But that should be less than the active esperanto speakers community(?).

I am also glad to see this development, since, logically, this will further inflate the EU linguistic bubble and drive their linguistic spending further more, eventually to the point when a neutral auxiliary language is worth considering.

still looking forward to the first Esperanto take-over. muhahahaha--

hi all, I'd just like to add my "two cents" to this. I currently live in Wales (though I'm not Welsh). anyway, the main problem that I have with Welsh and the social engineering that goes with it, is that in my opinion learning a new language should be about inclusivity; that is being able to converse with *more* people. Esperanto obviously is about this. But Welsh is most definitely not. The problem with the way the Welsh language is forced upon the population (that very often don't want it) is that it is fundamentally not a means of communication but a political bargaining tool. Feel free to disagree but unfortunately it is true.

Esperanto all the way.

I'd add to Aslan's comments that another problem is that they promote the language and all, and basically send the message that all should learn it - but once you're out of school, making people learn the language is very hard work! Here in Adelaide with Kaurna, you'll see on certain street signs (particularly major cultural centres like the Central Business District (downtown, yo!), where we have a sign in the centre square with "Tarndanyangga" written on it). But, the biggest problem is that they aren't really even teaching it. In primary schools I don't think they have EVER taught it (granted though we learn Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese, depending on your school). I think there are classes out there (somewhere), mostly aimed at teaching the aboriginal population, although I am peaved that they aren't teaching it much elsewhere, what is the city of Adelaide aiming for, renewed cultural segregation? The only phrases I really know are things like "Tardanyannga" which means "(at) Red-kangaroo rock", and I had to go to Wikipedia for that