20 years of celebrating linguistic and cultural diversity
©Občina Izola
On the initiative of the Council of Europe, we have been celebrating the European Day of Languages on 26 September every year since 2001. The aim is to raise awareness of the rich cultural and linguistic diversity in Europe and of the importance of learning languages in order to consolidate the European principles of tolerance.
The Council of Europe encourages the 800 million Europeans living in the 47 Council of Europe member states to become multilingual, firmly convinced that linguistic diversity is an important tool for achieving better intercultural understanding and is at the same time a key component of our continent's rich cultural heritage.
The European Day of Languages aims to raise people’s awareness of the importance of language education and of each language, as well as to enhance respect for all the languages spoken by different peoples across Europe and to increase linguistic awareness. The initiative is also aimed at promoting language learning and lifelong learning. This is also beneficial for health, as medical studies have shown that learning a second language can delay the onset of dementia for several years.
Europe’s linguistic wealth
There are 225 native languages in member states of the Council of Europe, accounting for around 3% of all languages in the world. According to UNESCO, at least 6,000 languages spoken in 43% of the world are at risk. Languages have approximately 50,000 words or more. Native speakers usually know between 15,000 and 20,000 word families, but individual speakers typically use only a few hundred of them.
The European Union has 24 official languages and three scripts. In addition, more than 60 regional and minority languages are spoken in the European Union and migration flows are further expanding the range of languages in Europe. Many areas in the EU are characterised by bilingualism. There is a high level of multilingualism in Luxembourg, where more than half of adults speak at least three foreign languages. Knowledge of at least three foreign languages is also high in Finland (45%) and Slovenia (38%).
The oldest spoken Indo-European language is Lithuanian, which is very similar to ancient Sanskrit. One of the most difficult to pronounce letters in the world is supposed to be the Czech letter ř … except for the Czechs, of course.
Slovenian is one of the few languages with dual
The Slovenian language is spoken by approximately 2,500,000 speakers around the world. Most of them live in Slovenia, but Slovenian is also heard in Italy, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Germany, as well as in the USA, Canada, Argentina, Australia and South Africa.
Many believe that the dual is only a Slovenian special feature, but that is not the case. The dual in one form or another is also known by the Lusatian Serbian, spoken in the southeastern part of Germany, Kashubian spoken in northern Poland, Celtic Breton, spoken in the northwest of France, as well as modern Arabic and Hebrew.
Dual is a grammatical number used in addition to singular and plural, marking exactly two units. This makes the Slovenian very special, as it establishes and maintains the relationship between two persons, which is a special human relationship, in its very grammar. Or, in the words of the Slovenian poet Boris A. Novak: “Between the singular of solitude and the plural of the noisy crowd [...], the Slovenian has preserved an island of intimacy, where two solitudes whisper to each other, protected by the very grammar of the language”.
The Slovenian has 48 dialects and spoken variants, which is indeed a lot for a language spoken in such a small area. Dialects vary greatly and are grouped into eight dialect groups: Dolenjska, Gorenjska, Koroška, Primorska, Štajerska, Pannonian, Rovtarska and Kočevska.
Europe Readr digital platform
The Slovenian Presidency's flagship cultural and promotional project has been chosen in the language field. The Europe Readr digital platform offers free access to a selection of 27 books by European authors, including novels, short stories, poetry, essays and comics. Each member state is represented by one literary work in the original language and in the English translation. The main theme is the future of living, so books bring important social issues closer to readers and encourage reflection on the world they want to live in.
The Europe Readr platform, with a wide range of events organised in 27 countries around the world by the Network of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in cooperation with local partners, also came to life in the form of public spaces dedicated to reading and the exchange of ideas on the future. This kind of local community involvement is a valuable contribution to promoting reading culture and critical thinking, as well as a European identity and a unified image of the Union in the world.
