Definitions
A few notions to understand the situation of regional and minority languages.
- 1 What is a 'minority' or 'regional' language? The term "minority language" covers two types of situations of speakers: - the speakers of languages the use of which decreases and/or tends to disappear. The n…
- 2 What is an 'official' language? An official language is a language that can be used in dealings with public authority and in official documents (including commercial documents). In many countr…
- 3 What are these languages for? This issue can be dealt with from two viewpoints: From a scientific viewpoint Every utterance, even if it is short, corresponds to and enacts a particular reali…
- 4 Languages or dialects? Nineteenth century linguists used the same methods as zoologists and botanists to study language phenomena. They thought that languages, just like animal or veg…
- 5 The main language families spoken in Europe FAMILY 1 : INDO-EUROPEAN - GROUP / ROMANCE Aragonese, Aromanian, Asturian, Catalan, Corsican, Spanish, French, Franco-provençal, Friulian, Galician, Italian, Ju…
- 6 What is writing? Writing: putting language in a can BNM Consulting, Brussels, 2003 · translated from French for this site "Children don't read books any more!" teachers complain…