[lg policy] EU funded project to develop language vitality barometer

[Harold Schiffman]

EU funded project to develop language vitality barometer
Thursday, 10 December 2009

An EU-funded team of researchers is targeting the development of a
vitality barometer for European languages. This barometer would offer
Europeans a reliable method to determine which languages are in danger
of becoming extinct. The ELDIA ('European language diversity for all')
project has received EUR 2.7 million in EU support. The researchers
from 8 universities in 6 EU Member States are gearing up to launch
investigations of 14 Finno-Ugric languages. “These languages are
particularly well suited to the investigations as they cover the
entire spectrum of the different minority languages, starting with
autochthonous languages such as Meänkieli in Sweden right through to
the language of new migrant workers such as Estonians in Germany,”
said project coordinator Professor Anneli Sarhimaa of the Johannes
Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

An expert in Northern European and Baltic languages, Professor
Sarhimaa said the project's results will be used to generate a
universally bound European language vitality barometer. All minority
languages would be able to use this barometer. The team said the
European Language Vitality Barometer 'EuLaViBar' will be similar to
the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources (IUCN) Red List, which is the world's most comprehensive
inventory of the global conservation status of animal and plant
species. The EuLaViBar will provide indications of the current status
and extent of the danger to languages. The EU will also be able to use
the tool to monitor the implementation of the EU policy for the
protection of minorities.

The ELDIA team, consisting of 12 academics and 20 PhD students and
postdocs, will conduct several field tests and evaluate text documents
in the 14 minority languages and relevant majority languages.
Linguists participating in the study will examine the language of the
Setu people in eastern Estonia and the language spoken by the
Hungarian population living in Slovenia. Sociologists will evaluate
how the public perceives the ethnic groups and statisticians will
develop the methodological structure for the collection and evaluation
of the material. The role of the legal experts involved in the study
will be to assess the legal position of the minorities as regards EU
legislation.

"Multilingualism is a part of our great European heritage," Professor
Sarhimaa pointed out. "In Europe, 46 million people are brought up
with both a minority language and the main language spoken in the
area." One of the objectives of the ELDIA project is to preserve and
protect this heritage, according to the researchers. They will also
investigate the Karelian, Vepsian and Seto ethnic groups in Russia,
and the Northern Sami population in Norway. The vitality barometer,
according to the team, aims to demonstrate that no competition is
needed between the minority and majority groups. Also, that the
languages of each group can co-exist. The researchers speculate
however that the future does not look bright for the languages spoken
by fewer than 1 million people.

The researchers participating in the ELDIA project are from Finland's
Helsingin Yliopisto, Oulun Yliopisto, and Ålands Fredsinstitut, the
University of Vienna in Austria, Mälardalens Högskola in Sweden,
Estonia's Tartu Ülikool and Univerza v Mariboru in Slovenia. (Davyth
Hicks, EBLUL -Eurolang 2009)

ELDIA
http://www.univie.ac.at/eldia-project/

http://www.eblul.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=251&Itemid=1

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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