Latvia

[Harold F. Schiffman]

The Latvian argument is another example for me of something I've been
concerned about since 1996, which is the prioritization of the
'indigenous' at the expense of the 'immigrant'.  We see this in the EC's
(to me, invidious) definition of 'Regional or Minority Language):


"The customary definition of regional or minority language is that used in
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, an international
treaty supervised by the Council of Europe and adopted by many EU Member
States, i.e. languages traditionally used by part of the population of a
state that are not dialects of official languages of the state, languages
of migrants or artificially created languages."

 [The European Commission: Regional and minority languages of the European
Union, <http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/langmin/regmin.html> ] Being
defined as a 'regional or minority language' in Europe has financial
consquences.  Cornish, Romani and Yiddish are among the languages that may
benefit, while Urdu, Turkish, and Bengali are outside the remit.

If you ask anyone in the UK what the main minority languages in the UK
are, Urdu will come high on the list, and Cornish and Yiddish very low
down indeed, if they are ever mentioned.

I believe it is invidious to award benefits to groups or their languages
on the basis of where their ancestors came from, or whether their
ancestors were the goodies or baddies.  Arguments from ancestry are
arguments we should be very very worried about.

Anthea


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Anthea Fraser GUPTA : http://www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg/
School
of English University of Leeds LEEDS LS2 9JT UK

[NB: best email style is a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk.  Use REPLY -- do
not
paste from header.]
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