New map showing signatories to European Charter on linguistic minorities

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

Let's not forget that this protects only 'indigenous' linguistic minorities, and not 'immigrant' linguistic minorities. 
 
You can read about this policy at:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/languages/langmin/regmin_en.html
 
and see the list of the languages identified as 'regional and minority languages' at:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/languages/langmin/euromosaic/index_en.html
 
I'm not against 'regional and minority languages', but I do think speakers of widely spoken 'immigrant' languages (awful expression) deserve rights too. I would certainly argue (indeed, have argued) that in the UK, for example, the linguistic minority who speak Urdu have a better case for protection than those who speak Cornish.
 
Anthea

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Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr) 
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT <www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg> 
NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk 
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