Web of Words

[Johanna Laakso]

Dear Uralists,

forwarded, an announcement of the EBLUL "Web of Words" site dedicated to the
"regional and minority languages of Europe" [= EU?]. Please
- forgive this cross-posting, once again
- feel free to visit the site and express your opinion, either on this list
or directly to the EBLUL people, on the - in my opinion, that is - somewhat
amateurish quality of the site. The texts are written in unrevised English
(such as we all use ;-) ), and at least some of them are clearly not written
by professional linguists. (The idea of the Finnish local cases - inessive,
elative, ablative, allative - "developing into one" locative case in Sámi,
for example, was novel to me...) The database seems very uneven - obviously
the site is still "very much under construction". In all, the impression one
gets about the resources the European Commission is willing to allocate for
the regional and minority languages is not very favourable.

More comments?

Best,

Johanna

--
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
Institut für Finno-Ugristik der Universität Wien
Universitätscampus, Spitalg. 2-4 Hof 7, A-1090 Wien
Tel. +43 1 4277 43009 | Fax +43 1 4277 9430
johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at | http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/

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Von: louis janus <lctl at TC.UMN.EDU>
Antworten an: Less Commonly Taught Language teachers <lctl-t at TC.UMN.EDU>
Datum: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 12:06:08 -0600
An: lctl-t at TC.UMN.EDU
Betreff: European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages-- Web of words site

I received this announcement (somewhat shortened here) about the Web
of Words, (less commonly known/ used / understood?) words in the
European Union. I thought subscribers to some of our lists would
enjoy it
--Louis Janus, listmanager
--------------------------------------------------------

Brussels, Friday, November 09, 2001

"The European languages that few people speak about."
More than forty minority languages of the European Union are presented on
the new "web of words" site

Did you know that Russian is one of the minority languages of the European
Union? That Cornish, a Celtic language, which disappeared in the 19th
century, is reviving in Cornwall and on the web? That Judeo-Spanish, today
spoken by numerous European Jews, is very similar to the Spanish spoken in
the 15th century? The ³Web-Of-Words" - site [http://www.eblul.org/wow]
presents about forty languages, so called ³regional- or minority languages²,
which are spoken in the European Union.

³It is one of the goals of the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages, to
call the attention of every European citizen on the diversity and richness
of all the languages spoken in the European Union" explains Markus Warasin,
the Bureau's Secretary General ³ this web site has been voluntarily created
to answer questions asked by the public about the European language reality,
often very different from one Member-State to another.²
--
=====================================================
Louis Janus
  Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) Project
  Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA)
  University of Minnesota
  617 Heller Hall
  271 19th Avenue So.
  Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA
  phone: 612/624-9016; fax: 612/624-7514
-------------------------------
LCTL at umn.edu
-------------------------------
<http://carla.acad.umn.edu/LCTL>
<http://carla.acad.umn.edu/profiles/janus-profile.html>
=====================================================

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