L’EUROmosaico linguistico: scenario e politiche di tutela

Linguistic diversity has been an issue tackled since the EU began its life as an economic community in 1958 the 4 languages (Dutch, French, German and Italian) in which the Treaty was drafted were recognised as official languages in the Members States and therefore became the working and official languages of the Institutions. However, progressive enlargements have brought in additional states and the current UE official languages are 24 and, consequently, all legislation is promulgated in parallel in all official languages, while interpretation/translation is provided all languages. Additionally, apart from official state languages, in the linguistic Euromosaic some other 60 languages, i.e regional minority languages, are currently in use by almost 46 million EU citizens, together with a large number of immigrant minority languages spoken by the large migrant/refugees communities. All these languages represent an essential component of EU fabric and identity. Not surprisingly, in an age of intensive political and socio-cultural changes language policy has been acquiring increasing importance and linguistic diversity, in particular, has become an issue of growing social importance, recognized also as an all-encompassing dimension of the socio-economic pillars of any truly sustainable development. Nonetheless, a majority of living languages, for different reasons, are threatened in their existence. Given the interdependence among languages, cultures, and ecosystems, the loss of cultural and linguistic diversity represents an undeniable loss of our collective human heritage, resulting in social and cultural disruptions, but, as highlighted by many eminent linguists, similarly to bio-diversity, promoting and supporting language diversity requires constant nurturing. This is the reason why, nowadays, minority languages have been increasingly gaining support both at global level and at European one, and many initiatives/projects have been promoted in order to support minority and/or endangered languages. Among the main educational language policy issues enacted in contemporary Europe is NPLD 2020 Project, whose aim is both the safeguard and promotion of minority and endangered languages such as Irish, Welsh and Estonian language.