1. European language policy: Why is it so difficult?
Jacomine Nortier
Utrecht Institute of Linguistics
Dpt. of Dutch language & culture

2. Outline The official situation: complex but understandable
The actual situation: almost impossible to handle
My aim is NOT to solve this, but only to sketch.

3. Literature :
Official languages (based on Abram de Swaan: Words of the World (2001, Polity)

4. Indigenous vs imported minority languages Guus Extra & Durk Gorter (eds): The other languages of Europe (2001, Multilingual Matters)

5.
2007: The European Union has 27 member states
and 23 official languages:

6. Български (Bălgarski) - BG - Bulgarian
Čeština - CS - Czech
Dansk - DA - Danish
Deutsch - DE - German
Eesti - ET - Estonian
Elinika - EL - Greek
English - EN
Español - ES - Spanish
Français - FR - French
Gaeilge - GA - Irish
Italiano - IT - Italian
Latviesu valoda - LV - Latvian
13. Lietuviu kalba - LT - Lithuanian
14. Magyar - HU - Hungarian
15. Malti - MT - Maltese
16. Nederlands - NL - Dutch
17. Polski - PL - Polish
18. Português - PT - Portuguese
19. Română - RO - Romanian
20. Slovenčina - SK - Slovak
21. Slovenščina - SL - Slovene
22. Suomi - FI – Finnish
23. Svenska - SV - Swedish

7. De Swaan’s book:
First: general
Later : focus on Europe

8. Although the languages of the world differ extremely from each other, the speakers are tied together by bilinguals in a tightly organized system: the language constellation.
The position of individual languages in the world system can be expressed by their Q-values (a measure of communicative value).

9. The language constellation:
English (connecting the supercentral languages)
Supercentral languages (long-distance and international communication) [such as Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese]
Central languages (national) [such as Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Dutch, Iranian]
Peripheral languages (oral) (98% of the world’s 5/6000 languages

10. Q-value of a language:
“... the proportion of those who speak it among all speakers in the constellation and the proportion of multilingual speakers whose repertoire includes the language among all multilingual speakers in the constellation.” (i.e. as an L2)

11. Value versus attitude
René Appel (Appel, 2002): AdS holds an extreme instrumental view on language  tool.

12. The political economy of language constellations
Language: hypercollective goods
Economic goods: the more they are used, the less there is left of them
Language: the more you use it, the more valuable it becomes, both collectively and individually

13. Conditions - in order to be a collective good:
1- nobody can be excluded (true for languages)
2- Maintenance: collaboration of many but not all is required (true for languages)
3- The efforts of a single person are not sufficient (true for languages)
4- Utility does not diminish as new users are added (true for languages).
Consistently, AdS consideres language as a
“hypercollective” good.

14. Why is there stable multilingualism in Euope (according to AdS)?
It costs a lot of trouble and effort to learn a new language
But also (my addition): attitudes, affective values attached to different languages; different levels of importance.
Outside-value (status) versus inside-value (solidarity)

15. Europe: “The more languages, the more English”
Initial, shortly after World War 2: French
Why not Italian? Or German? Or Dutch?
With the UK and Ireland: English

16. Europe versus other parts of the world: the average speaker in Europe is relatively rich and well-educated.
Languages in Europe: robust. Support from own government and European Parliament; taught in school, used in court, politics, governments: prestige, standardization, function in education
As far as the official languages are concerned! And within, not necessarily between countries

17. 1987: 17% of the European citizens reported to be able to converse in English;
1997: the number has doubled.
Increase mainly caused by young people.
Nr 2 in popularity was German, except for the Dutch where Fench was second best.

18. Some countries: officially multilingual (e. g. , Belgium)
Some countries: officially multilingual (e.g., Belgium). But common practice in Europe: societal monolingualism
Europe: State = nation = national language
States are the protectors of the official languages.
Law, regulations, administration, education, business, prestige and mass media are all associated with that single language.

19. Q-values in Europe: English: number one French and German: second
Again: only measurable factors. Irrespective of affective factors & attitudes. Example: Netherlands.
AdS: Dutch prefer French because of communicative value (!)

20. European linguistic dilemma:
Maintenance of the languages
Effective and sucessful communication

21. In the European language constellation four levels of communication can be distinguished:
Domestic communication (central and peripheral languages). Threatened: by (1) the supracentral Ls for communication across borders and (2) minority languages within the borders.
The level of transnational communication, where English competes with French and German.
The level of the European Parliament and the European Commission, all official languages of the members of the Union have the same status. Decisions should be translated into all official Ls.
The level of the Commission’s internal bureaucracy where there are more or less informally adopted a few working languages.

22. Four levels of communication (repeated)
Domestic communication: powerful relation nation-state   language: maintenance
Transnational communication: 1: English; 2: French and German
European Parliament: all languages will keep their position
European Commission internal communication: English and French
(Spanish: world wide more important than F/G but within Europe spoken in only one country)

23. Minority languages in Europe (based on Extra & Gorter)
In short, there are three groups of languages:
Official languages (‘robust’)
Non-official indigenous (‘regional’) languages with lower status
Imported languages with low status

24. Regional languages restricted to one state:
Breton , France
Corsican , France
North-Frisian 8, Germany
Saterfrisian 2, Germany
Sorbian , Germany
Friulian , Italy
Ladin , Italy
Sardinian1,000, Italy
Frisian , The Netherlands
Mirandes ,000 Portugal
Galician ,300,000 Spain
Aragonese ,000 Spain
Asturian ,000 Spain
Scottish ,000 UK
Gaelic
Scots ,500,000 UK
Ulster Scots 100, UK
Welsh ,000 UK
Cornish UK

25. Regional languages spoken in more than one state:
Basque:
565, Spain
70, France
Catalan:
6,376, Spain
102, France
20, Italy
Occitan:
4, Spain
3,500, France
50, Italy
Sami:
18, Sweden 3,000 Finland
Low-Saxon:
1,800,000 Netherlands
8-10,000,000 Germany
Limburgian:
1,000,000 Netherlands and
Belgium

26. Exceptional positions:
Luxemburgish: national language but it doesn’t have the status of an official working language in the EU.
Romani and Yiddish are non-territorial minority languages.
Regional indigenous languages always function as an L1 for children. Usually they are not learned as L2 (de Swaan would call them peripheral Ls).

27. Most official Ls are minority Ls outside their own nation-state
Examples: Croatian in Italy; German in Belgium and Denmark; Swedish in Finland; Finnish in Sweden.
Official languages, but without the protection as in ‘their’ nation states

28. Immigrant languages (from outside Europe):
immigrant workers and their descendants; refugees; ex-colonials.
1993: 368 million people in Europe; 4.8% (18 mln) were not citizens of the countries they lived in
Exact numbers: difficult
Sometimes no data
Illegals
Nationality and country of birth?
Residents of former colonies

29. BCPMF: Birth Country Criterion of Person and/or Mother/Father
Problems:
what would we want to call the grandchildren of e.g. Chinese immigrants: Chinese or Dutch?
What to do with people with different ethnicities from one country (such as Kurds) or the opposite:
same ethnic groups from different countries (Chinese from China and Vietnam)?
And ethnocultural groups without territorial status? (Roma)

30. Immigrant languages in the Netherlands:
Groups
BCPMF criterion
Nationality criterion
Dutch
12,872,000
14,768,000
Turks
272,000
154,000
Moroccans
225,00
150,000
Surinamese
282,000
15,000
Antilleans
94,000 -
Greeks
11,000
5,000
Italians
32,000
17,000
Former Yugoslavs
56,000
34,000
Portuguese
13,000
9,000
Spaniards
29,000
Capeverdians
2,000
Tunisians
6,000
Based on CBS 1997

31. Conclusion:
How can we talk about European language policy when we don’t even know how to carry out initial fact finding?