LLAS News Blog

News articles of interest to higher education LLAS subject fields.

Thursday 20 November 2008

BBC NEWS | Wales | 'Historic' use of Welsh in EU

BBC NEWS | Wales | 'Historic' use of Welsh in EU: "

The Welsh Assembly Government pays for extra translation costs
Welsh has been used officially for the first time in a meeting of European Union ministers.
The move has been hailed as historic and follows years of campaigning for Welsh to be recognised in the EU"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Welsh language is not alone in fighting for its linguistic rights.

The promulgation of English as the world's "lingua franca" is impractical and linguistically undemocratic. I say this as a native English speaker!

Impractical because communication should be for all and not only for an educational or political elite. That is how English is used internationally at the moment.

Undemocratic because minority languages are under attack worldwide due to the encroachment of majority ethnic languages. Even Mandarin Chinese is attempting to dominate as well. The long-term solution must be found and a non-national language, which places all ethnic languages on an equal footing is essential.

An interesting video can be seen at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a former translator with the United Nations

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net