With 27 members, the European Union is home to 23 official languages. Although we cannot say precisely how many unofficial languages there are (linguists do not even agree on the difference between a language and a dialect!) we can definitely assume that the number is much greater than 23. This linguistic richness is apparent in many European cities. Did you know that only 5% of Utrecht (The Netherlands) citizens consider themselves to be monolingual? Multilingualism in big cities is growing and the EU project LUCIDE (Languages in Urban Community – Integration and Diversity for Europe) wants to create a network of multilingual cities so that we can profit from each other’s experiences.
On November 30th, the first international congress of the LUCIDE network was held in Utrecht, titled the ‘The Multilingual City in 2012’. Academics and policy makers could come here to learn more about how the phenomenon that is multilingualism is being dealt with.
An important part of the congress was about examples of best practices. Representatives of different European cities told each other what they do to support multilingualism. For example, how do you make sure that migrants are able to properly learn the language of the country they moved to? At the same time, how do you support migrants in the maintenance of their native languages? On the other hand, how do you encourage the native population to learn a second (or third) language in such a way that we obtain the EU goal in which each EU citizen speaks two languages in addition to their native language?
Hamburg (Germany), Cyprus (Greece), London (UK), Osijek (Croatia), Strasbourg (France) en Utrecht (Netherlands) have held a short presentation about what they experience as best practices. Public libraries turned out to play an important role. We learned, for instance, that in Hamburg conversation groups in German are organised for migrant to practice their German. An excellent idea for those who have few opportunities to speak German in their day-to-day lives. Public libraries in Osijek organise workshops for children in different languages and reading activities in German during the International Mother Language day. In libraries in Strasbourg, children are being read to in as many as 6 different languages. Cyprus explained that their government websites also offer information in English and Greek. Convenient if you don’t speak Turkish or don’t speak it well. London makes use of what’s called the Language Line, which makes translators available for many services via telephone. The inhabitants of London were, on the other hand, unhappy about the fact that the multilingual signs that were placed for the Olympics, were immediately removed afterwards. A missed opportunity, say the many people who participated in a London questionnaire.
The city of Utrecht also presented a number of best practices:
- Language Café Utrecht, an organisation of students at Utrecht University. Language Café offers students the opportunity to practice languages in a relaxed environment. It is intended both for international students who want to learn Dutch, as for Dutch students who want to learn or practice another language.
- A list of all language courses that are offered in Utrecht. A useful tool for all those who want to learn a language in a group.
- The’ Voorleesexpres’ Utrecht is a project which introduces the ritual of reading to your children to families with a language delay.
Also, two websites were mentioned that clearly present a collection of information about multilingualism:
And yes, our very own:
Hans Sakkers and Bharti Girjasing (Utrecht Municipality) presented an overview of multilingualism in Utrecht. One of the facts from their talk was that a whopping 95% of the inhabitants of Utrecht is multilingual. You can view the entire presentation here and if you want to keep posted about multilingual Utrecht, you should pay the occasional visit to Hans Sakkers’ blog: Utrecht: Multilinguistic Laboratory