#minoritised languages

[ana-actually]

‘We’re a bit jealous of Kneecap’: how Europe’s minority tongues are facing the digital future | Stephen Burgen

What does it mean to lose a language, and what does it take to save it? Those were the big questions being asked in Barcelona recently, says

"Representatives of some of Europe’s estimated 60 minority languages – or minoritised, as they define them..."

Love this reframing of 'minority' languages as 'minoritised'

[langsandlit]

🔵 Brief introduction to the history of Neapolitan: Origin and history of a minoritised language (from @/neapxita on instagram)

✂️ alt text under the cut !!

10th century - Placiti Campani

The first written evidence of Neapolitan dates back to the 10th century, when four sworn declarations were composed in modern-day Campania. Despite the brevity and formulaic nature of the texts, the Placiti campani provide an invaluable early example of the vernacular spoken in Campania, and allegedly the first one in the Italian peninsula.

15th century - Aragonese Court

Neapolitan becomes the main language of public administration and internal affairs of the Aragonese kingdom.

In the 15th century, the newly established Aragonese monarchy in Naples and Southern Italy pioneered the use of Neapolitan as the language of public administration and internal affairs until the end of its rule.

In the 15th century, the newly established Aragonese monarchy in Naples and Southern Italy pioneered the use of Neapolitan as the language of public administration and internal affairs until the end of its rule.

During this time, in addition to being one of the official court languages, Neapolitan slowly replaced Latin, and was used for poems, chronicles, and treatises. The oldest full history of Naples written in this language, however, is the Chronicle of Parthenope, which dates back to 1350, prior the establishment of Aragonese monarchy.

17th century - I

With the spread of Tuscan among elites post-1500, 17th-century intellectuals in Naples were making a case for the dignity of Neapolitan as a literary language.

While Neapolitan had been adopted by earlier authors, monarchs and religious authorities, only in the second half of the 17th century did it establish itself, although not without dissent, as a rich literary language.

Specifically, it is with the works of Giambattista Basile and Giulio Cesare Cortese that Neapolitan transformed into a fully fledged, alternative literary language (as opposed to Tuscan) used for both conventional genres and original ones, including the pastoral, novel, lyric, epic, satire, mock-epic, fairy tale, and opera.

17th century - II

Intellectuals aimed to create an illustrious vernacular that could rival Tuscan and to legitimise it as an equally worthy language. 

According to Neapolitan intellectuals, Tuscan could not be given the label of a more literary language. The use of their native Neapolitan, instead of the foreign Tuscan, served to shape and legitimise an autonomous, and equally respectable, literary reality.

18th century

In the 18th century, to take a stand against the taste for Italian Mannerism in Tuscan, there was an outburst of literary production in Neapolitan.

As the literary production of the early 18th century carried forward the legacy of Cortese and Basile, literary academies in Naples hosted public readings of works in Neapolitan which were written by and for the members of the Neapolitan elites.

The 18th century was also the time in which the first grammars of Neapolitan appeared. The first to be written was Francesco Oliva’s Grammatica della lingua napolitana (1723), while the first to be published was Ferdinando Galiani’s Del dialetto napolitano (1779). Yet, despite the literary success of Neapolitan, many stigmatised it as ignoble, and the exclusive language of the plebs.

Ferdinando Galiani

For Galiani, Neapolitan was not just the language of the populace, but the cultural property of the nation.

“Therefore we do not despair yet (...) Perhaps one day our dialect will achieve the most unexpected fortune: we will defend our causes in this language, pronounce our decrees, promulgate our laws, write our annals, and do everything that the patriotic zeal of the Venetians has allowed them to do in their own harmonious dialect”.

19th century - Music

Neapolitan and Neapolitan-language music have a rich and long-standing tradition.

The earliest mention of the performance of villanellas coincides with the visit of king Charles V (or Charles II of Spain) to Naples between 1535 and 1536. The first anonymous collection of villanellas was published shortly after.

After the king’s visit, villanellas, which were sung in Neapolitan, acquired clear political undertones and became representative of Neapolitans’ national identity in the 16th century.

However, the song fest of Piererotta marks a turning point in Neapolitan music history. Starting officially in 1835, the festival constituted a major festivity attracting tourists from both within and outside the kingdom.

1861 and Fascism

At the moment of the unification of Italy in 1861, less than 2,5% of the population was able to use Italian.  

Much like Latin in the previous centuries, Italian was an exclusively written and literary language known only to a minority of literate people.

The appearance of the first bilingual dictionaries immediately before and after the unification confirms that Neapolitan was not only the language of the common people but also that of the literate.

In the aftermath of the unification, these dictionaries were used to help students who were monolingual in Neapolitan to learn Italian, the language of the new state.

In the 20th century, the nationalist agenda of the fascist regime suppressed the use of all minority languages and enforced the use of Italian in its stead, especially at school. Children were beaten or otherwise punished, generating fear and shame towards their native languages.

Since then, Neapolitan has continued to be spoken, sung and written, albeit without being taught nor recognised by the Italian state, often coexisting in a situation of dangerous diglossia.

[mouth-almighty]

An Cailín Ciúin becomes first Irish language movie to be nominated for Oscar | BreakingNews.ie

Other Irish talent leading the way came from Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson for The Banshees Of Inisherin and Paul Mescal for Aftersun.

[whowantstobeaphd]

Did you guys know that it’s estimated that half of the world’s 7000 languages are going to be extinct by the end of this century? Have you ever wondered how this happens, or would you like to know how we can combat this? Then this episode is for you!

Our guest today is Guillem Belmar Viernes. Guillem is a PhD student at the University of California in Santa Barbara, but originally from Girona in Catalonia, Spain. Guillem did his BA in Translation, has a Master in Language Science and Hispanic Linguistics and a Masters in Multilingualism.

For his PhD, he is working on Minoritized Languages from different perspectives such as varieties of Mixtec Language spoken in California - but his research interests are much broader: He is interested in Language revitalization; endangered languages; language documentation; Native American Languages as well as Romance Languages and Germanic Languages. He is fluent in Catalan, Spanish, English and French, but - hold on to your seats, he also knows Galician, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Basque, Mandarin, West Frisian, Dutch and German.

Go to our website to read the transcript!

[bealdath-blog]

It would be unspeakable to lose Gaelic

"What sort of perverse logic is it that states that we cannot learn the languages of other nations without neglecting our own? Recent academic research on Gaelic education has consistently shown that Gaelic-speaking pupils outperform their peers in the study of English and achieve parity in most other subjects. For the Gaelic language gentiles such as me it is probably too late. And so some of the treasures of Iain Crichton Smith, Sorley MacLean and Aonghas MacNeacail must remain behind a veil; you can never experience the pleasure of driving a Bentley just by listening to those who have. But why also deny our children? Many of us are fond of believing that Gaelic is merely a language spoken by melancholic old Highlanders who like to sing about fishing tragedies and the Clearances after a few bottles of the Macallan. This, though, is the language that was spoken by Scottish kings and was considered by the English as such a dangerous source of seditious pride and unity in the face of slavery and conquest that they outlawed it. The songs and poems sung in this tongue expressed an entire people's determination to remain Scottish and free when others would possess us. To appreciate and learn this language is to understand something of what our nation is: its culture, its identity, its soul. Why would we willingly let this die for the want of even modest investment?" - Kevin McKenna, "It would be unspeakable to lose Gaelic", The Observer/The Guardian 9/X/11

[sruthnamaoile-blog]