EUROPA – Education and Training on Multiculturalism, offers a report of a Group of Intellectuals for Intercultural Dialogue.
In a Europe which will always be multilingual, learning languages opens doors. For individuals, it can open the door to a better career, to the chance to live, study or work abroad, even to more enjoyable holidays. For companies, multilingual staff can open the door to European and global markets.
But there is more than this. The language a person speaks is part of their identity and their culture. So learning languages means understanding other people and their way of thinking. It means opposing racism, xenophobia and intolerance.
The Commission’s Eurobarometer survey in November-December 2005 showed that in some European countries, nearly everyone speaks at least two languages. This proves that everybody can be multilingual. Language learning is not just for an élite.
Language learning obviously trumps the other option. (Is there another option?!) Must everyone become “cosmopolitan”?
initiatives in line with the objectives of the Lifelong Learning Programme including activities to make language learning more attractive to learners through the mass media and/or marketing, publicity and information campaigns, as well as conferences, studies and statistical indicators in the field of language learning and linguistic diversity (‘Accompanying Measures’)
2001 was the European Year of Languages, which was/is to be sustained by the 2003 Action Plan to fulfill European Parliament Resolution B5-0770, 0811, 0812, 0814 and 0815/2001 (final text) “on regional and lesser-used European languages.” The entire resolution omits (?), avoids (?) the use of “interpretation,” but does not hesitate to promote “translation software:”
F. whereas languages must be used in order to stay alive; this includes their use in new technologies and the development of new technologies such as translation software,
Note: the resolution references six previous resolutions.
Motion (10 December 2001): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=B5-2001-0770&language=EN
Motion (11 December 2001): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=B5-2001-0811&language=EN
Motion (11 December 2001): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=B5-2001-0812&language=EN
Motion (11 December 2001): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=B5-2001-0814&language=EN
Motion (11 December 2001): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=B5-2001-0815&language=EN
Official languages of the EU – twenty-three as of today.
A resolution for ending retour of Finnish.
AIIC’s webzine.
People are working hard to make the intercultural dialog about more than religious or interfaith dialog. It should encompass all aspects of life, how we laugh, how we heal, how we teach and learn en love. Tumbleweed