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Linguististic Policy in Europe
by Vittorio dell'Aquila

<Europe may have just about two dozen countries, but in terms of linguistics there is a lot more going on.
Almost each nation has more than one language, writes Vittorio Dell'Aquila.>

Most of the countries of the world are composed with more than one indigenous ethnic group, each one with its own language.
In Europe, for example, only Iceland, where the whole population has Icelandic as mother tongue, and Portugal (1), where
the official language and the spoken languages are so similar to each other that they really can be considered as being
part of the same linguistic system (2), are monolingual and monoethnic countries. Even the smallest countries of Europe,
like Andorra, Monaco, Malta, Liechtenstein and San Marino are not monolingual (3). The linguistic complexity is for
instance ruled by the laws of the different countries in different ways.
There are two main tendencies of the linguistic policy of the states of the world: the most common one, that does not
respect pluralism and the right of the people to their own languages and cultures, has as aim the elimination, directly or
indirectly, of the languages and the cultures considered as different from the official one (minorities). The second one
recognises and protects the different cultures and languages in one country.
The first policy has been adopted by several national states of Western Europe and has as model the French linguistic
policy. In fact, in France, since the revolution each different language to French not only has been forbidden in official
life and education, but also has been oppressed in private life. Only in 1951 the ôregional languagesö have received a
partial recognition: since that year it has been possible to studyEurope may have just about two dozen countries, but in
terms of language there is a lot more going on. Vittorio Dell?Aquila knows that almost each nation has more than one
language as a secondary subject for a few hours a week in the schools, Briton, Bask, Catalan, Alsacian and Corsican. Of
course, these languages are never used for official purposes. But since 1993 a new law lays down again that the unique
language of France is French, which obliges all citizens to use it (4).
A policy based on the concept of the linguistic pluralism, instead, tries to reduce the possible social conflicts produced
by the ethnic plurality in a country, recognising the same juridical right to more than one language and/or ethnic group.
The systems adopted by the states for that policy are quite different, but they can be classified following the personality
principle or the territoriality principle.
The personality principle consists in giving to each citizen certain services in his/her language independently from the
place in which he/she lives. The territoriality principle consists, instead, in using in a certain territory one or more
languages for all the citizens living there whatever languages they use.
The most interesting example of the personality principle, is the ôcorporative federalismö adopted by the Austro-Hungarian
Empire: this policy consisted in dividing the country not only in administrative territorial units, but also in ethnic
units on a voluntary basis, in which each citizen could register wherever he or she was living.

Sweden
The personality principle is also adopted for education in Sweden: everybody, citizen or foreigner, has the right to learn
his/her mother tongue at school, and, if there are enough students asking for that, it is possible to have an entire course
in a different language. In this way the Swedish state protects, at least at school, not only the autochthonous minorities
(Lapps and Finns), but also the several groups of foreigners living in the country.

Switzerland
The most ancient example of multilingual community based on territoriality, is the Swiss Confederation. The schools are in
general monolingual in the official language of the municipality where they are situated and it is not possible for the
students to choose the language of the school (5). It is only possible to choose the language of the teaching in the
German-French bilingual region of Biel/Bienne and in the town of Fribourg/Freiburg. The French speaking federal and
cantonal Civil Servants living in the German speaking town of Bern, have their French schools. The only bilingual schools
are those of the Romantsch speaking regions of Graub?nden/Grigioni, in which the lesson are taught in Romantsch (5
different variants) and German. The same happens for the official languages: the territory of the confederation is divided
into four linguistic regions based on historical reasons (a municipality cannot change official language even if the original one is no longer spoken by the inhabitants) and the federal administration uses the official language of the region independently from the mother tongue of the citizens.

Belgium
Belgium also has a linguistic policy based on the principle of territoriality: Vlaanderen have as only official language
Flemish (Dutch), Wallonie French (excluded a little territory on the border with Germany in which German is the official
language) and Bruxelles/Brussel and its region is bilingual French-Flemish. The public schools are in French or in Flemish
in the bilingual region of Bruxelles/Brussel and in very few municipalities along the linguistic border; French schools
exist in the whole German speaking area. In the rest of Vlaanderen the public schols are only in Flemish, in Wallonie, only
in French.

Norway
The two official written languages of Norway (Bokmal and Nynorsk) are used in the local administration and in school
respecting the preferences of the population. The state uses for the 70% ca of the texts Bokm=8Cl and for the rest Nynorsk.
Due to the very high similarity of the two written languages, there aren't any bilingual areas. The Lapps of the northern
part of the country have primary schools in their language.

Former Soviet Union
In the former Soviet Union and in Ex-Yugoslavia the constitutions stated language policies based on both territorial and
personality principles. The former Soviet Union recognised about 130 nationalities each one with its own language.
Each citizen had the right to use his/her own language for all kinds of communication with the state. Everybody had the
constitutional right to public schools in her/his language. But for the administration, in fact, it was necessary to
promote one or more languages as official ones: they were Russian only, for the federal government, Russian and one or more
local languages for the republics and the autonomous regions. In reality in the former Soviet Union only Russians had the
same right to their language and culture all over the confederation, the other nationalities having only partial rights and
only in certain territories.


Ex-Jugoslavia
Ex-Yugoslavia had three official languages at federal level: Serbo-croatian (with its two variants and alphabets, Latin
(Croatian) and Cyrillic (Serbian), Slovenian and Macedonian but Serbo-croatian written in Latin alphabet was the most used
language of the confederation. Each republic had its language: Slovenian in Slovenia, Croatian in Croatia, Serbo-croatian
(both alphabets) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbian in Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonian in Macedonia. Other languages were
used for official purposes together with the language of the republic where they were spoken by a high number of people,
i.e. Albanian (the third language of the confederation as number of speakers), mostly in the autonomous districts of
Kosovo, Hungarian and Romanian. Then Slovak, mostly in the separate districts of Vojvodina, Czech, Italian, Turkish,
Ukrainian and others in other regions. Schools in all the languages of the different ethnic groups existed where the
languages were spoken, but the schools in Serbo Croatia were more w
idespread than the others.

Finland
Finland applies the territoriality principle for the official languages (Finnish and Swedish) at local level and the
personality principle for the education. Each municipality of Finland is monolingual when the second language, based on the
census of population, is spoken by less than 8% of the inhabitants, bilingual when spoken by more than 8%. A monolingual
municipality becomes bilingual when the rate of speakers of the second language exceeds 10% of the population; a bilingual
municipality becomes monolingual when the second language is spoken by less than 6% of the population. The state and the
towns of Helsinki/Helsingfors, Turku/Abo and Vaasa/Vasa are considered bilingual by the constitution for historical, social
and geographical reasons. For education, each municipality must provide schools in the other language than the official
one, when required by at least 12 students. The Lapps of Lapland can have lessons taught in Lappish in the Finnish speaking
schools.
Some European countries apply the two principles of language policy to integrate in apparently democratic ways the so
called ethnic minorities. The system comprises of using the personality principle in the regions in which the national
minority is the strongest group, giving both populations of the area the same right to use their languages in public and
education, and using the principle of territoriality in the rest of the country in order to use for official purposes and
education only the national language of the state.

Spain
The Spanish constitution of 1978, for example, recognises the right to Catalans, Basks and Galicians to use their
languages, together with Spanish, as official and education languages in their regions, but outside these autonomous
regions only Spanish is official, and, as it is possible for Spanish speaking people to study in Spanish in the Bask
Country, for example, it is not possible to study in Bask in Madrid.
The Spanish constitution lays down also that it is the duty for all Spanish citizens to know and study Spanish, that is the
national language of the kingdom, but no duty is stated for the other recognised languages. However, the Catalan autonomous
government is now trying to oblige all citizens living in Catalonia to study in Catalan.

Italy
If the situation in Spain is improving since the end of the FrancoÆs dictatorship another country of Europe has been
obliged by international pressure to slow down its
French oriented and fascist linguistic policy at least in 4 (1% of the total population) of its more than 120 provinces.
That is Italy, in which the only national language (mother tongue of less of 50% of the population) is Italian. However in
Vall?e dÆAoste/Valle dÆAosta, French has been recognised as the official language, together with Italian. After that the
alpine valley had voted with a big majority, just after World War II, to be annexed by France. There, all schools are
bilingual Italian-French (all other languages spoken in the valley are not considered). S?dtirol/Alto Adige is
Italian-German because of the ôterroristö activities of certain extremist groups of the German speaking populations and the
pressures of Austria at the UN.
In S?dtirol/Alto Adige it is possible to choose schools in Italian or in German. The 13.000 Ladins living there have the
right to use their language as official in the villages and can study it in the Italian or German schools.
The other more than 10.000 Ladins living outside S?dtirol/Alto Adige are considered as Italians and their language as an
Italian ôdialectö. In two more provinces of Italy it is possible to study in public schools with a language different from
Italian: they are Gorizia/Gorica and Trieste/Trst in which it is possible to study in Slovenian and where some
municipalities use Slovenian and Italian as official languages. But the majority of the Italian citizens belonging to the
Slovenian ethnic group live in the province of Udine that is strictly Italian (as decreed by law).

Notes
(1) In only a few villages in the Spanish borders, the population used to speak a language more related to Spanish than
Portuguese.
(2) From a scientific linguistic point of view, there is no difference between a so-called dialect and a language.
(3) Andorra: Catalan as official language and spoken language, French as culture language. Monaco. French as official
language, Monegasco (strictly related with Genuan) as spoken language of the autochthonous population which is half of the
total population of the country.
Malta: Maltese (related with Arabian) official since the independence of the island in substitution of Italian, and spoken
language of the population, and English, official language and language of the culture. Liechtenstein: German as official
language, local Alemannic (German) varieties as only spoken language. San Marino: Italian as official and spoken language,
local variety of north Italian romance as spoken language (considered as dialect).
(4) In 1994 the Constitutional Court has abrogated the part of this law that obliged all citizens to use French in private
life as opposed to the concept of personal freedom (libert?) stated in the constitution.
(5) German speaking people, however, never use the official German language when they speak, even at school, but the
Schwyzerdytsch, a group of so called southern German ôdialects.ö

General References
Badia i Margarit, A., Lengua i poder, Barcelona, 1986
Breton, Roland, G?ographie des langues, Paris, 1978
Breton, Roland, Les Ethnies, Paris, 1981
Fishman, Joshua, Bilingual Education: an International Sociological Perspective, Rowley, Mass. 1976
Kloss, Heinz, Linguistic Composition of the Nations of the World, Qu?bec, 1974-84
Laponce, Jean, Langue et territoire, Qu?bec, 1984
Ninyoles, Rafael., Estructura social y politica linguistica, Valencia, 1975
Rothschild, Joseph, Ethnopolitics, New York, 1981
Salvi, Sergio, Le Lingue tagliate, Milano, 1975