Page 219 - Manj razširjeni evropski jeziki in jezikovne politike

Summary

criteria, they can be treated as seriously endangered idioms. The European
Parliament’s paper entitled Endangered Languages and Linguistic Diver-
sity in the European Union (2013) even refers to them as non-territorial
languages.
The current positive attitude of eu leaders towards recognising the offi-
cial status of less commonly spoken languages, the promotion of the idea
of protecting and/or revitalising them, did not, however, initially appear
within the circles of higher political representatives. On the contrary, it
is particularly due to the hard struggle led by non-governmental organ-
isations, offices and civil committees, which insisted upon encouraging
the revitalisation process of the already extinct languages and stimulat-
ing the development of those approaching extinction or being seriously
endangered, with an emphasis on maintaining the heterogeneity of Euro-
pean cultural heritages. What was vital for creating a systematic approach
toward those issues was the cooperation between civil society initiatives
and some individual eu politicians belonging to the highest political au-
thorities. The latter, after having heeded the calls for linguistic rights com-
ing from civil society representatives, supported these requests not only
from the conceptual point of view, but also promised the necessary finan-
cial means. With a view to strengthening links between the speakers of
less commonly spoken European languages and promoting language di-
versity on the European continent, the European Bureau for Lesser-Used
Languages (eblul) was established in 1982, under the leadership of Bo-
jan Brezigar, a Slovenian journalist and publicist from Trieste. The Bureau
was first located in Dublin, later moved to Brussels, and finally, in 2010, re-
placed on financial grounds by the European Language Equality Network
(elen). The year 1992 represents the main milestone in the history of this
category of languages, as under the auspices of the Council of Europe, it
saw the publication of the basic declaration for this field, entitled »The Eu-
ropean Charter for Regional and Minority Languages.« This document has
proved to be the most influential up-to-date declaration, convincing the
governments of European countries of the importance of resolving ques-
tions of national and linguistic minorities.
Less commonly used languages and minority/regional languages are the
topics dealt with by a younger branch of linguistics called perilinguistics
or preventive linguistics. The two terms were introduced by the Australian
linguist James Matisoff in his work ‘Endangered Languages of Mainland
Southeast Asia’ (1991) and the Welsh David Crystal also employed them
in his book Language Death (2000). The Greek prefix -peri within the first

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