Language Rights and Cultural Diversity Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Conference Papers Series, No

L a n Th ere are arou nd 6,000 liv ing langu ages in th e g Language Rights u w orld, bu t as of 2 012 , less th an 4 percent of a th em can claim oﬃ cial statu s in one of m ore of g e th e 196 ex isting states. Th is lack of oﬃ cial R and Cultural statu s, along w ith oth er cu ltu ral, political, and i g legal factors, is contribu ting to a w orldw ide h t loss of lingu istic div ersity and cu ltu ral rich ness. s Diversity Th e essays in th is book ex plore th e m any facets a n of langu age righ ts and langu age protection d from a v ariety of th eoretical, legal, and C academ ic perspectiv es. Im portant lessons are u l taken from th e Basqu e case in E u rope, and t u N ativ e Am erican and F rench -Canadian cases in r N orth Am erica. W ov en th rou gh ou t th e book is a l th e belief in th e pow er of discou rse and D i research to protect and ev en enh ance lingu istic v div ersity th rou gh legal recognition and oth er e r m eans. Langu age protection, h ow ev er, is only s i t possible if w e encou rage th e acceptance of y cu ltu ral div ersity and m u ltilingu alism as a positiv e ou tcom e for th e w h ole popu lation of th e state, not ju st for a m inority w ith in it. W e sh ou ld abandon th e idea of th e m onolingu al m ono-cu ltu ral nation-state, and encou rage th e popu lation of each cou ntry to adopt th e E d i a concept of a m u lti-cu ltu ral state. t n e d d b V y i o X l a a b M i e i r g l I i r o u j o C en ter fo r B asqu e Stu dies Un iv ersity o f N ev ada, Ren o Edited by Xabier Iru jo an d V io la M iglio Language Rights and Cultural Diversity Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Conference Papers Series, No. 9 Language Rights and Cultural Diversity Edited by Xabier Irujo and Viola Miglio Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Reno, Nevada This book was published with generous financial assistance from the Basque government Conference Papers Series, no. 9 Series editor: Joseba Zulaika Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Reno, NV 89557 basque.unr.edu Copyright © 2013 by the Center for Basque Studies All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America Cover and book design: Kimberly Daggett and Daniel Montero Cover illustration: Chumash Rock Painting, uknown source, subject matter unknown. In the collection of the Museum of the Mission of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa. Photo by Xabier Irujo. ___________________________________________________________________ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Language rights and cultural diversity / Edited by Xabier Irujo and Viola Miglio. pages cm. -- (Conference papers series ; no. 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-935709-47-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Language policy. 2. Lin- guistic minorities. 3. Minorities--Civil rights. 4. Language and culture. 5. Sociolinguistics. 6. Linguistic demography. I. Irujo Ametzaga, Xabi- er, editor of compilation. II. Miglio, Viola, 1966- editor of compilation. P40.5.L56L36 2014 306.44’9--dc23 2013046194 Contents Introduction The Lack of a Legal Status 1 Xabier Irujo and Viola Miglio 1. Endangered Languages and Self-Determination 33 Viola Miglio 2. Freedom of language and Language Rights: 69 Promoting Languages as an Overriding Reason in the Public Interest Iñigo Urrutia 3. The Language Rights of Minorities in Europe: 95 A Critical Look at the Law and Practice Fernand de Varennes 4. Challenges for Minority Languages 121 in Gaining More Top Level Domains on the Internet Peter Gerrand 5. Language and Culture in Canadian 139 Jurisprudence Pierre Foucher 6. Language Rights in Canada: 161 A Political or Judicial Leadership? André Braen 7. The Iberian Languages and Spanish 173 Nationalism Xosé M. Núñez Seixas 8. Nation-States and Native Tribal Language 201 Vitality: Postcolonial Language Policy in North America and East Africa Denis Viri 9. Giving Language Rights Meaning: 223 Revitalizing Basque, Navajo, and Other Indigenous Languages and Cultures Jon Reyhner 10. “Not Mere Documentation”: 245 Indigenous Languages at the Threshold Eleanor Nevins Index 271 List of Contributors 285 The Lack of Legal Status as the Main Challenge for Endagered Languages Xabier Irujo and Viola Miglio Even in a highly domesticated, often industrial, modern, and reg- ulated geographic area such as Europe, linguistic diversity is noth- ing short of phenomenal. Concentrating on Europe, we would like to point out some considerably striking numbers that bolster the well-known adage popularized by Max Weinreich that “a language is a dialect with an army and navy,” and propagated by linguists, sociologists, and minority rights activists alike. To name but a few, in 2012—as we write—the European Union now has twenty-seven members and twenty-three official languages, however, the most widely spoken languages are English, French, and German. A tally of actual documents issued by the EU, however, shows that their vast majority is in English and that German may be ousting French from second place as the most widely spoken language in the EU.1 Vying for second place might not seem of great importance if one considers another set of striking facts: 23 may be the official languages of the EU, but the number of European languages, dialects, and varieties considered together is an order of magnitude greater, the estimates varying from a conservative 113 to 230 or even as many as 300.2 Thus, taking the middle ground, only about 1. Arzoz, Respecting Linguistic Diversity in the European Union, 48–57. 2. See UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages, but many regional dialects and varieties are missing from that count (Basque dialects, for instance). Eth- nologue had 239 for Europe (see Krauss, The Vanishing Languages of the Pacific 2 Language Rights 10 percent of languages have some official status in the EU, and this is only possible if the state within which these national languages are embedded has already granted some official recognition to the language under consideration. Usually this excludes dialects or varieties. One more striking fact is that at least ten languages have become extinct in Europe over the last two hundred years alone, and hundreds have become endangered. Moreover, dialectal varieties are quickly losing ground—an example from Italy might suffice: when Italy was unified in 1861, only 2 percent of the population spoke “Italian,” 98 percent spoke other dialectal varieties or languages exclusively. In 2000, those who spoke dialect only (although it is unconceivable nowadays for these speakers not to be bilingual with the standard variety)3 comprised 19 percent of the population, whereas those who spoke Italian only made up 46 percent of the entire population.4 We maintain that there is a correlation between these trends— language loss, dialect attrition—and the lack of legal protection and therefore official representation afforded to minority languages. This makes the need for the political accommodation of linguistic diversity in Europe (and elsewhere) an urgent task. Historical Context for the Extinction of a Language Languages are becoming endangered at an alarming rate, a fact that has been attracting the attention of linguists and interna- tional institutions like UNESCO only in the last twenty years or so. Michael Krauss calculated that 20 to 50 percent of the world six thousand languages would become extinct during the twenty-first century and only 5 to 10 percent (i.e., three hundred) were to be considered “safe.”5 However, if we consider the number of Rim, 6). 3. A variety is a specific form of a language, including dialects, registers or other sociolinguistic variations. The standard variety itself is often chosen to be the “standard language” and, legally, the official language of the state admin- istration and education. As a consequence, the term variety is used as opposed to the terms language, usually associated with both the standard and the official language, and dialect, associated with non-standard varieties “thought of as less prestigious or ‘correct’ than the standard.” Schilling-Estes, “Dialect Variation,” 311–41. 4. De Mauro, Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita; ISTAT, Notiziario: Lingua italiana e dialetti in Italia. 5. Krauss, “The World’s Languages in Crisis,” 4–10. See, also, Krauss, “Key- note-Mass Language Extinction and Documentation: The Race Against Time.” Introduction 3 languages that have been known to become extinct historically, at least from Charles Voegelin and Florence Voegelin’s classifica- tion, we find around 370.6 Krauss observes that the number is surely higher since historical times, but probably not much higher than four hundred, although from now on that number could go extinct every decade.7 The main factors that Krauss isolates as contributing to making a language “safe” for the current century are the sheer number of its speakers and the language’s prestige. As for the number of speakers, Krauss maintains that 1 million is the safe number that will make sure that these languages are still spoken by children in 2100—this is an even more alarming number than the one quoted in the 2010 edition of UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Language in Danger, which maintains that a hundred thousand speakers already constitutes a safe number.8 The even more conservative number quoted by Krauss, however, 1 million speakers, is the number that usually defines what are referred to as “small languages”—regardless of whether they are minority languages or national languages.

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