Becoming a regional language -a method in language status planning? Tomasz Wicherkiewicz Adam Mickiewicz University Roznan - Poland The European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages, prepared in 1992 by the Ad Hoc Committee of Government Experts for the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, was the first official European document to distinguish the regional and minority languages as subjects of legal protection extended by uniting Europe. Such a distinction appeared earlier only in the 1981 project of the Charter, which resulted from the Arfé Resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe addressing the educational and cultural problems related to minority languages and dialects. The preliminary project of the Charter was to include also the "Regional or Minority Languages and Cultures". The most practical result of the 1981 Resolution was a far-flung research project on the situation of minority and regional languages used in the countries belonging at that time to the Council of Europe. The adjective regional in the context of language policy was formerly used as a synonym of "dialectal, pertaining to a dialect". The preparation, signing, and ratification of the European Charter has introduced the conception of regional language to the official nomenclature of European language policy, unfortunately - without having defined it. The notion regional language(s) is usually mentioned together with minority language(s), and without any clear distinction perceived by the user. Nevertheless, the Charter is by now practically the only official document with a name containing the conception of a regional language. Yet another official name used for the ethnolects who are in the position of minority languages is the so-called lesser-used languages. This version we can find in the name of the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages, founded in 1984. Political reasons that influenced the decisions of creating the official English and especially French name (Bureau européen pour les langues moins répanduesl of the institution are too obvious. Interesting enough is the fact that the two remaining official names of the Bureau: German (Europáisches Büro für Sprachminderheitenl and Dutch (Europees Bureau voor Taalminderhedenl refer exclusively to minority languages... An average European reader must be extremely confused when coping with all this variety of terminology: Are minority languages lesser used? Can a language with, say, 5 million speakers be called "lesser-used"? Is a regional language dialect of the official language or a separate one? These and many more questions are being asked throughout Europe when discussing the minority language situations and language policy. What are then the lesser-used languages? Are there any subcategories, which could help us define them typologically? The preliminary assumption is that the name can be used only in relation to autochthonous languages, i.e. languages of groups that were present in their present (ethno)linguistic milieus for a longer period of time. Some countries, as e.g. Hungary, have defined the period of autochthonous settlement for minimum 100 years. A rough typology of European lesser-used language situations could then include the following categories: 473 TOMASZ WiCHERKIEWICZ - languages of national minorities, who have elsewhere their national/ethnic states, and often constitute transborder minorities (e.g. Hungarian in Slovakia, German in Belgium and Denmark, Danish in Germany, Lithuanian in Poland, Old-Believers' Russian in Estonia); - languages of national minorities, who do not have their national/ethnic states, and often inhabit territory belonging to more states (e.g. Basque in Spain and France, Frisian in the Netherlands and Germany, Breton in France, Welsh in Great Britain, Upper and Lower Sorbían in Germany, Saami in the Scandinavian states and Russia, (Carpatho-)Ruthenian in Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine and Yugoslavia); - non-territorial or diaspora languages - spoken be ethnies without an explicit national/ethnic territory (e.g. Yiddish, Ladino and most of other Jewish languages, Romani dialect-complex, diaspora dialects of Armenian, Karaimic); the affiliation of the world Jewry to the State of Israel is mainly of symbolic character, this is also the case of the Roma/Sinti and Indian Peninsula, Armenians and Caucasus Armenia, Karaims and Crimea); - microlanguages - spoken by extremely small number of speakers, often in isolated areas, on territories not exceeding a single colony or a group of settlements (Mirandese in Portugal, Saterfrisian in Germany, the Germanic ethnolect of Wilamowice in Poland, the already- mentioned Karaimic as spoken in the town of Trakai in Lithuania, Livonian in Latvia, Izhorian, Votic or Vepsian in north-western Russia); - regional languages - discussed below. Throughout the text of the European Charter three types of languages are referred to, namely: minority and regional languages, and non-territorial languages. We have tried to assemble the ethnolinguistic and extralinguistic features that are distinctive for the so-called regional languages: - close genetic relationship to the corresponding majority language of the state; regiolects are often regarded as being "only" dialects of a majority/state language; - relatively long history of common development, especially sociopolitical, of the regional and the corresponding majority language; - lacking or not fully shaped feeling of national separateness within the group of speakers; however, strong regional and/or ethnic identity, with the language constituting the main constituent of the identity/regional ethnicity; - high dialectal differentiation within the regiolects, which, hence, can be often classified as dialect clusters or L-complexes; - lacking an adopted uniform literary standard or literary norm, or the standard being in statu nascendi; - rich, often very ancient literary tradition of dialectal/regional literature; - relatively low social prestige of a regiolect, often lower than in the past; - underdeveloped status language planning methods; - sometimes a confessional separateness of the regiolect speakers; - opposition within the group against being perceived and officially treated as national minority group, often a paradoxical resistance against being seen as minority group at all; an «embedded" national/linguistic identity. Such a set of attributes lets us form a group of European ethnolects, which can be treated as regional languages as meant by the Charter. - Low German (Niederdeutsch, Plattdeutsch, Plattdüütsch) - used by at least 7 million speakers in the northern lands of the Federal Republic of Germany: Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, as well as in the eastern provinces of the Kingdom of Netherlands: (where it is called Low Saxon). The 474 BECOMING A REGIONAL LANGUAGE -A METHOD IN LANGUAGE STATUS PLANNING? oldest written records of the language originate from the 12th century. In the Middle Ages, Low German served as lingua franca of the Hanseatic Union. The language change of the 16th century, which followed the translation of the Bible by Martin Luther into High German, deprived the language of the North its hitherto social and political domains of use. Some revival of the literary Low German started in the 19th century. The newest developments in the language policy of the German State have allowed Low German in 1999 to be included in the Charter as the first explicitly Regional language of Europe. - Occitan (provençal) - used by more than ten million speakers in France- (31 southern departments), Italy (Piedmont and Calabria), and Spain (in Val d'Aran in Aragón). Usually divided into three main groups of dialects. The oldest records of written Occitan originate from the 8th century; its bloom occurred in the 12th and 13th centuries, when it became an over-regional cultural language of Southern Europe and later a lingua franca of Mediterranean ports. The decline of Occitan started in 1245 when the Pope Innocent IV issued an edict forbidding its use as language of heretics (Cathares). The language revival started at the beginning of the 20th century, when the Occitan poet Frédéric Mistral was granted the Nobel Prize. - Scots (Lallans) - a Germanic ethnolect, closely related to British English, spoken since the 6th century in the lowlands of Scotland. In the 15th century it became one of official languages of the Kingdom of Scotland, on decline since the union between Scotland and England. Scots still enjoys a very rich literary tradition. - Asturian (asturianu, bable) - spoken by less than 500 thousand persons in the Principality of Asturià in northern Spain. Used in written form since the 13,h/14th century. Since 1982 the region enjoys political, cultural and linguistic autonomy. Language standardization processes coordinated by the Academy of Asturian Language, founded in 1980. - Kashubian (kaszèbizna) - used by 100-300 thousand Kashubs inhabiting the region of Eastern Pomerania in northern Poland. Constitutes a link between the Polish dialects and the extinct Polabian dialects of Western Pomerania and Mecklenburg. Used in literature since the 1840's; although commonly regarded commonly as a dialect of Polish. Remarkable ethnic and language revival since the 1980's, resulted in numerous developments upgrading the status of Kashubian - in the 1990's the regiolect introduced to schools, including the university-level, Catholic church, mass-media; literary