French regional and minority language policy

If you believe that Brussels is more than happy to see powerful member states neutralised by internal division–as is increasingly Spain’s case–then it becomes easier to understand the promotion by official EU “news” agency Eurolang of a French electoral lobby devoted to obtaining official status for the country’s smaller languages. Like all European initiatives of…

Language immersion counter-productive, says Finnish prof

Being a naive progressive, my opposition to the illegal policy of compulsory Catalan language immersion has always been based on appeals to the old liberal idea that we should be free to use whichever language we choose, with the odd reference to “rights” enshrined in international conventions and publicised via absurd junkets like UNESCO’s International…

Linguistic policy of Hispano-American language academies

“[Language] academies, oscillating in the disjunction between description and prescription, will have to document prescription taking into account descriptions of use,” says Pilar Chargoñia. Burn em down, I say. (Here via here is news of lobbyists who want the RAE to undescribe various popular uses of terms.)

Singing in Llantiol, December 18

We‘re doing a short show in Llantiol on Sunday December 18th at 23:00. It’s a cute, *little* theatre, with only about 70 capacity, so book etc etc. OK, it’s Sunday night, but no one does any work on the Monday before Christmas anyway. New repertoire will probably include a satire on language policy, Tom Lehrer…

Officialay anguageslay

Oh dear, more kerfuffle about official European languages. It seems clear to me that until the Common Agricultural Policy is abolished we should be condemned to Pig Latin.

Irish: it’s official! Well, almost…

The Taoiseachracy got sick of being hassled during the Irish presidency of the EU by lobbyists for various unloved languages, so here’s a little bit of revenge that should end discussion of EU institutional language policy for the next decade: LONDON — Ireland said yesterday it wants Irish to be made the 21st official language…

“The USSR saved Europe from fascism”

Stalin apologist Rafael Poch has published an article in La Vanguardia which belittles, falsifies, misrepresents the Normandy landings. That’s a common line here, where quite large numbers of people still believe that Stalin (substitute Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Companys etc as you will) was a benevolent (although misunderstood) genius. All’s quiet on the domestic front…