The Other Languages Of Europe

The book offers demographic, sociolinguistic, and educational perspectives on the status of both regional and immigrant languages in Europe and in a wider international context. From a cross-national point of view, empirical evidence on the status of these other languages of multicultural Europe is brought together in a combined frame of reference.

Open publicationThe Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of the continents of the world. The book supplies profiles of the language families of Europe, including the sign languages. It also discusses the areal typology, paying attention to the Standard Average European, Balkan, Baltic and Mediterranean convergence areas. Separate chapters deal with the old and new minority languages and with non-standard varieties. A major focus is language politics and policies, including discussions of the special status of English, the relation between language and the church, language and the school, and standardization. The history of European linguistics is another focus as is the history of multilingual European 'empires' and their dissolution. The volume is especially geared towards a graduate and advanced undergraduate readership. It has been designed such that it can be used, as a whole or in parts, as a textbook, the first of its kind, for graduate programmes with a focus on the linguistic (and linguistics) landscape of Europe.

This is an authoritative reference guide to all the languages of Europe, covering nearly three hundred languages and language families. It focuses on extant languages but includes all languages known to have been spoken in Europe in the past. Speech varieties whose status as dialects rather than languages is a matter of debate either have separate entries or are considered under other headings, with appropriate cross references. The encyclopedia includes entries on non-European languages now spoken by substantial communities in Europe (such as Punjabi and Chinese in Britain and Arabic in France) and on the major non-Latin alphabets used for the transcription of European languages. The aim of the book is to provide surveys of the origins, historical development and, in the case of living languages, contemporary position of each language. Bibliographical addenda to articles list grammars, dictionaries, and works on historical and sociolinguistic topics. Written by an international team of scholars, many of them among the foremost authorities in their field, the Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe is of interest to all those involved in the study of language, linguistics or cultural history.

"Professor Heine and Professor Kuteva look for the causes of linguistic change in cultural and economic exchanges across national and regional boundaries and in the processes that occur when speakers learn or are in close contact with another language. Testing their data and conclusions against findings from elsewhere in the world, the authors reconstruct and reveal when, how, and why common grammatical structures have evolved and continue to evolve in processes of change that will, they argue, transform the linguistic landscape of Europe." "The book is written in clear, non-technical language. It will appeal to scholars and students of language change and variation in Europe and elsewhere. It will also interest everyone concerned to understand the nature of language and language change."--BOOK JACKET.

This book, derived from the acclaimed Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages, describes the ancient languages of Europe, for the convenience of students and specialists working in that area. Each chapter of the work focuses on an individual language or, in some instances, a set of closely related varieties of a language. Providing a full descriptive presentation, each of these chapters examines the writing system(s), phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of that language, and places the language within its proper linguistic and historical context. The volume brings together an international array of scholars, each a leading specialist in ancient language study. While designed primarily for scholars and students of linguistics, this work will prove invaluable to all whose studies take them into the realm of ancient language.

The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

Six thousand years. Sixty languages. One “brisk and breezy” whirlwind armchair tour of Europe “bulg[ing] with linguistic trivia” (The Wall Street Journal). Take a trip of the tongue across the continent in this fascinating, hilarious and highly edifying exploration of the many ways and whys of Euro-speaks—its idiosyncrasies, its histories, commonalities, and differences. Most European languages are descended from a single ancestor, a language not unlike Sanskrit known as Proto-Indo-European (or PIE for short), but the continent’s ever-changing borders and cultures have given rise to a linguistic and cultural diversity that is too often forgotten in discussions of Europe as a political entity. Lingo takes us into today’s remote mountain villages of Switzerland, where Romansh is still the lingua franca, to formerly Soviet Belarus, a country whose language was Russified by the Bolsheviks, to Sweden, where up until the 1960s polite speaking conventions required that one never use the word “you.” “In this bubbly linguistic endeavor, journalist and polyglot Dorren thoughtfully walks readers through the weird evolution of languages” (Publishers Weekly), and not just the usual suspects—French, German, Yiddish, irish, and Spanish, Here, too are the esoteric—Manx, Ossetian, Esperanto, Gagauz, and Sami, and that global headache called English. In its sixty bite-sized chapters, Dorret offers quirky and hilarious tidbits of illuminating facts, and also dispels long-held lingual misconceptions (no, Eskimos do not have 100 words for snow). Guaranteed to change the way you think about language, Lingo is a “lively and insightful . . . unique, page-turning book” (Minneapolis Star Tribune).

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1, University of Innsbruck (English Department), course: English in Europe, 14 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The European Union is not only an economic community. It is also a unique language community in which each language has its place and its right to exist. Today, English is the dominant language in the world serving as a first or second language, a working language, a lingua franca etc. for many people. Nevertheless, the position of the English language is not the same in the European Union as in a global context. This paper will focus on the position of English in the European Union being only one of 23 official languages. It will be analyzed in how far the dominance of English affects the other languages and the institutions of the European Union and to which extent English has the status of a European lingua franca. On the other hand, the influence of the other languages on English will be looked at, which will lead us to the phenomenon of 'Euro-English'. Finally, the opposition of other language communities against the dominance of English will be discussed.