EUROPEAN MINORITY LANGUAGES

DEFINITION OF A MINORITY LANGUAGE

• A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a country. It must be traditionally used by nationals group numerically smaller than the rest of the State's population and must be different from the official languages of that State.

ESTONIAN LANGUAGE• Estonian is the official language of Estonia

• Is spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various emigre communities

Estonianeesti keel

Spoken in: Estonia 

Region: Northern Europe

Total speakers: 1.1 million

Language family:

Uralic Finno-Ugric  Finno-Lappic   Baltic-Finnic

    Estonian 

Official status

Official language in: European Union Estonia

HISTORY

• From the 13th century to 1918 by Denmark, Germany, Sweden anf Russia resulted few early written literary works in Estonian language

• After the Estonian War of Indenpendence Estonian language became the state language of the newly independent country

LITERATURE

• The oldest records of written Estonian date from the 13th century. Originates Livoniae in Chronicle of Henry of Livonia contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences

• In modern times Jaan Kross and Jaan Laplinski remain as two of Estonia's best known and most translated writers.

Classification

• Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages

• Is one of the few languages of Europe that is not Indo-European

• It has been influenced by German, Russian, Swedish and Latvian

Alphabet

• Estonian employs the Latin alphabet, in addition to which the Estonian alphabet contains letters š, ž, ä, ö, ü, and õ.

IRISH

• Is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish

• Irish is also an officially recognised minority language in Northern Ireland

• Is the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland and it is an official language of the European Union.

• Native speakers range from 20,000 to 50,000 people

• 0.8% aged three and over speak Irish and approximately 60% speak Irish on a daily basis.

LADIN

• Is a Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in the Dolomite mountains in Italy, between the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Veneto

• It is officially recognized in Italy and has some official rights in the region of Trentino while it does not have official status in the province of Belluno

• It is spoken in:– the following municipalities of the Province of Bolzano-Bozen

• Urtijëi• Santa Crestina Gherdëina• Sëlva• Badia• Corvara• La Val• San Martin de Tor• Mareo

– the following municipalities of the Province of Trento (Val di Fassa): • Canazei (Ladin Cianacei)• Campitello di Fassa (Ladin Ciampedèl)• Mazzin (Ladin Mazin)• Pozza di Fassa (Ladin Poza)• Vigo di Fassa (Ladin Vich)• Soraga (Ladin Soraga- or- Sorega)• Moena (Ladin Moena)

• It has more or less 30.000 total speakers and its language family is the Indo- European one, in which is related with Italic, Romance, Italo-Western, Western, Gallo-Iberian, Gallo-Romance, Gallo-Rhaetian and Rhaetian.