Fantastic Languages and Where to Find Them

The project “Minority Languages, Major Opportunities. Collaborative Research, Community Engagement and Innovative Educational Tools” COLING, funded by Horizon 2020 MSCA RISE programme (778384), focuses on developing and sharing expert knowledge on language revitalization programs that combine community-driven and top-down approaches; promoting engaged collaboration among academic, non-profit and community-based institutions; developing efficient teaching methodologies, teacher training, and curricula for minority languages; establishing a new international academic program in minority studies at the partner institutions, in which the new methodologies and curricula will be employed. To this end, COLING aims to organise 4 international schools and several workshops to create space for academics, experts, language and speech community members, and activists from various communities in the world to meet, discuss, and share their work in very different minoritised contexts.

The school “Fantastic Languages and Where to Find Them” will take place from 12th to 17th April 2019 in Bova, Italy, the heart of the of the last Hellenophone Area of Calabria. This area comprises 5 municipalities where a few hundred people still speak an old variety of Greek, Greko. At present, Greko is a critically endangered language, however for the past decades there have been very many attempts from the local community to revitalise it.

The school will host 20 minority language experts coming from all over the world who will discuss in and about the following languages: Arbëreshë, Castilian, Dutch, English, Frisian, Galego, Modern Greek, Griko, Hebrew, Latgalian, Louisiana Creole, Maya, Mixteco, Nahuatl, Nahuat-Pipil, Polish, Southern Quechua, Uitbergs, Wymysiöeryś. Greko experts and activists will present their community and their language and share with their experience in language revitalization projects. The aim of the school is to sustain local efforts for language revitalization, share best practices, and find innovative ways to deal with issues as orthographic standardization, lexical borrowings and neologism formation. The first day of the school will coincide with an event co-organised by GAL Area Grecanica, COLING and the Hellenophone Association Jalò tu Vua for the UNESCO International Year of Indigenous Languages, entitled “Revitalizing Endangered Languages: For Whom and Why?”.