Posts Tagged ‘official languages’

Last month, voters in the City of Nashville, Tennessee went to the voting booths to decide whether to make English the city’s official language. And, thank goodness, they voted against the proposal that would have made “Music City” the biggest U.S. city with such official language legislation. This is good news, not just for the immigrants and non-English speaking Americans who need to be able to easily understand public documents and proceedings in order to access basic public services, but also for translators. Yes, it is a victory for translators!

According to a Reuters article by Pat Harris, backers argued that the English only proposal would have “saved an estimated $150,000 yearly on translation services”. Nonetheless, the good citizens of Nashville voted against the exclusion and marginalization of non-English speakers and, consequently, for translators and interpreters.

The history of the European continent has defined countries that we recognize as having regional languages as well as official languages. Because of that, several countries are multilingual and it is quite common to learn several languages at once and use them on a daily basis.

Within minority languages, Catalan is the language with the most speakers in the European Union.

Below is a list of the main minority languages in the EU that include more than half a million speakers.

• Catalan: 7,200,000 speakers in Spain, France, Italy and Andorra.
• Galician: 2,420,000 speakers in Spain.
• Occitan: 2,100,000 speakers in Spain, France and Italy.
• Sardinian: 1,300,000 speakers in Italy.
• Irish: 1,240,000 speakers in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
• Basque: 683,000 speakers in Spain and France.
• Welsh: 508,000 speakers in the United Kingdom.

Source: IDESCAT. EUROMOSAIC Study.