Before anything else I would like to warn you: in this post the proud girl inside me is writing. Why? I read something it made me feel proud of my mother tongue.
Catalan has roughly 9 million speakers, which means that it is the 88th most spoken language in the world -out of the more or less 6000 that have been identified nowadays. (One could say, looking at this figure, that Catalan enjoys good health. It is not really the case, however. Anyway, this is would fit much better in another post.)
What catched my attention some days ago was that a minorised language as Catalan is, has an extraordinary presence on the Internet:
- It is the 15th most used language on Wikipedia -or Viquipèdia in Catalan (200,000 entries).
- It is the 17th most used language on web pages.
- It is the 8th most used language on blogs.
I could not believe my ears when I heard and then read this. Especially the figure related to blogs. Even bearing in mind that 90% languages in the world have no presence on the Internet, that makes an impressive number! This is really good for the language, as it indicates that people see it as a normal vehicle of communication. Besides, the Internet, is a powerful tool for less spoken or minorised -made minoritarian- languages: on the net these language can have a voice which reaches the whole world.
There even has been a congress, which discussed this case success and what could be done to take advantage of the Internet in similar cases. The congress was held by the "Casa de les Llengües" (The House of Languages), which is financed by the Catalan government and aims at studying and taking advantage of multilingualism, exploring the richness of languages. By the way, I strongly reccomend you to visit their webpage: it is really complete with all kinds of activities and...it is truly multilingual! (I think I would really love to work there).
Why was I so happy then? I'm sick of hearing offence against Catalan, and Catalans (most of times by politicians and conservative people), I am sick of how little by little our language is blurred by monolingual strategies which disregard it (why some people in Spain see bilingualism as bad?). This piece of new was a new breath of fresh air, something positive among all this.
So this is all: proud girl mode Off :D.
Catalan has roughly 9 million speakers, which means that it is the 88th most spoken language in the world -out of the more or less 6000 that have been identified nowadays. (One could say, looking at this figure, that Catalan enjoys good health. It is not really the case, however. Anyway, this is would fit much better in another post.)
What catched my attention some days ago was that a minorised language as Catalan is, has an extraordinary presence on the Internet:
- It is the 15th most used language on Wikipedia -or Viquipèdia in Catalan (200,000 entries).
- It is the 17th most used language on web pages.
- It is the 8th most used language on blogs.
I could not believe my ears when I heard and then read this. Especially the figure related to blogs. Even bearing in mind that 90% languages in the world have no presence on the Internet, that makes an impressive number! This is really good for the language, as it indicates that people see it as a normal vehicle of communication. Besides, the Internet, is a powerful tool for less spoken or minorised -made minoritarian- languages: on the net these language can have a voice which reaches the whole world.
There even has been a congress, which discussed this case success and what could be done to take advantage of the Internet in similar cases. The congress was held by the "Casa de les Llengües" (The House of Languages), which is financed by the Catalan government and aims at studying and taking advantage of multilingualism, exploring the richness of languages. By the way, I strongly reccomend you to visit their webpage: it is really complete with all kinds of activities and...it is truly multilingual! (I think I would really love to work there).
Why was I so happy then? I'm sick of hearing offence against Catalan, and Catalans (most of times by politicians and conservative people), I am sick of how little by little our language is blurred by monolingual strategies which disregard it (why some people in Spain see bilingualism as bad?). This piece of new was a new breath of fresh air, something positive among all this.
So this is all: proud girl mode Off :D.
References:
"El català, un exemple a Internet" (Catalan , an example over the Internet)
-Ethnologue, Languages of the world: http://www.ethnologue.com/
-Casa de les Llengües: http://www.linguamon.cat/
- Viquipèdia: http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/
"El català, un exemple a Internet" (Catalan , an example over the Internet)
-Ethnologue, Languages of the world: http://www.ethnologue.com/
-Casa de les Llengües: http://www.linguamon.cat/
- Viquipèdia: http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/
