The Secretary of Linguistic Policy of the State of Catalonia and Professor of Catalan Sociolinguistics at the University of Barcelona is demanding the official status of Catalan in European institutions, a measure that would provide the language with international visibility, symbolic and instrumental value, and more linguistic rights.
What does it mean for Catalan to be one of the official languages of European institutions?
In terms of equal rights, Catalan speakers could communicate with European institutions in our language, which would significantly enhance the position of Catalan in the linguistic field as a whole and its value in transmitting it to children in regions such as, for example, Northern Catalonia. It would put it on par with other official languages of European institutions and enhance its visibility across the EU. In other words, it will be a language recognizable to European citizens. Essentially, language is cultural capital that is evaluated based on a series of criteria. Speaking Catalan will have the same value as other languages in European institutions. That Catalan speakers were forced to change their language in order to relate to European institutions constitutes a democratic anomaly.
Catalan, although it has more speakers than Danish, Slovak or Irish, among others, is not an official language of the European Union institutions. Would you describe this situation as anomalous as well?
All of the EU’s official languages in their territories are also official in the European institutions, except for our own. This is indeed strange, but if you add, in addition, that Catalan has more speakers, it represents an outlier. There is no treaty stating that for a language to be official in European institutions, it must be the only official language of the state, nor be it monolingual. It is enough to be officially in one of the European Union territories.
Beyond symbolic value, what practical implications might formalizing the Catalan language bring to European institutions?
Every time the EU enacts a topic and mentions languages, it only refers to the official languages, which is why it does not take Catalan into account. This complicates their standardization in many matters, such as labeling, for example, which will now be resolved. Catalan being official in European institutions will also allow European schools, where EU officials and locals in places like Dublin, Brussels or Munich take their children, to offer teaching in and in Catalan. In addition, all programs and information offered by the European Union will be available in Catalan, as well as other services, such as online language learning courses (OLS, its abbreviation in English), which are offered in the Erasmus + programme, for example.
“Being official in EU institutions increases the symbolic and utilitarian value of the language.”
How will the field of research and linguistic resources benefit?
The EU is creating and promoting linguistic tools and technologies to manage multilingualism, such as its terminology database, which only works with the official languages of institutions. Moreover, we have now entered a world in which artificial intelligence has increasing weight. We need the Catalan language to be present in as many institutions as possible that generate texts so that AI can use them. All documents issued by the European Union are very important.
Do you think that making the Catalan language official in European institutions would encourage its social use?
I would encourage several things. The first is awareness of the unity of the linguistic community as a whole. There are people from some places in the linguistic field who may have doubts regarding the language, and seeing that the European Union recognizes Catalan as a unified language would help. On the other hand, the fact that the language is official in European institutions increases the symbolic and utilitarian value of the language, and this makes more people want to learn it. We won’t see millions of people learning Catalan until there is change in the EU, but these are small steps to making the language more valuable and therefore worth learning and using. In fact, the formalization of the Catalan language in EU institutions would improve its internationalization, as its status would rise.
What consequences could the formalization of the Catalan language have in places where it is a minority, such as northern Catalonia?
In northern Catalonia, the Catalans are in a very precarious position, and responsibility in EU institutions would mean an improvement in symbolic value and prestige. However, the status of the language currently is still far from approaching official recognition in this region. France has said publicly that it does not oppose the official use of Catalan in European institutions, as it has done on other occasions. In fact, it would also favor French citizens, who, thanks to their ability to speak Catalan and French, would know two of the official languages of the European institutions, necessary to work in the European Union.
Could the formality of the Catalan language generate claims by speakers of other languages that are not official in European institutions?
For a language to be official in European institutions, it must first be official in its territory. The official European languages in its territories and unofficial in the European institutions are the only Spanish state languages. There are other languages that currently do not have an official status recognized in their territories, and therefore, if they had to demand something, it would be first at the level of internal politics. Currently there are no movements in the European Union demanding the official status of indigenous languages in European institutions.
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Do you think that society is not well aware of the reality of multilingualism?
Often residents are not aware of the dynamics of languages. Multilingualism is very productive and has many added values, but it makes sense that it is well managed and organized. Doing language education is to inform that the current organization of multilingualism benefits many languages, except ours. This is neither logical nor equal, so it does not make sense for us to continue this situation.
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