Unite against English colonisation! (his words, not mine...)

The Parliament is a pretty cosmopolitan place as you would imagine, and you hear all sorts of languages in the lifts, in the cafes and around the place. But increasingly you hear English, and people are starting to notice. I worked in Brussels as an intern 1996/7 and if you did not speak French you were not at the races. Meetings were in French, conversations over a beer or a coffee were by and large in French, with English being the thickoes language. Then enlargement happened, and the Poles, Czechs, Estonians and all the rest pretty well to man speak English as their second language, and French is less and less necessary. I make a point of speaking it and my bad German just to prove I can, and have caught a few people out understanding them when they assumed the thick Brit would be monophone.

Now for Scotland as an Anglophone country this is a double edged sword, because the rule is basically you can buy from anyone in your language, but you need to sell to them in theirs. Personally I want to see language tuition in Scotland massively increased, and I know this is all a question of money and priorities but I think it would be worth it, and a major step towards making the internationalist Scotland we want to see a reality. The benefits to the brainpower of kids who speak another language is clear, the worldview very different once they speak something else. I do not care which language, so long as they do speak something and lose the pathological fear of getting their le la or les wrong because that is not how language works in the real world. But that is another discussion.

Meantime, the natives are fighting back. On February 21 outside the British Embassy in Rome there will be the first "Demonstration of independence from English", which essentially seeks to slate Gordon Brown (personally) for the funding that the British Council received to promote the "colonisation" of the world by the English language. Clearly this is just daft, but an interesting wee wrinkle to the concept of "soft" power which we as Scots will have access to. The world already speaks our language, but might in some cases kind of resent it. We must be careful that we do not give the impression of being lazy or arrogant by accident, or by association.

Remember the cautionary tale of an English lady in Florence in the early 1900s saying loudly when called a foreigner "No no dear, we're English, YOU'RE all foreign..." As Scots I like to think we're a wee bit more culturally aware, but one for us to watch.

Below the email sent around the Parliament by one of the event organisers. Sadly I had to run his email through Babelfish so it is a bit garbled but you get the gist. More at www.democrazialinguistica.it

Chère/Cher Collègue, today the use of mass and increasingly more exclusive of the English language, whose obligatory knowledge extends to the various contexts from the life from tous.les.jours, does not only continue to cause the disappearance of the minority languages, but represents a strong threat for all the languages and the linguistics-cultural ecosystem of planet: it is estimated that 90-95% of the languages of the world will disappear during this century. This tendency to use only one language, generates imbalances and discriminations increasingly larger, incalculable between the anglophone countries and people, which extend their influence political, social and economic with the rest of the world, and the countries and people not-english-speaking which are subject to this influence (see the considerations of Claude Piron on dotsub.com). In the European panorama, the privileged use of the English language is testified by the fact that only 6% of young English speak a second Community language compared to more than 50% of the young people of the other Member States. However, it is obvious that the European Institutions, which recognize the inescapable principle of linguistic diversity, by supporting this tendence (it was enough to think that even the documents téléchargeble on the site EU relating to the policy of the multilingualism are available only in English and that the opinions of the contests for civils servant or trainees are published in English, French and only in certain cases in German) are the first to especially lead a nonmultilingual but discriminatory policy towards the nonanglophone European citizens. In Italy, on thousand young people from 18 to 35 years, of the question "you Think that the European linguistic system centered on the use of English, can support the young people of English mother tongue compared to the autres?"La crushing majority consisted of 73% answered Oui (source Forum Nazionale Giovani). For a long time, the language which less would need some, is financed non-returnable by the United Kingdom by investments colossals - only in 2005-2006, British Council received financings of 275 milions of euros - and that with the obvious goal to monopolize the European and world linguistic communication definitively. In the light of these considerations, the declaration of British the Prime Minister Gordon Brown of January 17 highlights a stronger will of expansion at the goal to attack the Asian markets. By defining it a "new gift for the world", British the Prime Minister announced later news resources in British Council with the goal to form thousands of English teachers, of which 750.000 only in India (ex colony British which conquered the indépendence in 1947 pennies the guide nonviolent of Gandhi, which denounced in 1908: "To give to million people the knowledge of English it is like reducing them in slavery"). Such declaration of Brown is available, with the soutitres in several languages, with address Internet http://dotsub.com/films/ukdeclares/index.php One is thus in the presence of a true colinisation of the whole world through the linguistic policies. However, we organized, at the time of the International Day of the Mother tongue, that one célébre on February 21, the "First Demonstration of Indépendence of the English Language", which will take place in Rome of 15h with 17h in front of the British Embassy. To know some more and to adhere to this initiative contact: ERA Onlus, association for the Right to the language and the international linguistic Democracy, 76, Via di Torre Argentina - 00186 - Roma; such: 0668979.380/308/797, 3490818387; fax 0623312033; www.democrazialinguistica.it info@democrazialinguistica.it