to improve economic conditions or, for example, traffic safety; a well-developed language and favourable conditions for its usage are not enough if a considerable number of the population (in particular, young people) leave the country to pursue a better life, or perish in traffic or other accidents (all measures from childbirth allowance to the requirements to fasten seatbelts and have a smoke detector installed can be looked at as countermeasures). Losing a million speakers of a big language will go unnoticed but for us it would mean the extinction of the Estonian language.
Beside materialistic considerations, the general cultural environment and patriotism are very important factors. The state has a very important role here and can do a lot through the education system, including the above-mentioned values programme.
Although the same measures are essentially required to preserve both big and small languages (ensuring language development, conditions for and uniformity of usage), small languages are disadvantaged in comparison to big languages:
A small ‘revenue base’ (population), which makes preserving a language more expensive (for example, the translation of one document is 100 times more expensive for a nation that has one million taxpayers than for a nation with 100 million taxpayers).
Lack of competitiveness arising from the limited scope of usage of a language, which in turn reduces the incentive to learn the language. It is for the state to create such conditions that people have an incentive to learn and use a language. Proficiency in Estonian must be economically beneficial (this could be ensured e.g. by supporting the acquisition of Estonian-language software).
On the other hand, being a small nation has its advantages. A small nation does not necessarily have to be poor or a large nation very wealthy. It is important to use the resources available and small countries have an advantage here: measures can be implemented quickly throughout the country and it is easier to reach every citizen.
Back to the beginning: we do not know in which position world languages will be in 100 or even in 50 years. However, when political, technical and economic obstacles to the development of small languages have disappeared, these languages will have to have been preserved. We will have to make an effort to ensure that.
Nowadays, no language can exist without state support and regulative activity. This is especially true for small languages. At the end of the day, it is the citizen, the user and developer of the language who is the most important.
The Friulians and Their ‘Piçule Patrie’ (Little Homeland): A Language and People without a State
Franco Finco
University of Udine
Friuli (loc. Friûl) is a region of northeastern Italy with its own particular cultural, historical and linguistic identity. It borders Austria to the north and Slovenia to the east. To the south, it faces the Adriatic Sea, and to the west, its internal border is with the Veneto region. Friuli is a part of the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The historical capital and most important city of Friuli is Udine, which was also the mediaeval capital of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, the so-called Piçule Patrie (“Little Homeland”).
While standard Italian is the primary official language of the region, several other regional languages and dialects are spoken in Friuli: Friulian, Slovenian, German and variants of Venetian.
Friulian is spoken throughout most of the region and is more predominant in the countryside, while standard Italian and Venetian are more common in the larger towns. Friulian (called furlan or Marilenghe “mother tongue” in the Friulian language) is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance sub-family and has more than 600,000 speakers (approximately 50 % of the population), most of whom also speak Italian.
In addition, Friulian is spoken outside the region. Friuli was a poor area until the 1960s, which caused a large number of Friulian speakers to emigrate. This emigration began in the final decades of the nineteenth century and ended in the 1970s. It is estimated that more than a million Friulian people left the country over a period of approximately one hundred years. According to the most recent census by AIRE (2005), about 135,000 Friulian emigrants are living abroad. Of these, 56 % are located in Europe, 24 % in South America, 10.3 % in North America and 4.7 % in Oceania. These data only reflect those Friulians and their descendants who have Italian citizenship. The majority of Friulian descendants are excluded from the census because they are not Italian citizens. Friulians worldwide have created and supported cultural associations called Fogolârs furlans (“fireside”), of which 46 exist in Italy and 156 throughout the rest of the world. We don’t know how many of these emigrants or descendants still speak Friulian. There are no data for this. However, there are some towns in Argentina and Brazil, where the inhabitants still preserve the Marilenghe: e.g. Colonia Caroya, Reconquista, Avellaneda, Resistencia and others.
In the last 60 years, the number of Friulian speakers has fallen (in Friuli), especially among the younger generations. Their language attitudes reveal a loss of the prestige and efficiency of the Marilenghe, normally associated with the old rural world, considering it inadequate for more sophisticated communication. On the other hand, Friulian is being threatened by the Venetian dialect in its traditional domains, mainly in the western part of the region.
To give a complete picture of Friulian, it has to be noted that this code gained the status of “language” in the community’s representations: while the population claimed to speak the Friulian dialect when asked in the 1970s, by the 1990s most Friulians claimed to speak the Friulian language. This change of orientation towards the local language reflects the profound changes occurring in that period in the sociocultural identity of Friuli. In the late 20th century, and particularly after the earthquake in 1976, there was a revival of interest in the Friulian language, culture and identity, which has continued up to the present day.
Unlike other minorities in Italy that are also protected by international treaties (e.g. Germans, French, Slovenians, Croatians, Greeks), Friulians do not have the support of any foreign country in which Friulian is the national language. The historical homeland of the Friulians, the so-called Piçule Patrie (“Little Homeland”), is entirely contained within the Italian Republic.
As a result, up to 1996, the only references to the Friulian language that could be found in legislative texts were incidental, or relegated the defence of this language to projects of general cultural promotion. The official recognition of the Friulian linguistic minority is very recent and is established by three laws: regional laws no. 15 of 1996 and no. 29 of 2007 of the Autonomous Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia and law no. 482 of 1999 of the Italian Republic.
Among others, these laws establish measures to promote the Marilenghe in schools and through the media of radio and television. Therefore, teaching Friulian has been introduced in many primary and some secondary schools. There are also courses at the University of Udine.
Some newspapers and magazines that are totally or partially written in Friulian are available.
In Friuli, only one radio station broadcasts most of its programmes in Friulian (about 70 %): Radio Onde Furlane (“Friulian Wave”). They began broadcasting in 1981 and currently do so seven days a week: news, cultural and musical programmes, etc. Another radio station that broadcasts some of its programmes in Friulian (about 30 % of the total) is Radio Spazio 103, a commercial radio station established in 1993.
As far as television is concerned, very little has been broadcast in Friulian. There is news in Friulian (Lis gnovis, twice a day) on Telefriuli, which has been broadcasting weekly programmes in Friulian for years. A few other programmes in Friulian, including news, are broadcast by other private TV stations, while they wait for the state television,
