THE EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES

The European Day of Languages (EDL) was first celebrated in 2001 during the European Year of
Languages. At the end of this campaign the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers decided
to make EDL an annual event, to be celebrated each 26 September. Every year, millions of people
in the Council's member states and elsewhere organize or take part in activities to. Millions of
people in 45 member states took part. It was such a success that in order to satisfy the expectations
of many partners, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe decided, in late 2001, to
make this day an annual event to be celebrated on 26 September.

“Everybody deserves the chance to benefit from the cultural and economic advantages language
skills can bring. Learning languages also helps to develop tolerance and understanding between
people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds”, declared the Secretary General of the
Council of Europe and the European Commissioner for Education and Culture in a joint statement
at the launch of the European Year of Languages. The importance of plurilingualism has been
highlighted by numerous awareness-raising initiatives, and by documents such as The celebration
of linguistic diversity.

The general aim is to draw attention to Europe's rich linguistic and cultural diversity, which has to
be encouraged and maintained, but also to extend the range of languages that people learn
throughout their lives in order to develop their plurilingual skills and reinforce intercultural
understanding. EDL is an opportunity to celebrate all of Europe's languages, including those that
are less widely spoken and the languages of migrants.

The objectives of the European Day of Languages are similar to those of the 2001 campaign:
  Celebrated on 26 September, the European Day of Languages (EDL) is a means of
promoting awareness among the general public of the importance of language learning and
protecting the linguistic heritage.
 Celebrating linguistic diversity in Europe, the plurilingualism of its citizens and lifelong
language learning;
 Improving awareness of Europe’s linguistic heritage and promoting its rich diversity by
encouraging openness to different languages and cultures;
 Motivating European citizens to develop plurilingualism (the ability to use different
languages, to whatever standard) to achieve a degree of proficiency in a number of
languages, including those less widely used or taught;
 Encouraging and supporting lifelong language learning for personal development.
 In keeping with these rules, people, young and old, are encouraged to take up a language,
or take special pride in their existing language skills.
 Also, those responsible for providing access to language learning are encouraged to make
it easier for people to learn a range of languages, and to support policy initiatives to
promote languages.
 There is also emphasis on learning a language other than English.

On the occasion of the day, a range of events are organized across Europe, including those for
children, television and radio programmes, language classes and conferences.
 The events are not organised by the Council of Europe or the European Union nor do they
allocate special funding (i.e. apart from their existing language programmes) for the day.
 Member states and potential partners are given a free hand to organize activities.
There are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe – roughly 3% of the world's total. Most of
the European languages are of IndoEuropean origin.
Since the end of the 18th century, the most widespread language of Europe (both in terms of
geography and the number of native speakers) has been Russian, which replaced French. As far as
foreign language studies are concerned, English is currently the most popular foreign language in
Europe, followed by German, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish.

Prepared by: Sokol DORRI