Dying minority languages in Europe
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"‘We’re a bit jealous of Kneecap’: how Europe’s minority tongues are facing the digital future", Stephen Burgen, The Guardian (11/26/25)
What does it mean to lose a language? And what does it take to save it? Those were the big questions being asked in Barcelona recently
The author tells us:
There’s an Irish saying, tír gan teanga, tír gan anam: a country without a language is a country without a soul. Representatives of some of Europe’s estimated 60 minority languages – or minoritised, as they define them – met in Barcelona recently to discuss what it means to lose a language, and what it takes to save it.
Language diversity is akin to biodiversity, an indicator of social wellbeing, but some of Europe’s languages are falling into disuse. Breton, for example, is dying out because its speakers are dying, and keeping languages alive among young people is challenging in an increasingly monolingual digital world.
In turn, Burgen surveys the current bill of health for Catalan (about 10 million speakers in Spain; doing quite well, thank you), Frisian (approximately half a million speakers in northern Netherlands), Irish (nearly two million speakers in the Republic, thanks in part to the popularity of the rapper group Kneecap), Welsh (more than half a miilion speakers in Wales, which is slowly depopulating), and Euskera (around one million speaker in the Basque region that straddles France; and Spain).
Burgen concludes by stating that those minority tongues living amidst larger languages do best when they do not insist on rigid purity, but, following the Kneecap effect, "loosen their grip").
Selected readings
- "The 'genetic singularity' of the Basque people" (4/5/21)
- "Why is Basque an Ancient Language?" (1/3/07)
- "Hiberno-English: it's a soft day" (2/18/25)
- "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" (2/15/25)
- "The Welsh heritage of Philadelphia" (8/26/24)
- "Xina" (11/26/18)
- "Occitan and Oenology" (10/8/23)
- "How to pronounce the name of the president of Catalonia" (11/6/17)
- "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/23/18)
[Thanks to Philip Taylor]
DJL said,
December 2, 2025 @ 7:40 am
Irish has 2 million speakers partly because of Kneecap? Shurely shome mishtake!
J.W. Brewer said,
December 2, 2025 @ 8:21 am
That article's claim that 624,000 of the people who know Irish use it on a "daily" basis is difficult to reconcile with the 2022 Irish census data (per wikipedia) saying that only 71,968 speak Irish daily.
The key difficulty is that quite a lot of adults in Ireland have some familiarity with the Irish language because, and only because, they were forced to study it in school. If you wanted to boast about how many people in the U.S. speak Spanish you could run up the numbers with tens of millions of functionally monolingual Anglophones who took a few years of high school Spanish and haven't forgotten all of it but rarely make active use of it.
On a brighter note I am pleased to note that I learned yesterday that a Spanish university whose grad students do linguistics scholarship on the English language is happy to celebrate and promote that research with a press release written in Galician, a regional language not even mentioned in the article. (In that language "philology" comes out as "filoloxia," rather than the "filologia" preferred by all three of Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish.) https://www.usc.gal/gl/xornal/novas/circulo-linguistica-inglesa-profunda-ilusions-gramaticais-case-sinonimos-vinculados
Jenny Chu said,
December 2, 2025 @ 9:00 am
@JW Brewer that's delightful! More press releases should be issued in minority languages.
I was covering environmental news for COP30 this past month and one thing I noted is that they issued a number of their press releases in indigenous languages. Not all of them, and not all of the languages, but it was a cool gesture and even if it didn't help people from the region (Para) read news about climate change, it did at least remind the rest of us that there's a lot more to Brazil than (Brazilian) Portuguese.
Joaquim said,
December 2, 2025 @ 2:06 pm
Nice to have the subject discussed in The Guardian, but as usual, journalists simplify to the point of misrepresenting facts, as already J. W. Brewer observed in the case of Irish.
For Catalan, let me just say that the bit about a "language police, who stamp out any perceived impurities" is close to bullshit. I mean, such prescriptivist correctors do exist, but the Catalan media landscape is large with a lot of variation. And presenting the question whether it is best to preserve a "pure" language or a "living" one as if Catalans had chosen the first option and Frisians the second is so naïve… There is heated debate between descriptivists and prescriptivists in Catalonia just as everywhere else, and there has been since the nineteenth century (not called descriptivists yet, but look: https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catal%C3%A0_que_ara_es_parla).
Michael Vnuk said,
December 2, 2025 @ 4:15 pm
The article says:
'Catalan, which is spoken by about 10 million people [In Europe? Spain? Catalonia? Wikipedia says 8m live in Catalonia.] is the poster child of successful minoritised languages. Thanks to decades of linguistic immersion in public education, from nursery to university, about 93.4% of the population [Europe? Spain? Catalonia? Probably Catalonia here, based on the context, but how does it relate to the 10m figure?] can speak or understand Catalan, in addition to Spanish. Both are co-official languages in Catalonia, and the result is a culture that is almost completely and unselfconsciously bilingual.
However, the latest figures show that only 32.6% of adults [In Catalonia? Or does this refer only to those with a knowledge of Catalan? How many of the 10m are adults?] say Catalan is the language they habitually use, and the numbers are falling, especially among younger people [Young adults, children, or both?].'
The article refers to 'Europe’s estimated 60 minority languages', but I couldn't quickly find a list in the link provided. Wikipedia mentions about 250 languages in Europe, of which some are clearly majority languages, and perhaps also immigrant languages. Definitions of 'Europe' and 'minority' probably explain other differences in numbers.
Peter Taylor said,
December 2, 2025 @ 4:23 pm
@Joaquim, down here in Valencia we have opposing bands of prescriptivists, although one does wonder with some politicians how much they're acting in good faith and how much they're trying to make valencià seem too complicated.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 2, 2025 @ 6:29 pm
FWIW this page lists the members of the group that sponsored the recent get-together in Barcelona mentioned in the story. There is NOT a 1:1 correspondence between groups and languages (some languages have multiple associated groups, other groups seem to not have a focus limited to a single specific language), there are probably European minority languages not represented by groups on this list, and I expect the different groups do not all use a single consistent methodology for distinguishing "language" from "dialect." But it at least gives you a taxonomy of activist groups if not so directly a taxonomy of languages.
https://elen.ngo/members/
David Marjanović said,
December 2, 2025 @ 7:19 pm
I visited a place a bit outside of Barcelona two years ago. All non-official signage was monolingual, with the choice of language seeming random; it is evidently assumed, almost certainly correctly, that everybody can read both languages.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 2, 2025 @ 8:54 pm
To David M.'s point it seems relevant that Catalan and Castilian are both Romance tongues that are fairly closely-related, making it comparatively easy for someone who is fully literate in one language to make educated guesses (not 100% accurate, of course) about the meaning of signage in the other even if they couldn't really be fairly described as fully fluent. It is substantially harder for e.g. a monolingual Anglophone to bluff their way through signage in Irish that way. Consider by way of comparison a German who might do reasonably well at guessing the meaning of signage in Dutch w/o having had any formal instruction in the language but wouldn't do nearly so well with signage in Czech.
Whether this sort of situation where the "weaker" language is a comparatively short "distance" away from the "stronger" one (in terms of grammar and lexicon etc.) is better or worse for the survival prospects of the weaker one than a situation where there is much more distance seems difficult to say as a general rule, because the lack of distance probably has both some positive implications and some negative ones.
James Griffiths said,
December 2, 2025 @ 9:57 pm
As others have pointed out, the stats for the Celtic languages (I can't speak to any expertise as regards the others) in the article are fairly misleading. The Guardian cites Irish government statistics for all speakers, but of that 2 million, per gov, "one in ten people who spoke Irish could speak it very well while a further 32% spoke it well. The majority of Irish speakers (55%) could not speak the language well."
By comparison, the 500K figure for Welsh, is active users, so a far larger population both by proportion of all speakers (the equivalent would be about 1 million, using similar wide net as 2 million for Irish) and by proportion of total population, which around 3m in Wales vs. 5m in Ireland.
Wales is depopulating, but the Welsh language is in better shape today than it has been in decades, and has enjoyed a similar Kneecap-style boost from a growing number of popular artists and culture made in Welsh. Welsh is by far the healthiest of the extant Celtic languages (Welsh, Irish, Breton, Cornish and Scottish Gaelic).
Chester Draws said,
December 3, 2025 @ 12:22 am
"Language diversity is akin to biodiversity, an indicator of social wellbeing,"
Is there any sort of pesky evidence for that assertion. I know that the common consensus on this site it that it is "obvious". But "obvious" things often turn out to be untrue.
I think that being able to speak the same language as everyone else around you is a prerequisite for success in a modern society, and overall helpful for a country. Which means all minority languages are now going to be a second language, at least in Europe.
The fans of Welsh, Catalan etc are implicitly fans of separatism. Which is pretty much the opposite of being fans of unity. How that improves a country like Spain, which threatens to be riven apart by such separatism is at very debatable issue. Is the "social wellbeing" actually improved by separatism? I would like to see some evidence, rather than assertion.
Now as evidence that "language diversity" is not akin to biodiversity and isn't good for society I think of the massive societal split in Belgium, caused in major part by the two languages. I cannot see why any country would want that. Is Canada stronger because the Quebecois continue to insist on French? It certainly costs a lot of money and creates a lot of friction.
Now I am not a fan of monolingualism. I've lived in non-English countries, learning the languages, and both my kids are bi-lingual, which we helped them to remain even when we moved back to an English speaking country. But that is a personal issue, not a societal one.
I realise that this is red rag to a bull for many here, but without evidence you are merely arguing for something you like, not something helpful. Meanwhile the populations of countries continue to get their children to learn the primary language of a country first, because they know it will be helpful to them.
Joaquim said,
December 3, 2025 @ 2:02 am
@Chester Draws, assuming for the sake of civility that you are not just trolling: "The fans of Welsh, Catalan etc. are implicitly fans of separatism" is simply false. The same (PSC party) politicians who in 2017 actively supported jailing the separatist government are now in the Catalan government trying to protect the "linguistic immersion" system. Always in the name of "unity". Things are complicated.
And, with regard to "unity": some of us still believe that European unity is possible and necessary, but I don't think anybody equates this with choosing a common language, so making Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, even Spanish and French, "second languages".
I understand your Belgian example, but let me oppose Switzerland to that. Linguistic and national identification are indeed intertwined, but it is not 1:1. Croats and Serbs killed each other while speaking the same language. In Switzerland they have a strong unity with four languages.
Oh, and I do agree that the parallel with biodiversity is a sort of Sapir-Whorf thing with no scientific support. But let us not counter this with social Darwinism, please.
Andreas Johansson said,
December 3, 2025 @ 2:50 am
Which means all minority languages are now going to be a second language, at least in Europe.
I don't see how you arrive at this, but I'm pretty sure that any minority language that ceases to be the first language of a significant chunk of people is going to go extinct in a hurry.
That said, yes, some actual argument why maintaining linguistic diversity is a good thing is all to often missing in discussions like this.
(Frankly, the same goes for biological diversity. Adding malaria to a previously unaffected ecosystem isn't obviously a good thing.)
Joaquim said,
December 3, 2025 @ 2:57 am
@Andreas Johansson Re:some actual argument why maintaining linguistic diversity is a good thing.
Let us just respect each other with their languages, simply. Nobody should get to decide that it is ok if someone else's language disappears.
C Baker said,
December 3, 2025 @ 3:10 am
> I think of the massive societal split in Belgium, caused in major part by the two languages.
If having a shared common language was a guarantee of unity, the USA wouldn't be in the state it is today.
The massive societal split in Belgium is caused partially by the fact that Flanders and Wallonia were kinda haphazardly soldered together to invent "Belgium" from whole cloth in the 1800s and *definitely* by the fact that the two regions have vastly different economic climates.
wgj said,
December 3, 2025 @ 9:26 am
There is no such thing as a country without a language – there is no (human or animal) society without a language. What exactly that saying means to express is unclear, but perhaps something like "without its distinct language" (which is also used elsewhere)?! But if so, is France "a country without a language", because other, non-French people speak French too?
Rodger C said,
December 3, 2025 @ 11:03 am
Flanders and Wallonia were kinda haphazardly soldered together to invent "Belgium" from whole cloth in the 1800s
Belgium, i.e. the Catholic Netherlands, formerly the Austrian Netherlands, formerly the Spanish Netherlands, formerly the Burgundian Netherlands … All of which were dominated by French, which I take it is the real issue.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 3, 2025 @ 1:32 pm
Of course the backstory of Belgium is that the formerly-Austrian Netherlands were soldered together (in a fashion that might have seemed like competent workmanship at the time) with the "regular" Netherlands at the end of the Napoleonic era, but then the Catholic southern provinces chafed under the domination of the Protestant north, leading to the split in 1830 where the Flemish ended up tied to fellow Catholics who didn't speak Dutch rather than fellow Dutch-speakers who weren't Catholic. One of the more plausible explanations I've seen for the relative stability of Switzerland over time is that its historical religious division does not match up with the linguistic division but cuts across it – the historically Protestant cantons include both German-speaking and French-speaking ones and ditto for the historically Catholic ones. Thus these two contrasting potential sources of tension keep each other in check so that neither becomes so dominant a problem as to destabilize the country as a whole.
Who knows what would have happened if the Dutch regime in the 1820's had pursued a more conciliatory policy toward the Catholic south and not provoked successful separatist revolution? I suppose Napoleon III would probably have eventually pursued an irredentist claim on Wallonia and maybe thereby caused a general European war.
The theory in Spain, I take it, is that respecting the position of traditional regional languages (and various other sorts of regional claims to limited autonomy) will hopefully address and ameliorate potential regional grievances and thus prevent them from becoming as destabilizing as they could have been had the heavy-handed centralization policies of certain prior Spanish governments been continued. But it's a delicate balance with no objective way to tell it's being done right other than trial and error.
Chester Draws said,
December 3, 2025 @ 7:02 pm
Let us just respect each other with their languages, simply. Nobody should get to decide that it is ok if someone else's language disappears.
True.
But insisting that people speak a minority tongue so it doesn't disappear isn't really much better. If the Catalan Spanish think that speaking Castilian so that they can get jobs and the rest is a priority for them and their children, then who are to say that they are wrong?
And, with regard to "unity": some of us still believe that European unity is possible and necessary, but I don't think anybody equates this with choosing a common language,
But it clearly does, which is why virtually every educated European speaks good English.
Again, the people have voted with their feet, to the dismay of many bien pensants. (Note those intellectuals usually speak English themselves, for exactly the same reasons.)
Regarding Switzerland: its a proper federation (like the US was before the federal government grew). It exists as a concept, and they are proud to be "Swiss", but living in different cantons is like living in different countries.
David Marjanović said,
December 3, 2025 @ 8:05 pm
I agree with the first sentence; but how is the second sentence supposed to follow from the first?
It is often claimed that all the translation constantly going on in the governing organs of the EU must be a huge waste of taxpayer money. In reality, it is a rounding error. I'd be very surprised if that was different in Canada.
But very, very few of them (outside the UK, Ireland and Malta) speak it to their children. Instead, the children learn it in school as a foreign language just like their parents did.
Joaquim said,
December 4, 2025 @ 3:32 am
Exactly. English is widespread as a lingua franca, but that does not mean that "national" languages need to become "second languages" for real unity in Europe.
Also, it is perfectly ok "If the Catalan Spanish think that speaking Castilian so that they can get jobs and the rest is a priority for them and their children," but it is also perfectly irrelevant, because all Catalan Spanish speak Castilian, no debate on that.
The real question is, if we (some of us Catalans) still want to keep Catalan as our first language and that of our children, who is to say that we are wrong? This one is not a rhetoric question, rather it is very much alive in Spanish "culture wars" politics (including Constitutional Court politics).
J.W. Brewer said,
December 4, 2025 @ 10:44 am
I just happened to learn that about a decade ago Oxford University Press put out a thick and expensive book that may be relevant to these matters with the intriguing title "Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity: The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts (Volume 2)." I can't actually speak to the quality of the contents, which I have not read, but it's one of the best subtitles I've seen for a linguistics-related book since the classic "The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success."
Peter Taylor said,
December 5, 2025 @ 1:56 am
@Joaquim,
Actually, I would caveat that. The mother of a colleague of mine is an L1 Valencian speaker who understands Castilian but cannot maintain a conversation in it because she unconsciously code switches into Valencian. (I'm pretty sure she wouldn't call herself Catalan, but this is a linguistics board rather than a politics board so I think we can agree that Valencian is a dialect of the same language as Catalan).
DJL said,
December 5, 2025 @ 4:55 am
Bilingualism is often a matter in degrees, and this is certainly true in Catalonia. I used to teach at various Catalan universities and at one institution in Tarragona most students were Catalan dominant, with some a bit unsure of themselves (or less confident) when speaking in Spanish, especially in front of a visiting, Castlilian-sounding speaker – one student used to ask the person next to them to pass on their questions to me in Spanish.
And sometimes there’s a bit of stigma in Catalonia when it comes to speaking in your less dominant language, especially if the difference between L1 and L2 is pronounced. It was not uncommon to hear Spanish-dominant bilinguals state that they preferred not to speak in Catalan because they couldn’t speak it well enough… and I think that was the issue with the student I mentioned, and perhaps with the Valencian example above.
(I note that someone like Rosalia, who’s clearly Spanish dominant, has no problem speaking in Catalan in all and any context, but that might have to do more with her own confidence, etc).
Chas Belov said,
December 8, 2025 @ 10:28 pm
@Victor Mair, thank you for the referral of the article. I now have one more Irish representative on my Infectious Multilingual and Multilingual Incubator playlists.
I'd guess that having popular music in minority languages is not going to be sufficient to save minority languages, but I'd also guess that it helps get the attention of younger speakers.