The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML), the only treaty of its kind in the world, aims to protect the linguistic and cultural heritage of minoritized languages in ‘a Europe [founded on] principles of democracy and cultural diversity within the framework of national sovereignty and territorial integrity’. Promotion to ‘official’ language status under the ECRML offers institutional protection to these languages within member states of the Council of Europe and, by extension, access to financial resources. Recent research suggests the maintenance of linguistic and cultural ties in Europe’s diasporic communities has a protective effect on health and wellbeing. Evidence-based policy-making, we propose, therefore holds the potential to foster linguistic wellbeing; that is, the connection between language vitality (i.e. the maintenance of a language on a societal level) and the social, mental and physical health of individuals and communities in which connections to an ancestral language are maintained.
However, eligibility for protection under the ECRML currently excludes ‘dialects of the official language(s) of the [relevant] State’—measured by degree of ‘difference’ from the national language(s)—or the ‘languages of migrants’. By framing eligibility in terms of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and linguistic ‘difference’, two key problems arise which this project will address. First, people entering and settling in European states develop complex and intersecting sets of political relationships with those States. Some of these are formally recognised with various forms of membership (e.g. citizenship; work or study visa; refugee status), while others are not. Second, linguistic difference (the degree of structural similarity between dialects or languages) is relative, complex to quantify, and can be manipulated according to one’s scientific and/or ideological standpoint. This raises feasibility and ethical issues in the application of ‘linguistic difference’ as a key eligibility criterion for ECRML recognition.
Ladino’s complex linguistic and sociopolitical history provides invaluable co-ordinates for interrogating questions of linguistic diversity, migration and (non-) citizenship in the context of contested languages and European minority language policies. In particular, we are interested in establishing whether the ECRML afford adequate protections for diasporic linguistic communities and/or dialects; and, if so, the extent to which these rights are enforceable in given European states. Our key contribution to this question is to examine whether, and if so, how ‘linguistic difference’ can be measured within the context of the ECRML. Moreover, if, as we hypothesise, quantifying linguistic difference is empirically or ethically problematic, then it is imperative to work out how ‘linguistic difference’ can be retained and/or reconfigured as an eligibility criterion to ensure it is both workable and equitable in its application.
The status of Judeo-Spanish as a ‘severely endangered’ (UNESCO 2013) vernacular of European origin, which continues to be preserved by Sephardic communities around the world, including in several European countries today, makes it a key test case in the application of the ECMRL in relation to its stated aims. Spain’s 2015 Law of Return—based on the universal human right that grants people the freedom to return to their country of origin in virtue of nationality, citizenship or ancestry—, set out a window (2015-2019) in which descendants of Sephardic Jews could claim Spanish citizenship. Whether Ladino is a distinct language from, or ‘mere’ dialect of, Spanish has been hotly debated for over a century amongst scholars and community members alike. The polemic takes on an extra dimension in the context of the ECRML and the Law of Return, now that Ladino-speaking descendants can lay claim to Spanish citizenship, raising the question of whether Ladino can qualify for protection in Spain under the Charter as an eligible ‘non-territorial’ language of Spanish citizens. Taking Ladino as a case study will thus allow us to assess the effectiveness of the ECMRL in protecting (as a way of supporting the language survivance of) an important historical minority European language.
In collaboration with colleagues working in law and political theory, this case study will also allow us to identify appropriate realisable and enforceable protections for future efforts in linguistic policy making, with a view to developing a roadmap towards inclusive, evidence-based policy-making that protects the linguistic wellbeing and rights of those who lay claim to membership of European states.