26. Language security.

Инфа –от группы А-37

Language policy in the EU.

The cornerstone is multilingualism.

Multilingualism policy’s two facets:

• striving to protect Europe's rich linguistic diversity

• promoting language learning.

24 Official languages:

The support of all 24 languages:

• The right to use any of EU’s official languages in correspondence with the EU institutions. (which reply in the same language)

• Regulations, legislative texts are published in all official languages (except for Irish)

• Representatives can speak in any of all the official languages

• General information about the EU policies – in all the official languages.

Regional and minority languages:

• The EU is home to over 60 minority languages

• The European Commission maintains an open dialogue with all of them

• Erasmus+ as a potential aid for promoting teaching and learning of minority languages.

The support of language learning:

One of the EU’s goals – for every European to speak 2 additional languages. Reasons:

• Improving people's job prospects

• Cultures can understand one another

• Effective trading, business across Europe

• The language industry is growing

The 2012 Eurobatometer revealed highly positive attitudes to multilingualism.

Language politics and globalization

Language politics is the way language and linguistic differences between peoples are dealt with in the political arena. This could manifest as government recognition, as well as how language is treated in official capacities.

Since politics is concerned with power to make decisions, to control resources/other’s people behavior, politicians choose their words carefully (using metaphors, euphemisms, generalizations, etc.). The point is that politicians have to control their language because they are always afraid of some documents going public which may affect their careers ultimately.

Most vivid and unpleasant examples can be found in one of «The Daily Mail»’s articles revealing most cutting insults penned by U.S diplomats. For instance, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was described as «emperor with no clothes» with a «thin-skinned and authoritarian personal style». Or Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev «played Robin to Putin’s Batman» meaning that Vladimir Putin held most of the cards in the tandem relationship.

Globalization

Globalized economics and media are changing the face of culture around the globe, reducing the number of languages.

Linguists distinguish English, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as the dominant languages. The realities of commerce and the seductive power of world pop culture are placing pressure on speakers of minority languages to learn the majority ones. Otherwise, they will suffer the consequences: greater difficulty in doing business or less access to information.

Unfortunately, these pressures have a huge impact of minority languages. They’ve been disappearing steadily, with 3000 of the world’s languages predicted to disappear in the next 100 years. More than 2500 languages are already in danger of extinction.

However, the fact that globalization is the wave of the future is undeniable. It means that more and more languages and cultures will simply cease to exist and people will instead choose dominating cultures and languages that will transcend boundaries.

Borrowings

Borrowing – resorting to the word-stock of other languages for words to express new concepts, name new objects, phenomena, etc.

Borrowing is a consequence of cultural contact between two language communities.

A borrowing can also be called a loanword.

Loanwords are adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language (the source language).

Borrowing of words can go in both directions between the two languages in contact, but often there is an asymmetry, such that more words go from one side to the other.

In this case the source language community has some advantage of power, prestige and/or wealth that makes the objects and ideas it brings desirable and useful to the borrowing language community.

English has gone through many periods in which large numbers of words from a particular language were borrowed. These periods coincide with times of major cultural contact between English speakers and those speaking other languages. The waves of borrowing during periods of especially strong cultural contacts are not sharply delimited, and can overlap.

Latin borrowings

Latin, as the language of learning in Europe for many centuries, had an impact during the Renaissance. From the 14th century, Latin, and to a lesser degree, Greek, have been a continuous source of loanwords. The most obvious places to see Latin borrowings used in English are the terminologies used in biology, botany, and chemistry ( for example chromium, bacteria).

Most of the world's scientific community uses Latin as the universal language (or at least terminology) of science.

Borrowings from other languages

As English traders spread across the globe during the seafaring centuries, thousands of words from world languages were borrowed and became part of the English lexicon.

The list below is only suggestive of the paths followed by much of English vocabulary.

Arabic: alcohol, algebra, algorithm

Chinese: ginseng (/ˈdʒɪnseŋ/, женьшень), japan (“varnish”, лак), ketchup

German: carouse (/kəˈraʊz/, пировать), cobalt (/ˈkəʊbɔːlt/), frankfurter (/ˈfræŋkfɜːtə(r)/, сосиска)

Italian: balcony, bandit, casino

Japanese: banzai, geisha

Russian Slavic: czar, intelligentsia, mammoth

Spanish: albino, alligator, armada (/ɑːˈmɑːdə/)

Vocabulary borrowings from other languages take many forms, one of which is the loan translation or calque.

The English word calque derives from French calquer "to trace." It refers to a word or a phrase that has been translated word-for-word from its foreign origin.

Because English is a Germanic language, it's not surprising that English has numerous calques that originated as German expressions.

Here are a few: superman from Übermensch; Hang-glider from Hängegleiter (дельтаплан); loanword from Lehnwort; Rainforest from Regenwald; Watershed from Wasserscheide (водораздел); World war from Weltkrieg

Latin calques:

Milky Way(the galaxy that contains Earth's solar system) from via lactea

"Rest in Peace" from requiescat in pace

"in nutshell" from in nuce

There are a lot of words which have been borrowed from English into Russian. This phenomenon can be illustrated by the following examples:

House and everyday life: mixer; shaker; toaster; jumper; second-hand; hand-made; jeans; cracker; baby; weekend; hair; shoes; lunch

Electronics: printer; browser; scanner; notebook; Internet; computer; user

Sport: diving; bowling; biker; sprinter; match; football; snowboard; skateboard; time-out; drive

There are some features, that help to identify borrowings from the English language:

дж < j/g

инг < ing

мeн(т) < men(t)

ep < er

тч < (t)ch

ция < tion

Summing up, it is ought to be noted that language policy does a lot to prevent unhealthy tendencies in language, but high speed of life, typing instead of writing, not high quality of education, produce these incorrect words. The easiest way to prevent the damage is to start using pure correct language ourselves.

Language policy in Russia

The Russian language is a state language of Russian Federation and one of the working languages of international organization such as UN, UNESCO.

The Day of the Russian language is held on June the 6^th. The purpose of the celebration is to preserve, support and develop the Russian language as a national heritage of Russia, a means of international communication and an integral part of culture and spiritual heritage of world civilization.

In the status of the state language of Russian Federation, it’s used along with other national (ethnic) languages in different political, social and cultural life of the Russian people.

In the regions of Russia with the status of Republic, along with the Russian language as a state language other languages can be used and set as official. In practice it’s usually the languages of ethnic groups.

In some cases it can create potential risks of lowering the status of the Russian language. As an example, it will be appropriate to mention Tatarstan, where the Tatar language is a compulsory subject in schools. At the beginning the initiative was positive, but in practice the number of academic hours for the Russian language and literature began to decrease, and the number of hours for Tatar increased. As a result the literacy in the Russian language in general has gone dramatically. The conflict resulted in alternative meeting, held in Kazan in April 16, 2011 under the slogans in support of both Russian and Tatar languages.

Modern Russia is a multiethnic society and for centuries has been developing as a multinational state in the processes of constant interpenetration and mixing of cultures.

Improving knowledge of the state language of the Russian Federation should apply not only to Russian citizens but as well to migrants wishing to adapt in Russia. This updated the need for taking an examination in Russia as a foreign language for the acquisition and renewal of immigration status.

Borrowings from English into Russian.

The remarkable growth of English neologisms in the Russian language results mostly from sociolinguistic factors and widespread public support. There is a certain distribution of foreign words between functional styles and speech genres, so anglicisms vary relative to the text-type of discourse.

According to investigations they are distributed in the following way in different types of discourses:

In fiction – 6%

In common communication – 9%

In business discourse – 14%

In scientific discourse – 22%