language rights
The right to use one’s mother tongue is a fundamental human right and as such a matter of priority for the state to regulate. The majority of modern countries are nation states based on a political nation whose language has a prominent function in the functioning of the state. The state’s duty to protect the institutions includes defining the language of the state and providing a framework for certain sectoral standards. However, the state also has a duty to identify language use opportunities for minority ethnic communities, i.e. those using a language other than the official state language, and to slow down and possibly stop language assimilation trends as well as language change and exchange at individual and community level.
At the individual level the recognition of language rights means that everyone has the right to identify with one or more mother tongues and to have this identification respected by others. A person belonging to a national minority has the right to use his or her mother tongue, to learn, cherish, cultivate, enrich and transmit his or her history, culture and traditions and to participate in education and culture in his or her mother tongue.
At the community level language rights serve to provide an institutional structure or procedural environment that is in the long-term interest of the group. Community language use includes the exercise or maintenance of substantial influence on the operation of educational or cultural institutions which (also) use the language of a national minority, the indication of names in the minority language in registers and personal documents, and the use of historically established place names and geographical terms.
The basic European documents for language rights are the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. The European Union’s language policy promotes the preservation of diversity, a pluralist ideology that guarantees the right of several groups to keep and use their languages equally.