On the 17th of November of 2016, we celebrated the European Day of Languages (EDL), in cooperation with the Language Interest Group of AEGEE-Europe. The main goals of the EDL is encouraging language learning all over Europe and highlighting the value of Europe’s cultural diversity. It was created in 2001 as an initiative of the Council of Europe. AEGEE has organised it in several antennae since the beginning, in cooperation with several institutions. During these years, participating locals have organised a wide variety of events about languages, with activities such as conferences, seminars, workshops, contests, language tandems, language fairs and surveys. The Council of Europe and the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) suggest the 26 of September to celebrate this day, but AEGEE-Europe’s Language Interest Group (LIG) suggested the 17th of November for the EDL this year.
This year, we celebrated the EDL in the room P1G1A of the School of Engineering of Bilbao and we prepared an amazing programme: a short introductory presentation, a small but interesting conference consisting of a talk about Tosta project and a talk about gypsy languages and culture, an exciting workshop about language diversity with an interactive language quiz and a diverse language tandem with international students.
The event was scheduled to start at 16:00, but we waited a few minutes for some participants who arrived a bit late, even though we put some signs indicating the location of the room. The short presentation about AEGEE and the EDL was given in English by Iñigo Sesar in front of a diverse audience of 17 people, who carefully listened and learned about our organisation and the aims of the European Day of Languages. Thanks to Sophia Holtermann and other organisers, the room was attractively decorated with a big shimmering placard, some multilingual posters, the promotional material from the ECML and a few coloured balloons.
After the initial presentation, Sara Camara introduced the talk about gypsy languages and culture, which was given in Spanish by Oscar Bizarraga. After an introduction to Kale Dor Kayiko, an organisation that fosters the development of gypsy culture, he explained the origins of the Rrom or Romani nation, the origin of the word ‘gypsy’, a comparison between several Roamni ethnic groups, the structure and philosophy of gypsy families, the situation of gypsies in the Basque Country and their languages, including Romani languages, Erromintxela and Calo. At the end, a few motivated participants asked about their questions and curiosities.
The next presentation was about Tosta project and it was given in Basque by Asier Basurto and Iker Martinez. The first speaker is a member of Donostia San Sebastián 2016, which is a foundation related to the European Capital of Culture 2016 and its main goal is to create a new and sustainable model of living together in the relationships between all Europeans. The second speaker was a member of Euskaltzaleen Topagunea, which is a federation of Basque associations with the aim of promoting the use of Basque. They introduced the partner organisations of Tosta project and they explained the structure, organisation and results of the whole project. Tosta (http://tosta2016.eu/) is a cultural project developed by cultural organisations in 7 minority language communities of Europe’s Atlantic coast and it serves as a travelling embassy of Donostia San Sebastián 2016 European Capital of Culture. It has three main parts: cooperation between artists and cultural creativity, celebration of cultural diversity with a series of events and festivals, and the balanced management of minority languages in international cultural projects. They also talked about the European Language Diversity Forum, which will be celebrated in Donostia-San Sebastián between the 15th and 16th of December (http://www.donostiaforum.eu/) and the event to present the Protocol to Ensure Language Rights on the 17th of December (http://protokoloa.eus/).
After expressing our gratitude with a loud applause and a box of chocolate candy for the speakers, there was a 10 minutes break. Thanks to the collaboration with Coca Cola, participants had the opportunity to enjoy drinks such as cokes, mineral water and Fanta during the break, for the consumption outside the room. We also showed the participants the wristbands, reflective click bands and multilingual stickers about the EDL, which we received from the ECML.
Subsequently, we started the workshop about language diversity with an interactive language quiz on Kahoot!, which was presented and moderated by Xabier Rodriguez. There were 16 participants, most of them international students, so we made 4 groups of 4 people. Each group had a phone and a name, so that they could quickly choose the answer to the questions displayed on the big screen. The game was very exciting, because points were not only awarded for right answers, but also for the time needed to choose the right answer. Participants learned many facts and general information about languages, but there were also some discussions. We made the quiz according to what was written on the ECML’s website, but some details might not be very accurate. The winning team won a bag of Haribos as a prize, but they decided to share it with all participants. Then, we played a game called «translate celebrities’ names», which consisted on translating names and surnames of famous people to other languages. For instance, the translation of «Michael Schumacher» could be «Mikel Zapatari» in Basque or «Miguel Zapatero» in Spanish. We had also prepared other games, such as tongue twisters and idioms in foreign languages, «guessing the language», Taboo and «my favourite word», but it was already 20:40 and we had to leave the room. We asked if participants were interested in a language tandem with some games about languages in a bar in Pozas, but most of them were tired and they went home.
To sum up, our EDL celebration was quite successful and we enjoyed an exciting event with participants from various nationalities. We learned interesting facts about languages, we changed our perception about the gypsy culture, we discovered the details of a cultural cooperation project between different language communities and all of us were more motivated to learn other languages and use the several languages we speak.
