September 26: European Day of Languages

25 September, 2012

Since 2001, the European Day of Languages (EDL) is being celebrated on September 26 every year. Established by the Council of Europe, EDL is jointly organised by the Council of Europe and the European Union with an aim to encourage language learning across Europe for multilingualism and inter-cultural understanding.

ACCORDING TO an estimate, there are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe but the most widespread language of Europe is Russian followed by French, English and German. As far as foreign language studies are concerned, English is currently the most popular foreign language in Europe and the smallest language in Europe is Maltese - the national language of Malta.

This year is special for EDL to spread the message across Europe that how important languages are, and what fun can be had learning them since the special day completed 10 ten years of its celebration.

‘Be active – learn languages!’ is the motto for this year’s EDL in Warsaw. The day is being observed with language lessons and language teaching workshops in dozens of languages for teachers. Also an international conference, theatre classes, storytelling, street games in many languages, quizzes and a film festival with European language are slated as the events of the day.

But, it is strange that despite the major goal of EDL being the promotion of all European languages in all countries of Europe, its website is available in English and French only.