1.5 MLN-EURO ITALIAN LANGUAGE PROGRAMME IN WAKE OF EU
BLOW Rome
(ANSA) - Rome, February 22 - Italy's National Research Council
(CNR) today said it was launching a þ1.5 million programme
to promote the study of the Italian language. The announcement
comes only days after the European Commission decided to drop
Italian as one of the languages which Commissioners' press conferences
are translated into. That move caused an outcry here and prompted
Italy's permanent representative in Brussels, Ambassador Rocco
Cangelosi , to write a letter of complaint to Commission Chief
Manuel Durao Barroso. In the letter Cangelosi said the Commission
had relegated Italian to "a wholly secondary position"
The CNR programme will finance 139 Italian language research projects.
The initiatives will include conferences and courses aimed at
raising interest in the language of Dante abroad. The CNR said
it will also open a special Italian cultural identity department
this year. "Until today an effective linguistic policy was
lacking at both the national and European level. The CNR is committed
to the task of conserving and promoting the Italian linguistic
and cultural identity," said CNR Vice-President Roberto de
Mattei. "The process of globalization threatens to kill cultural
and linguistic variety, with English's development as the universal
languageþ "If there's any truth in the slogan 'unity
in diversity' it's in the field of culture. Europe's wealth is
in its variety of identities." On Sunday Foreign Minister
Gianfranco Fini said Italian language learning should be boosted
across the world. But Fini played down the EC problem, saying
that each member state had the right to its own translators for
ministerial meetings. He also disclosed that Italian was not an
official EC language - alongside French, English and German -
during the previous commission led by Italy's Romano Prodi. There
are 6,000 Italian cultural and language institutes around the
world, but the foreign ministry intends to reinforce the network
to teach Italian.
