Summer Tour RML2future – Monolingualism is easy to cure!

'It’s never too late...monolingualism is easy to cure!’ – with this slogan a group of youth will travel through Europe from 17 July till 3 August. The reason however is not to go on vacation; the participants, who are all belonging to European minorities, want to ask attention on how multilingual Europe is during their journey.

“Europe is multifaceted; there is enormous linguistic and cultural diversity, also characterised by the smaller and smallest languages in Europe. Only very few European citizens know about this. With our network RML2future we stood up to act against this deficit, using actions raising public awareness and pointing out the great value of multilingualism. That is why our young team of multilingual minority representatives will start their tour showing that there is more than “just” the large state languages in Europe”, the project manager of FUEN (Federal Union of European Nationalities), Judith Walde explains.

The tour – organised by project partner YEN (Youth of European Nationalities) – will start on Saturday 17 July in Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. The first stop will be in Pécs / Fünfkirchen, Hungary, where the participants will join the choir project of YEN: Voices of Europe. Pécs is a multicultural town and this year it is the European Capital of Culture.

After Pécs the journey will continue to Trieste/Trst in Italy, where mainly the Slovenian minority will be visited, before moving further to South Tyrol and its capital Bolzano/Bozen. Here the participants of the tour will engage in a discussion with the citizens to learn about their experiences on the importance of multilingualism in Europe. Across the mountains the tour will continue to Switzerland where the Rhaetians live in the canton of Graubünden, and further to the capital of the Council of Europe, to Strasbourg. The final stop will be with the German-speaking Community in Belgium, before the journey ends where it began, in Friesland.

“The tour will certainly be not as exhausting as the Tour de France – but the participants will cover about 4000 km in 17 days and will not stop asking attention for the positive contribution of a multilingual Europe. We hope we can contribute to a Europe that is language-friendly and full of diversity”, says Hester Knol (West Frisian from the Netherlands).

Source: http://www.fuen.org/rml2future/news_EN.html