European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages facts for kids

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (often called the ECRML) is a special European treaty. It was created in 1992 by the Council of Europe. Its main goal is to protect and help old regional and minority languages in Europe.

This treaty helps languages that have been used for a long time by people in a country. These languages must be very different from the main or official language of that country. It does not cover languages spoken by people who have recently moved from other countries. It also does not protect local ways of speaking (called dialects) of the main language.

For a language to be protected, it needs to be spoken by people in a certain area of a country. Or, it can be spoken by a smaller group of people across the whole country. For example, Yiddish and Romani are protected even if there isn't a specific "Romani region."

The main official languages of a country are not covered by this treaty. But some official languages that are only used in a certain region can be protected. For instance, Catalan is official in a part of Spain, so it gets help from the treaty. However, Irish is the official language of Ireland, so it's not covered there. But in Northern Ireland, Irish is protected because it's not an official language of the United Kingdom.

France signed this treaty, but its laws do not allow the government to support any language other than French.

The Charter offers two levels of protection for languages. Every country that signs the treaty must give all qualifying languages the lower level of protection. Countries can also choose to give some languages a higher level of protection. If they do, they must follow 35 specific rules to help those languages.

Countries and Protected Languages

Many countries have agreed to follow the Charter. Here are some of the countries and examples of the languages they protect:

Related pages

• European languages
• Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
• Languages of the European Union
• Language policy in France
• Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights
• Vergonha

See also