Trilingualism and minority languages in Europe

Abstract

Trilingualism and multilingualism is common in Europe and in many other parts of the world. It is the result of historical, social and political factors and can involve combinations of different types of languages (Cenoz & Jessner, 2000). Some of these languages are official national languages in European states such as French, English, Spanish or German which are spoken by millions of people as a first language. Others are minority languages or lesser used languages which in some cases are only spoken by a few thousand. Minority languages in Europe are usually divided into two main groups: established or regional minorities on the one hand, and inmigrant minorities on the other (see Turell, 2000; Extra & Gorter, 2001). This special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Languages refers to the former and focuses on the use of different languages in education in European regions in which an authochthonous, minority language is spoken. In these regions, speakers of the minority languages are usually proficient in the majority national language and learn additional languages at school. In many cases speakers of the majority languages also learn the minority language. The spread of English as a language of international communication and its increasing use as the European lingua franca has created the need to learn this language for those speakers of minority languages who do not live in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Nowadays

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