26 September - European Day of Languages

Every year, when the calendar arrives at a page with the date 26th September, we know exactly what this date means: it is the European Day of Languages. As I am at school, teaching on this date, I can't let things go by without involving my students. But first of all, what does this celebration mean?

The European Day of Languages was first celebrated in 2001 during the European Year of Languages. At the end of this campaign the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers decided to make EDL an annual event, to be celebrated each 26 September. Every year, millions of people in the Council's member states and elsewhere organise or take part in activities to promote linguistic diversity and the ability to speak other languages.

The general aim is to draw attention to Europe's rich linguistic and cultural diversity, which has to be encouraged and maintained, but also to extend the range of languages that people learn throughout their lives in order to develop their plurilingual skills and reinforce intercultural understanding. It is an opportunity to celebrate all of Europe's languages, including those that are less widely spoken and the languages of migrants.

This year we were not at all indifferent to this day. But as it is on Sunday and we don't go to school  then, we decided to organize our activities on Friday. In the morning some students (about 20) greeted all the students and teachers who enetered the school in one of the 23 official languages of the European Union. They could hear greetings in Romanian, French, Polish, Serbian, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, Bulgarian, and many others. Then they offered their colleagues and teachers a flyer with information about the 23 languages and the advantages of knowing a foreign language.

Next Monday we'll start working on a short video presenting the Romanian greeting and its explanation in English.

If you want to find out more about this day, click here.