The organizations that work on the European Digital Language Diversity Project (DLDP) will meet today and tomorrow at the Elhuyar headquarters in Usurbil to discuss the next steps of the project.

This summer we published the results of the survey we conducted last year to measure the digital use of minority languages, in English, and can already be read in Basque here.

In short:

• Speakers have clearly expressed their desire to use their languages digitally in all sociolinguistic fields and for all purposes used in the majority languages.
• Social networks offer a unique opportunity as a framework for the revitalization of languages, but this sociolinguistic area is still limited.
• There is a growing demand for the use of these languages in the public sphere.
• Speakers of retail languages should be supported and encouraged to use their languages digitally, highlighting their importance as digital content generators.
• The lack of structural support for these languages is a serious problem to be solved. In fact, the digital development of these languages is not viable if it depends on the work of a few activists and volunteers.

Now we have to plan the next steps. We will talk about the Digital Survival Kit and, in relation to this, we will design a training program for users of the four retail languages in which we work (Breton, Carelo, Sardines and Basque), so that these languages will advance in the digital field. The results of this work will be shown in a few months.

At the meeting we will meet the following members of the DLDP project:

• Claudia Soria, Irene Russo and Valeria Quochi Consiglio Nacionalista delle Ricerche (Pisa, Italy)
• Davyth Hicks, European Language Equality Network, ELEN (France)
• Anneli Sarhimaa and Eleonore Kruse, Mainz University (Germany)
• Tuomo Salonen, Carelian Language Association (KKS, Finland)
• Antton Gurrutxaga and Klara Ceberio, Elhuyar (Basque Country)