September 26 is European Day of Languages, which should be an important day for vasco-speakers. We have a lot to celebrate, the same thing we have to denounce many others. But I have decided to talk about what we have to celebrate today and to claim the strength that this multilingual society gives to our economy.

Healthy coexistence between languages is the basis for the survival of the language and economic development for both the Basques and other minority languages of Europe. But there is the problem that this coexistence is balanced and natural, because it is not easy.

The European Union has already expressed its concern in the report on the development of the Information Society in 1999. It talked about the risks of linguistic exclusion that the implementation of new technologies can generate, and talked about the need to control and avoid them. 25 years later, with the explosion of artificial intelligence, linguistic diversity is in danger. All the studies show that, in general, all languages have problems, both hegemonic and minority, and that English is becoming the only hegemonic language in the digital world.

If the Basque Country has a particularity, which is multilingual, we have two hegemonic languages and a minority language in our own languages, as well as other languages derived from migratory flows. The struggle for the survival and development of this multilingualism has created an important language industry in Euskal Herria, the forces that have been made so that our language is not left behind in the new technologies, the needs that have arisen as a result of the Euskaldunization of adults, the translation needs that have generated the right to linguistic equality, the need to develop the terminology, the need for opportunities in Basque...

The Basque language can teach other languages the progress it has made in its process of survival and development, and our language is eager to receive lessons from other languages because cooperation between languages in a similar situation is enriching. That is why we want to hear experts in other languages coming from outside. We want to know what and how other minority languages do in Europe. At what point are they? What has the development of your language contributed to the economic development of your country? What is the European Union’s view of the development of languages today?

To respond to all this, on 26 and 27 November, Langune, the association of the language industries of the Basque Country, has organized the Euskararen Irabazi-Win Languages forum, because we are convinced that the survival and development of minority languages, in addition to cultural wealth, generates economic wealth, and a strong industry is generated that is not generated in the hegemonic languages and that strengthens the people.

Lohitzune Txarola Gurrutxaga

Langune, Director of the Association of Language Industries of the Basque Country