Every year, the European Day of Languages (EDL) is a significative event for students and not. Each 26 September, in fact, many initiatives and project are organized all over the continent – and the world – in order to encourage people to study languages. But, when was this special day established and why? Why is this event so important? And which initiatives have been organized for this year’s EDL?

Europe is a very multi-cultural and plurilingualist continent: aside of the 24 official languages recognized by the EU, there are more than 225 indigenous languages in Europe. The need of creating an initiative concerning languages was already clear a few years ago.
Back in 2001, during the European Year of Languages, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers decided to make EDL an annual event, to be celebrated each 26 September. In effect, the first European Day of Languages took place in 2001 as a flagship of the European Year of Languages. Millions of people in 45 member states took part, and its great success made it possible to organize it every year till today. Its major goal was to highlight the importance of multilingualism and to encourage people to learn new languages. As the 2001 Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Javier Solana, declared at the launch of the European Year of Languages, “everybody deserves the chance to benefit from the cultural and economic advantages language skills can bring. Learning languages also helps to develop tolerance and understanding between people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds”.

As explained by the European Council official website, today’s EDL goals are not much different from those of the 2001 campaign:
– Celebrating linguistic diversity in Europe, the plurilingualism of its citizens and lifelong language learning;
– Improving awareness of Europe’s linguistic heritage and promoting its rich diversity by encouraging openness to different languages and cultures;
– Motivating European citizens to develop plurilingualism to achieve a degree of proficiency in a number of languages, including those less widely used or taught;
– Encouraging and supporting lifelong language learning for personal development.

To celebrate the European Day of Languages, several projects have been organized, and many initiatives are planned all around Europe.
Some examples are the “Fête des langues européennes”, in France, where 10 Franco-European associations will present their language with games, quizzes, conferences…; the “Beauty of the words”, in Serbia, where, together with teachers of Serbian, English and Italian, students will read poems in different languages, create e-books and make presentations of authors like Keats, Dante, Dostoyevsky and others; “The Gate of Languages Unlocked”, in Slovakia, a competition where teams of elementary school pupils will solve tasks in European languages; the “Plurilingual Venice” an entirely online-held event that will evoke, valorize, and celebrate the profoundly plurilingual and multicultural nature of the Most Serene Republic from its origins.

Every year, students, teachers and others from all over Europe look forward the European Day of Languages. EDL is, in fact, an opportunity to celebrate all of Europe’s languages, including those that are less widely spoken and the languages of migrants. Our school will participate in this special day as well, organizing special games, activities and a new logo you can see on the side. We, who speak more than one language, must be delighted of the privilege we have. However, we must also do our part to celebrate and valorize the incredible richness and diversity of languages and cultures we have in our beautiful continent, as the Council of Europe Secretary General, Marija Pejčinović Burić, remembered: “the European Day of Languages reminds us that all voices matter and that together we can overcome linguistic and cultural divides in our societies”