Singing contest highlights endangered languages

TONDER (Denmark) • Folk musician Billy Fumey strode onstage last Friday night in this quaint, rural town and launched into an intense love song in the endangered language of Franco-Provencal.

As he belted out a lyrical description of hair blowing in the wind, few in the 500-strong audience had any idea what he was singing about, but it did not matter. When the track ended, the crowd clapped wildly.

A few moments later, Carolina Rubirosa, a Spanish rock musician who sings in Galician, got a similar reaction. As did Jimi Henndreck, a psychedelic rock band from Italy who sang a raucous number in South Tyrolean, a German dialect. So, too, did Inga-Maret Gaup-Juuso, an electronic artist singing in a language of the Sami Indigenous people of Northern Europe.

All were taking part in Liet International, a European song contest for regional and minority languages.

Rubirosa told the crowd in English that minority languages are vital. She added. "We don't have to let them die."

About 200 million people tuned into the Eurovision Song Contest last Saturday to hear music from around the continent. The 25 pop stars in the final included those performing in Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian.

Yet the millions of people in Europe who speak one of its many regional and minority languages are unlikely to find themselves represented on the Eurovision stage, let alone in their country's pop charts.

Since 2002, Liet International has been offering a platform to musicians from these communities - although it is far from the spectacle of a Eurovision final.

The status of Europe's minority languages varies. Some, including Catalan, are spoken by millions of people, yet others, including North Frisian, native to northern Germany, have just a few thousand speakers left and are at risk of extinction, according to Unesco.

Professor Elin Jones, who studies language diversity at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, said regional languages such as Welsh - ones protected by governments and taught in schools - were thriving. But in countries including France, Greece and Russia, minority languages were more at risk, because children are usually educated only in the national language.

On Friday, Doria Ousset, a Corsican singer with a six-piece band, sung an epic rock lament for a 17th-century Corsican soldier facing execution by French forces. She was announced the winner.

"How do you feel?" asked one of the hosts in English. Ousset replied in Corsican with a lengthy, tearful, speech. Very few people in the audience understood a word she said. But they clapped and cheered anyway.

NYTIMES