22 Facts About Linguistic rights

Linguistic rights are the human and civil rights concerning the individual and collective right to choose the language or languages for communication in a private or public atmosphere.

Linguistic rights include, among others, the right to one's own language in legal, administrative and judicial acts, language education, and media in a language understood and freely chosen by those concerned.

Linguistic rights became more and more prominent throughout the course of history as language came to be increasingly seen as a part of nationhood.

However, it was not until the 1900s that linguistic rights gained official status in politics and international accords.

Linguistic rights were first included as an international human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

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Individual linguistic rights are provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:.

Linguistic rights can be applied to the private arena and the public domain.

Collective linguistic rights are linguistic rights of a group, notably a language group or a state.

Collective rights mean "the right of a linguistic group to ensure the survival of its language and to transmit the language to future generations".

Collective linguistic rights apply to states because they express themselves in one or more languages.

Generally, the language regime of states, which is communicated through allocation of statuses to languages used within its boundaries, qualifies linguistic rights claimed by groups and individuals in the name of efficient governance, in the best interest of the common good.

Linguistic rights translate to laws differently from country to country, as there is no generally accepted standard legal definition.

Principle of territoriality refers to linguistic rights being focused solely within a territory, whereas the principle of personality depends on the linguistic status of the person involved.

An example of the application of territoriality is the case of Switzerland, where linguistic rights are defined within clearly divided language-based cantons.

Negative linguistic rights mean the right for the exercise of language without the interference of the State.

Positive linguistic rights require positive action by the State involving the use of public money, such as public education in a specific language, or state-provided services in a particular language.

Maintenance-oriented types of language Linguistic rights refer to laws aiming to enable the maintenance of all languages within a country, and range from permission to promotion.

An example of laws that promote language Linguistic rights is the Basque Normalization Law, where the Basque language is promoted.

Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights was approved on 6 June 1996 in Barcelona, Spain.

UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1992.

All of these Linguistic rights apply to primary and secondary education, sustained on public funds, and depend on the numbers and circumstances.

Regulations regarding the rights of linguistic minorities in Finland, insist on the forming of a district for the first 9 years of comprehensive school education in each language, in municipalities with both Finnish- and Swedish-speaking children, as long as there is a minimum of 13 students from the language community of that mother tongue.