Giorgio Pagano: President Fini, we must do more for the country’s Linguistic Democracy
Statement by Giorgio Pagano, Secretary of the "Esperanto" Radical Association
Yesterday, during the Republican Patriotism and National Unity Conference, the President of the Chamber, President Fini, said that “despite the cohension’s unravelling, the Country’s national unity is not at risk thanks to its linguistic unity.”
This brings us to the inevitable question; for how much longer?
The country’s linguistic unity is constantly being undermined by the "Anglonization" policies which are being imposed, claiming openly that to teach English as first foreign languauge in schools is obbligatory, and that other subjects will gradually be taught in English, and university courses will be slowly be "anglofied" as well. The social gap will expand between the wealthy English-speaking elites, who use the national language at home in the same way that dialect is used, and the English-educated, who, on the other hand, are those who use Italian as their main form of social interaction.
The fact that there still isn’t a series of laws that enforces the central importance of the italian language in the world of education, in schools, in reseach and in universities, or in communication, healthcare and work, causes an inevitable and ever-growing marganalization of the Italian language in commercial trading, and especially in International enviroments, starting with the European enviroment. We risk losing our products’ shares in the market.
Today, the United Kingdom is further advantaged by fact that a debate has never been opened on the subject of what is the best linguistic policy to protect linguistic variety within the continent, or how to not block the development of the European Union and the free competition.
These factors all clearly indicate that this situation is not destined to last, and failing to stress how important protecting the italian language is, means not protecting the Italian Unity, which is always more at risk.
The state’s costitutional duty is to remove these obstacles which block the citizen’s social employment. The first thing to be done is to break down the linguistic barriers, yet they are being built by the "Englishorum."