About Spoken Languages
Every language is a source of unique knowledge and cultural expression. Smaller languages provide us with new perspectives on the world. They give words to cultural phenomena, show us how people communicate and how a community forms its identity.
In the lecture series ‘About Spoken Languages’ five academics shine their light on a smaller or less known (and sometimes not standardised) language.

Catalaans
With an absolute count of ten million speakers (double the number of Finnish or Danish, and the same number as Swedish and Portuguese), Catalan is not a small language. Moreover, with 94% of the population in Catalonia knowing the language, it is also not the language of a local minority. However, because of its sociopolitical history, it is the regular language of only 36% of its speakers, who are multilingual mainly in Spanish. Catalan exemplifies a situation of minorization, which can happen to any language regardless of size and history. We will examine what happens when a language finds itself in it, but doesn’t go gently into its obliterating effects.

Dr. Eva J. Daussà
Dr. Eva J. Daussà is a professor in the UvA. She is affiliated with the linguistics and the Spanish department, and she is also the coordinator of the Catalan Minor, the only of its kind in the Benelux. She has published in the fields of sociolinguistics, with a focus on minoritized groups on the basis of their gender, history of migration, or the colonial past of their homes.

Language of instruction: English

This lecture is part of the series About Spoken Languages.
Other lectures in this series:

9 January: Cappadocian, Pontic, Pharasiot by Prof. Dr. Mark Janse
19 February: Yiddish by Dr. Daniella Zaidman-Mauer
10 April: Palestinian Arabic by Dr. Nina van Kampen
22 May: Frisian by Dr. Alexia Kerkhof

€18 per lecture | entire series €80
Student rate:* €6 per lecture | entire series €25

Entry is not possible after the lecture has started.

*The student rate applies to students enrolled at a university or university of applied sciences. Select ‘Invoice’ as the payment method and indicate in the ‘Additional remarks’ field that you are a student.