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Autonomous Community
An autonomous community is an area in Spain that enjoys limited political and administrative autonomy. They were created in accordance with the Spanish constitution of 1978 to guarantee limited autonomy of the nationalities and regions that comprise the Spanish nation. Spain has 17 autonomous communities and many of these have additional official languages next to the official state language Castillian 1).
Council of Europe
A European wide human rights organisation. Many European states are members. The Council of Europe drafts conventions describing measures that members can take to protect human rights, and urges its members to ratify these conventions. It also determines whether its members comply with these conventions by sending delegates to members states every few years.
European Charter for Regional and Minority languages
Convenant drafted by the Council of Europe offering protection for regional or minority languages. The Charter essentially is a list measures that Council members states can take to protect regional and minority languages within their territory, organised in Part II and Part III.
Part II of the European Charter for Regional and Minority languages
If a minority language is mentioned under Part II of the Charter it enjoys the “basic” protection that the Charter has to offer.
Part III of the European Charter for Regional and Minority languages
If a minority language is mentioned under Part III of the Charter it enjoys “additional” protection: the host country of this language has committed itself to additional measures to protect this language. The country has to apply a minimum of 35 (sub-)paragraphs from Part III, including at least three (3) from Article 8 on Education.
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3 is an international standard to represent names of languages, using three‐letter codes. The standard was developed by SIL International.
Official language:
A language that may be used for official purposes, such as in government, in court, etc. An official language is bound to a certain political territory or unit (for example: nation state, federal state, province, municipality, etc).
For Example: In the kingdom of the Netherlands, Dutch is the official (state) language. However, within the province of Fryslân, Frisian is a second official language. This means that within Fryslân, both Dutch and Frisian can be used for government, court, etc, whereas the rest of the Netherlands permits only Dutch.
Regional or minority languages
Defined in the Charter for Regional and Minority Languages as languages traditionally used within a given territory of a state by nationals of that state who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the state’s population; they are different from the official language(s) of that state, and they include neither dialects of the official language(s) of the state nor the languages of migrants.
Standardized orthography
If a minority language has a standardized orthography, it means that the speakers are in agreement about how the language should be written: what spelling should be used.