Sano se saameksi – Say it in Sámi

Say it in Saami features the first online Saami phrasebook on the Internet containing informal language, and its goal is to help the endangered languages. You can listen to the phrases in North, Inari and Skolt Saami. The website also features five short documentary films, a quick guide to Saami culture and a soundboard in North Saami.

The website and online dictionary have versions in Finnish, English and Swedish.

The Say it in Saami project began is a collaboration of Finnish documentary filmmaker Katri Koivula and Saami poet Niillas Holmberg.

Picture: from Say it in Sámi -website
illustration: Lille Santanen

What Language do You Speak – documentary film and discussion

Film Screening at Stoa,
Turunlinnantie 1, Helsinki
6.3. 2018 at 18:00
short discussion after the film with the director and audience at 19:00

(In case you are interested in showing the film in another context, please ask for the director’s contact from Multilingual Month.)

The documentary film What Language Do You Speak? shows the universal nature of the identity defined by language.
The director of the film, Elisa Bracher from Brazil, will arrive to Finland to participate in the screening. After the film screening we’ll share experiences about multilingual contexts with Elisa, who also runs a children´s art education center in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Welcome to contribute!

Description of the film:
Children and adults who have had to adapt to an environment where their own language is not understandable, tell about their experiences in e.g. Brazil, Britain and India. Each experience is unique, but learning the language appears to be the key to being treated as an equal.

“At that time people didn’t understand us. Kids would laugh at you in class, if you said the wrong thing, or if you spoke differently. Because of that there was no other option than to stay quiet. And you had to try hard, try hard to be invisible”
(Girl from Somalia, migrated to Britain)

Brasil 2017, 65 min
Director Elisa Bracher
Main Language Portuguese, English texts. The film includes interviews or fragments also in English, Somali and many other languages.
Tue 6.3.2018 at 18.00
Stoa, Musiikkisali
Turunlinnantie 1, Itäkeskus , Helsinki
Free entry

Elisa Bracher will be interviewed by Outi Korhonen

Nypon förlag – lättläst också på andra språk

Nypon förlag is a publishing house located in Helsingborg, Sweden, specialized in books that are easy to read (lättläst/ selkokieli). It publishes books mainly in Swedish but also in other languages, either as bilingual or monolingual publications. The languages of the collection  include Arabic, Dari, English, French, German,  Meänkieli, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Somali, Spanish, Swedish and Tigrinya.   

The mission of Nypon förlaget is that all the children have an opportunity to become great readers, develope their language(s), imagination, the pleasure of reading and thus their learning skills.

The Women’s Story Circle (Söguhringur kvenna) in Reykjavik City Library

Image: a visual art piece, a new map of Reykjavík, created by The Women´s Story Circle under the guidance of Lilianne Vorstenbosch

A worldful of stories

The Women’s Story Circle is a co-operation between Reykjavik City Library and W.O.M.E.N. in Iceland. A forum where women exchange stories, experiences and cultural backgrounds and take part in creative activities. It is open to women who are interested in meeting other women, sharing stories and ideas and having a nice time in good and relaxed company. The Women’s Story Circle also gives women who want to practice the Icelandic language the perfect opportunity to express themselves in Icelandic and enhance their language skills.

All women are welcome! Here is a short video about the project.

You can follow the activities on Facebook, we have a group and a page.

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Reykjavik City Library runs several  intercultural projects where the goal is to promote awareness of the positive values of cultural diversity in our society. The library puts an emphasis on co-operating with social service centres, schools, organizations and individuals from all over the world living in Reykjavík. The IFLA/UNESCO Multicultural Library Manifesto is used as a guideline in this work.

Kristín R. Vilhjálmsdóttir is the manager of multicultural projects at Reykjavík City Library. She is a language teacher and intercultural project manager, who has coordinated several award-winning projects related to interculturalism and multilingualism.

 

 

 

Learning for Integration: multilingual language cafés, language-specific playgroups for kids, language expert services etc.

Learning for Integration ry promotes the learning of languages and cultural sensitivity of migrant, immigrant and refugee children and youth in Finland and other Nordic countries. It aims to facilitate the new members’ integration into the new culture and the development of a multicultural society. It also supports Swedish learning in Finland.

Learning for integration organizes activities such as the popular language cafés in more than 10 languages, Story time circles, playgroups for kids in different languages and craft and theatre groups. It also offers expert services including workshops for teachers, specific learning materials and affordable but high quality editing, proofreading and translations to NGOs and other organizations working mainly for public good in Finnish, English, French, Russian, Swedish and other languages according to demand.

The multilingual work team of Learning for integration is presented at their website.

Litteraturcentrum Uppsala

Litteraturcentrum Uppsala  is a collaboration of Studiefrämjandet, Kultur i länet, Kulturrådet, Uppsala city, Uppsala regional library and Svenska Pen. Its aim is to support local reading and writing and the regional literary field including a multilingual context. The centre is based in Uppsala, and it is a part of the culture plan of the Uppsala region.

The people involved in the activities of Litteraturcentrum Uppsala use at least the following languages: Swedish, Sami, Arabic, Bengali, Dari, French, German, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Wolof, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Estonian, Kokborok, Beluch, English, Tamil, Georgian, Turkish etc.

 

Anisur Rahman, the project leader for LItteraturcentrum Uppsala describes the work:

“We are interested in both the artistic and social effects of literature. We work locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, and have established productive partnerships with several organizations, including literary organizations, local theatres and schools. Our centre is now a platform for both professional and amateur writers in diverse mother languages. It is a meeting point for native, foreign, immigrant and exiled writers. We publish more than a hundred writers a year in our literary anthology from our creative writing workshops every year. We host more than a hundred literary events a year.

Our centre in Uppsala together with Litteraturcentrum in Tranås, Litteratur resurscentrum in Norbotten and similar project in Jämtland-Harjedalen is now Sweden’s international literary checkpoint where we have growing network and exchange with different continents. All are welcome on board to read and write in diverse languages in defense of free word and free thought.”

Anisur Rahman is Uppsala’s guest writer 2009–2011 in the ICORN system and currently project leader for Litteraturcentrum Uppsala, Studiefräjandet Uppsalaregion, http://www.litteraturcentrum.se/

Móðurmál – the Association on Bilingualism

Móðurmál (Mother Tongue) is an NGO founded in Reykjavik in 1994 as The Parents of Bilingual Children Association (Samtök foreldra tvítyngdra barna). It supports multilingualism by teaching languages to bi- or plurilingual children and develops structured language programs with clearly defined curricula and goals. It has offered instruction in over twenty languages for plurilingual children since 1994.

Móðurmál offers of has offered teaching in Albanian, in Arabic, in Czech, in Chinese, in English, in Filipino, in French, in German, in Ghanaian Languages Ewe & Twi, in Indonesian, in Italian, in Japanese, in Korean, in Latvian, in Lithuanian, in Nepalese, in Polish, in Portuguese, in Russian, in Serbian, in Slovakian, in Spanish, in Swedish, in Thai, in Turkish, in Ukrainian, and in Víetnamese

Móðurmál has received the following awards:

2008: “Vel að verki staðið” (“For A Job Well Done”) certificate of recognition from the Intercultural Centre for Mother Tongue’s active work on immigrantion issues in Iceland. The award was presented by the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

2014: “Samfélagsverðlaun Fréttablaðsins“ (The Society Award of Frettabladid) in category “From Generation to Generation“. The award was presented by the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

2016: “Foreldraverðlaun Heimilis og skóla” (Parents’ award from the National Parents’ Association) for mother tongue teaching of bilingual children

 

Story Sharing Universum

Story Sharing Universum is a project which helps immigrants, asylum seekers and Finns to meet and share stories together in several languages. The project has two parts: Story Sharing Cafés, which are open to the public, and storytelling workshops for asylum seekers at reception centres. Story sharing cafés have developed work formats that permit to communicate in a multilingual way with guides who speak different mother languages. The group speaks at least Arabic, English, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, French, Dari, Pashto and Farsi (/Persian).

Story sharing café is a part of City of Helsinki’s official integration programme for year 2017.

Ós Pressan

Ós Pressan is a non-profit initiative designed to think of literature in an updated way, to bring out and promote new authors, to create an inclusive, multilingual writing community and to challenge the reality of the publishing industry in Iceland.

From Ós Pressan’s website you can find the newest collective publications of the community and presentations of the authors and other artists or journalists linked to this community that includes a wider range of writers, languages and visions.

The writers connected to Ós Pressan write in Icelandic, English, Spanish and Polish.

Sivuvalo – Is This Finnish Literature?

Sivuvalo project is a creative platform for writers who write in other than the two national languages in Finland. It offers information about transnational writers, edits publications and organizes multimedia poetry readings, workshops and other artistic collaborations.

The coordinator of the project is Peruvian poet Roxana Crisólogo and the producer of “Mutant Language” multimedia poetry evenings  is Mexican poet and designer Daniel Malpica.

Sivuvalo´s website also includes a wide link list of writers who write in different languages in Finland.
Among them there are writers who write in Arabic, Burmese, English, Icelandic, Kurdish, Persian, Russian, Northern Sámi, Somali and Spanish.

 

Multilingual Library, Helsinki, Finland

The Multilingual Library is located in Pasila Library, Helsinki and its collections cover over 80 languages. Customers living outside of Helsinki can order all materials to their local libraries around Finland.

The Multilingual library also hosts a blog about current topics related to literature and multilingualism. The blog has blogs in English and occasionally in other languages, e.g. in Somali, Persian and Arabic.

Customers who cannot find their own language among the language collection can suggest items to add to the collection.

In the book collection you find books at least in the following languages:

Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Byelorussian, Catalan,  Chinese,  Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek,  Greenlandic, Gujarati,  Hebrew,  Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Karelian, Khmer, Komi, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Mari, Nepalese, Norwegian, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Sámi, Sign language, Slovakian, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamili, Tatar, Telugu,  Thai, Tigrinya,  Turkish,  Ukrainian,  Urdu, Vietnamese and Yiddish

The mother languages of the permanent staff at Pasila Library, which is the physical location of Multilingual Library, include Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian, Estonian and Somali.

 

 

International Library, Stockholm, Sweden

The International Library is part of the Stockholm Public Library and it is in central Stockholm. It has a multilingual collection of books in around 200 languages. People living elsewhere in Sweden can order books from the international library to their local libraries.

The library´s website has language versions in Swedish, in Arabic, in English, in French, in Chinese, in Persian, in Russian and in Spanish.

In the webpage of the International Library you can also find interesting archives related to multilingual issues, like the interview archive and book recommendations for and from readers in different languages, apart of the previously mentioned at least in Polish, Bulgarian, Portuguese and Urdu.

The collection includes books in the following languages: Acholi, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Ashanti, Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Bambara, Basque, Bemba, Bengali, Berber language, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Buli, Burmese,  Catalan, Cebuano, Chewa, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dari, Edo, Efik, English, Greenlandic, Estonian, Ewe, Fanti, French, Fulani,  Galician, Geez, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrean, Hindi, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Kikuyu, Kirgisyan, Kongo (Kikongo), Korean, Krio, Kurdish (Kurmandji and Sorani), Kymric (Cymric/Welsh), Lao/ Laos,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Det flerspråklige bibliotek, Oslo, Norway

Det flerspråklige bibliotek, Oslo, Norway:
The multilingual collection of the National Library of Norway has books and films in 69 languages. Libraries around Norway can order materials for their customers.

The library also offers special packages with books and other materials for multilingual reading promotion. One of the tools  are the adventure bags with bilingual editions of selected stories in several different languages. For the celebration of mother language day there are special material packages as well. Other institutions can book these materials through their local library.