The names of the four Sardinian, Italian and European personalities who will receive the “Ondras 2022” award for the promotion of minority languages have been chosen.
For Sardinia, the award was assigned to the memory of Paolo Pillonca, the journalist, writer and scholar originally from Osilo who died in 2018 in Cagliari. Then there are Carles Duarte i Montserrat, Catalan poet and linguist, for his works and career, William Cisilino, director of the Friulian Language Agency, for his writings and for his lifelong commitment and Rut Bernardi , expert in translations and teaching, for the great contribution she has made to the Ladin language.
The ceremony is scheduled in Cagliari, at the Manifattura Tabacchi, on Saturday 8 October .
The initiative, promoted by the Acli Sardegna and supported by the Foundation of Sardinia, “has a great significance which goes to recognize the social and political commitment at an international level for the promotion and enhancement of minority languages. We believe that the jury has selected, after a long and painstaking work, figures above any discussion and in this way we believe that we have given prestige to a theme that the European Union should re-appropriate to relaunch its noblest roots " , explains Franco Marras, Acli regional president.
After many years in which a poetic literary prize in Sardinian language was promoted, now the aim is to frame the Sardinian question in the European context: "The idea of the award for activists of Italian and European languages, including Sardinian, seemed to us to be a winner" , adds Marras.
For this reason, a special commission of experts has been set up in Sardinia to study the method of presentation and evaluation of the applications for the first edition. To support this phase were called Giuseppe Corongiu, writer and long-time activist of the linguistic battles, Nicolò Migheli, sociologist and author of RAI radio broadcasts in Sardinian, and Maria Antonietta Piga, expert in Sardinian language and television journalist.
The commission worked on the creation of a network between the different minorities, involving opinion leaders of each group, in order to identify a series of names to report and reward by the beginning of the summer.
