Antonella Sorace , Guido Mensching , Blanca Inès Férnandez Quintana and Gianfranco Fronteddu are the winners of the 2023 Ondras Award - now in its second edition -, promoted by Crei Acli and Fondazione di Sardegna, for the promotion of European minority languages. Today in Cagliari the ceremony took place with the awarding of awards to activists who have distinguished themselves in the field of protection and diffusion of languages. «We are happy because it was not obvious that we would continue and do it with this quality - says Mauro Carta, regional president of the ACLI -. We will continue to work like this because we believe that the many European languages are a wealth and must be preserved"
Accompanied by the music of Andrea Deiana Porcu and hosted by Lucia Cossu , the winners took the stage from which they told those present about their relationship with languages and how and why they used and studied them. Blanca Inès Férnandez Quintana told how she "exploited" the pandemic to start writing in Asturian and how this activity attracted very heavy criticism, while Gianfranco Fronteddu explained how his linguistic training began at home and how he then thought of use Sardinian also in the technological field (via an application for translations from Sardinian). Guido Mensching explained how his passion for Sardinian was born, how he studied it and how today he works for his study and he did so with a beautiful and passionate speech all in Sardinian (with a light and pleasant German accent). Finally, Antonella Sorace gave a speech on language learning throughout life, on the importance of learning more than one language and on the generally positive effects of bilingualism.
The 2023 Ondras Prize was born with the idea that to save local languages it is necessary to broaden our gaze to Europe and the world. Thus it was decided to establish the recognition, to be awarded to activists for their social and political commitment at an international level for the promotion and valorization of minority languages.
(Unioneonline/vf)
