ABSTRACT
Over the past sixty years, the notion that language rights might be accorded the status of a fundamental human right and be recognized as such by nation-states and supranational organizations has been both highly contentious and widely contested. The key point of contention has not been on the general right of an individual to continue to speak a language (any language) unmolested in the private or familial domain, since this broadly accords with the protection of individual human rights that has developed in the post-Second World War era and is thus relatively uncontroversial. Of course, this does not mean that states have always adhered to even this general human rights principle. Franco’s Spain is a clear historical example where such individual language rights were foreclosed for all other than Castilian speakers. The ongoing statesanctioned proscription of Kurdish in Turkey and Tibetan in China are two contemporary examples of states that continue to fl out this human rights’ principle. Rather, the controversy has focused on whether speakers of minority languages have the right to maintain and use that particular language in the public, or civic realm – most often in, but not necessarily limited to, education.
