Project: Multilingualism and Minority Languages in Ancient Europe

The present project aims at stimulating further reflection about the question of multilingualism and minority languages in ancient Europe. Multilingualism is not only a feature of modern societies but also of the ancient European territory, which showed traces of it both in the zones that were under the authority of a single and cohesive national power such as the Roman Empire, as well as in those zones that were at the boundaries between two or more nations or populations, such as ancient Phrygia, the North-Western part of Greece, or some regions of Southern Italy. Investigating minority languages - the socalled Restsprachen - and multilingualism in Ancient Europe is thus crucial both to recover a significant and often ?submerged? section of the European past and also to better understand Europe nowadays with its distinctive features of multilingualism and languages in contact. The investigation conducted by the project is twofold. Each of the five research units will focus on a specific contact situation, which is poorly known or completely undocumented (e.g. Messapian, Phrygian and Lydian). Subsequently, the new philological data will be analyzed from a sociological perspective and on their value for supplying interesting parallels to reflect on multilingualism, linguistic (and social) identity and unity-in-diversity in the European Union nowadays, which is one of the key factors for building an inclusive, innovative and reflective Europe.

Acronym	MuMiL-EU (Reference Number: HERA.15.029)
Duration	01/06/2016 - 31/05/2019
Project Topic	REFLECTIVE-1-2014
Network	HERA JRP UP
Call	HERA Call “Uses of the Past”

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	University "La Sapienza", Rome	Coordinator	Italy
2	Leiden University	Partner	Netherlands
3	Departamento de Filología Clásica Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Universidad Autónoma de Madrid	Partner	Spain
4	Ghent University	Partner	Belgium
5	Università per Stranieri di Siena	Partner	Italy
6	Università del Salento	Observer	Italy
7	Nederlands Klassiek Verbond	Observer	Netherlands
8	Orientaal	Observer	Belgium
9	Panhellenic Association of Cappadocian Unions	Observer	Greece
10	Allard Pierson Museum	Observer	Netherlands
11	Centre for the Greek Language	Observer	Greece
12	Foundation Hardt	Observer	Switzerland
13	Fundación Pastor de Estudios Clásicos	Observer	Spain
14	AICC	Observer	Italy
15	Instituto Statale di Istruzione Superiore	Observer	Italy
16	Liceo Classico Galileo Galilei	Observer	Italy
17	Oxfam	Observer	United Kingdom