Minister for Education and for Heritage John Cortes recently attended the Multilingual Gibraltar event where the NGO presented each secondary and upper primary school, as well as Gibraltar College with a copy of the book ‘Gibraltarians and their language: 22 linguistic biographies’.

This was published by the University of Vigo and was launched at the Second Gibraltar International Conference which was hosted by this university last July. It consists of an anthology of linguistic biographies by contemporary Gibraltarians of different ages, in which they share their personal bilingual/multilingual journey. This publication was an initiative by Professor Elena Seoane and her research team in collaboration with internationally recognised Gibraltarian author Mark Sanchez.

In their presentation to local educators, Manuel Enriles and Dale Buttigieg of Multilingual Gibraltar highlighted the importance of addressing the ever-increasing problem of language loss among young Gibraltarians with the utmost urgency. It pointed out that if parents insist on only speaking English to their children, they will deprive them of the many advantages that older generations have enjoyed. These include enhanced cognitive ability, delaying the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s and improved career opportunities among many others. The crucial role that education plays in the fight against language loss was emphasised and schools were encouraged to keep multilingualism high on the agenda; to create a multilingual environment for their pupils, with communication between them and teachers not being limited exclusively to English, where possible; to introduce pupils to Gibraltarian literature in all three languages: Llanito, English and Spanish; to seek to  inform parents of the benefits of bringing their children up as multilinguals in order to provide them with the advantages that most children around the world have.

The Minister expressed his wholehearted support for the work being carried out by Multilingual Gibraltar and for the safeguarding of all languages in common use in Gibraltar. The association took the opportunity to publicly thank him for having stood by them since its inception, listening to and acting on its proposals, and particularly for recognising the importance of maintaining multilingualism alive and kicking in our community.  To mark this gratitude they fittingly presented the Minister with a coffee mug with the inscription “Life begins dehpue d’un kafelito”.