Minority languages and media

Last week in class we talked about the minority languages in media. In the Basque Country the media in basque is limited because there aren’t so many speakers, tso for example on TV there are only two channels in basque and the programmation isn’t very wide. Most of the shows are sports and a few quizes. In my point of view, the problem is that the standarization of the language started only a couple of decads and people who speak basque commonly speak dialects so they don’t feel used to watch shows in standard basque. A good example for this is the success of huomour TV shows like Wazemank and Finlandia, which don’t use standard basque. In the writting press, there is only one newspaper in basque, Berria, the others have some articles or suplements in basque. Taking into account the number of basque speakers and the potential consumers of this media, the stadistis are favourable, but there is a long way to achieve a “normal” media.

In the case of calatan, the standarization started earlier, so the servide that media gives is better. The TV  programmation is wider and the written press variety is greater as the readers and TV consumers are more (catalan speakers are over 800.000 people). Besides, the offer they give in the internet is really good.

As the internet is the new media, this gives minority languages the possibility to take part in the communication world in an active way.