I wonder if there is a rationale for this particularly strange selection of languages. They propose, for example, Irish (Gaelic), which is the native language of about 80.000 european citizens and is understood by about a million. Yet they do not propose Catalan, which is the native language of 4.1 million and understood by about ten million.
As a staunch partisan for the unity of the EU, and native Catalan speaker, I cannot but feel dismay about this continuous lack of tact from my institutions. I know this is due to ignorance more than malice, but it really looks as if the institutions are purposely shadowing our very existence.
I think they're just going with the list of official EU languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...). That list does not, unfortunately, include Catalan, even though the Spanish government pushed for adding it to the list (along with Galician and Basque).
The press release[1] has contact information for several people involved with the project. Perhaps you could offer to translate the course into Catalan. It doesn't hurt to ask. If you feel really strongly it should be offered in your native language you could also just do the entire translation and then contact them. Once you've put in all the effort it will be much harder for them to say thanks but no thanks.
Ok, I can understand that it sucks that your language is excluded, but I think it would make way more sense to try to get your language recognized as an official eu language instead of critizising a finnish project for limiting their selection to official eu languages.
With that said, if catalan was added, would you actually use that instead of english for a course like this?
> it would make way more sense to try to get your language recognized as an official eu language instead of critizising a finnish project for limiting their selection to official eu languages
I agree 100% with this. My intention is not to criticize the organizers of this course that made a very reasonable choice. The problem here is the rather absurdl (in my view) selection of official EU language. It would make more sense to me to declare English the sole official language of the union. This would not favor any big country now that the UK is out.
> With that said, if catalan was added, would you actually use that instead of english for a course like this?
Of course! I use all my software localized into catalan, even vim! Now, for technical documentation it is rare to find much in my language, almost everything is in english only. If this (quite serious) course was translated I would be even happier to follow it (but I might do it anyway if it was english only, as I'm used to it).
This is the list of official EU languages, to which Irish (Gaelic) belongs, but not Catalan. Reading the article carefully reveals that they propose the course precisely in the official EU languages.
As a staunch partisan for the unity of the EU, and native Catalan speaker, I cannot but feel dismay about this continuous lack of tact from my institutions. I know this is due to ignorance more than malice, but it really looks as if the institutions are purposely shadowing our very existence.