Ideas For the Future

Currently 99% of everything Friulans read, hear on the radio or watch on TV is in Italian. It is necessary to give people more content in Friulan. I’m not taking about poetry and great literary works. The truth is most people don’t read these things in any language. What is necessary is daily newspapers, entertainment magazines, soap operas, sports programs, comics etc.. Things that people will read not because they love Friulan but for entertainment, the same reason they read or watch things in any language.

It is necessary for young Friulan journalists to make an attempt at these things. Once the first successful venture is done others will see that the task is not impossible. Toronto has a population of 3 million but supports 3 daily English newspapers as well as daily newspapers in Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese and Korean. If you look at weeklies there are probably over 100 newspapers. All of these serve communities smaller that the population of Friuli.

Friulan must be introduced into the schools. First of all to give more prestige to the language. Second of all to create a literate population that will read the books, newspapers and magazines mentioned above. We currently have few readers with not much to read. An increase in one will increase the other. I am not advocating that all schooling be done in Friulan however we can start with 3 to 5 hours per week and expand from that. In Toronto we have French which is mandatory in elementary school. Also we have a heritage language program where the languages of immigrants are taught for free by the government after school or on Saturdays. Over 20 languages are offered, depending on demand in a given are, these languages include, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Serbo/Croatian, Chinese, Korean and a few East Indian languages. If this much consideration is given to many small groups of recent immigrants is it too much to ask the same for Friulans who have been in Friuli for hundreds of years.

If we started teaching Friulan children to read and write starting today it will take 40 years before all adults can read and write their own language. If possible a short booklet (10-20 pages) should be produced that will teach people who can speak Friulan and read Italian how to read Friulan. This should be as simple as possible so as not to intimidate casual readers. This could be distributed free to all households across Friuli.

Each parish, by a vote by parishioners, should decide whether they want masses in Friulan or Italian.

Andrew Cosolo