Vera Ferreira, Peter Bouda

Europe is a continent with low linguistic diversity and the number of minority and endangered languages is reduced in comparison to other parts of the world. Consequently, Europe is not in the focus of the researchers working on language documentation. Apart from some “major” minority languages in Europe (Catalan, Galician, Breton, Welsh, Basque, etc.), several of the European endangered languages are not known in detail (even in the academia) or documented in a concise and comprehensive way. Primary data on these languages, reflecting their everyday use, is almost non-existent. Moreover, the linguistic diversity in Europe is also unknown to the general public. In this sense and in order to raise awareness of minority and endangered languages in Europe and to foster the dialog between researchers working on European endangered languages and on language documentation all over the world, CIDLeS – Interdisciplinary Centre for Social and Language Documentation (http://www.cidles.eu/) organized in October 2013 a two-day conference titled Endangered Languages in Europe (ELE 2013). ELE 2013 aimed to provide an interdisciplinary forum in which scholars from language documentation, language technology, and experts on European endangered languages could exchange ideas and techniques on language documentation, archiving, and revitalization; to further methodological discussions and collaborative research into linguistic diversity in Europe; and to reflect on language policy issues.