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Supermarkets in the UK should take a leaf out of the language policy book of the Basque supermarket chain, Eroski, according to the General Secretary of the Celtic League.
Labels on Eroski's own supermarket products are written in four different languages – Basque, Galician, Catalan and Spanish – compared to English-owned supermarket giants who label their products only in English when sold in the Celtic countries.
In the Celtic countries private enterprise is largely excluded from bilingual language legislation and many companies argue that it would be too expensive to implement. However, Eroski supermarket continues to expand throughout Spain (and now France) and is well known for its competitive prices.
In addition since 1988 Canada has implemented bilingual - French and English - language legislation in all provinces, which includes private enterprise, despite the fact that the country is largely monolingual.
This demonstrates that there is no excuse for English owned supermarket giants like Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and others to label their own products in English only when sold in the Celtic countries. Of course language legislation, enforcing private companies to develop a bilingual policy would be the best way to ensure equal rights for Celtic language users.
Letters have been sent to the Managing Directors of Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda, suggesting that they reconsider their current language policy, an example of which can be found below.
"Dear
Language Policy
I am writing to you to draw your attention to what we see to be to be the good practise of an expanding Basque supermarket chain that has outlets throughout Spain and France. The company in question is Eroski and we want to recommend its language policy to you as an example that Tesco could follow.
All of Eroski's own labelled products are written in the four languages of Basque, Catalan, Galician and Spanish even in those territories where they are not the official languages. The Tesco supermarket chain has many hundreds of stores throughout the Celtic counties of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Isle of Mann, Scotland and Wales and we believe that labelling your own products in the language of the respective nation, when sold in one of these countries, would also prove that Tesco is committed to good language policy.
Eroski is well known for its competitive prices and between 2000 and 2004 it saw an increase in profits from 70 to 129 million Euros. We therefore do not think that by adopting a bilingual/multilingual language policy would adversely affect your profit margin.
Neither do we think that it is a good enough reason to argue that because the languages of the Celtic countries are spoken by a minority of people that your company should only use the English language on product labels. Since 1988 Canadian language legislation has meant that French and English has equal legal status, despite the fact that Canada is a largely monolingual English speaking country.
We therefore urge you to consider the example set down by Eroski and revise your language policy with regard to the labelling of your own products when sold in the Celtic countries. All of the Celtic languages(with the exception of Brittany) are official Government recognised languages and so by adopting a more accommodating language policy would merely be a sign that you respect the language rights of these different language communities to whom you sell your goods.
We would be interested to hearing from you with your views on this.
Yours sincerely
Rhisiart Tal-e-bot
General Secretary Celtic League"
Responses to Rhisiart's appeal to the supermarkets will be published on Celtic News in due course.
J B Moffatt Director of Information Celtic League
15/05/07
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