Multilingual Gibraltar has issued a statement congratulating the Government of Gibraltar for being "so forward thinking in their approach" to the preservation of multilingualism in the community. 

A statement from Multilingual Gibraltar follows below:

Multilingual Gibraltar congratulates the Government of Gibraltar for being so forward thinking in their approach to the preservation of multilingualism in our community. 

A spokesperson for the association said, ‘we are absolutely delighted with the results of this joint venture between our association and the Ministry for Heritage. It represents a clear declaration of intent by the Government to  preserve and promote our unique multilingual heritage as pledged in their manifesto commitments.’

According to Multilingual Gibraltar, this is a further step in normalising our very own multilingual identity, which not only makes us unique, but also affords us the advantages that speaking more than one language provides. Anyone who may visit Morocco can not avoid but notice its multilingual identity from the moment they set foot in the country as immediately they will come across multilingual signs in Arabic, Amazigh and French. You will also be met with bilingual signs, within the United Kingdom, in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland as these nations take pride in their linguistic heritage. The local charity notes that the overall reaction from Gibraltarians has been overwhelmingly positive as is reflected by the number of people who support the work that they are carrying out and have welcomed this as a very positive initiative. A spokesperson for the organisation comments, ‘this is hardly surprising as all surveys that have been conducted by different institutions and multiple researchers show massive support for preserving Llanito, which its speakers consider to be an integral part of Gibraltarian identity. Inevitably there will be those who do not agree, and while respecting their right to express their opinion, our association will strongly condemn any attempt to deny the linguistic identity of the majority of our community. We already suffered linguistic discrimination for decades when we were not allowed to express ourselves in Llanito in school at a time when we were under colonial rule. We would certainly not expect to suffer any further linguistic discrimination this day and age in a modern Gibraltar with the sufficient level of autonomy to stand up for who we are.’

The heritage street names compliment the fabulous work that has been and continues to be done in preserving the built environment by successive administrations, the Gibraltar Heritage Trust and other entities. Multilingual Gibraltar believes that as stewards of Gibraltar’s heritage the local community has the responsibility to educate future generations of Gibraltarians about it and hand it down to them. This obviously includes our languages. By recovering the names of streets which were used by previous generations of Gibraltarians and making them accessible to present and future generations we are preserving an aspect of our intangible heritage, and in this way avoiding them being forgotten forever. There are many street names that Gibraltarians used exclusively before 1870 when English street names were introduced for the first time. Some people might want to reject these names because they have never heard them and they no longer exist in the collective memory. However, these names were used on a daily basis by our Gibraltarian British ancestors and this did not make them any less British. In fact, languages have no frontiers nor are necessarily exclusive to a particular nationality. If they were, then all speakers of English in the world would be English nationals, including those from the United States, Canada, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Australia and Gibraltar among others. So suggesting that embracing and promoting our  very own language, Llanito/Yanito, which, by the way, is the language that along with English  is used by the majority of the local inhabitants of the Rock in everyday life, makes us less British is utterly ludicrous.

Multilingual Gibraltar as an apolitical organisation strongly rejects any politicisation of language. We believe in equipping our younger and future generations in the best way possible for a modern globalised world where bilingualism and multilingualism are by far the predominant linguistic models. At present we are heading in the completely opposite direction, going from a multilingual society towards a monolingual one and in this way making our children and grandchildren linguistically disadvantaged, denying them the benefits that we enjoy from being multilingual. We are already the odd ones out in that the older generations speak more languages than the younger ones. In most of the world the contrary is true, because parents, politicians, educationalists and employers value the advantages provided by multilingualism, so they ensure that their children possess the necessary language skills to compete in the twenty-first century. For instance in countries like Luxembourg the norm is that children speak at least four or five languages. We surely do not want our children to be the odd ones out?

We applaud the Government of Gibraltar for having the foresight to acknowledge the importance of maintaining and promoting our multilingual culture and identity, as well as the courage to  rise above any politically motivated criticism that may come their way either locally or from beyond our borders. There is still a long way to go in order to reverse the tide of monolingualism, but Multilingual Gibraltar is optimistic that if we work together as a community we are still in time to succeed