«Parellaes». Programa d'intercanvi lingüístic entre dues llengües minoritzades

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present the program Parellaes, a language exchange program between Catalan and Galician carried out by the Department of Catalan Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela since 2009. Aimed to Galician students who want to learn or improve Catalan and Catalan students who want to learn or improve Galician, Parellaes is a program which not only works the linguistic aspect of exchange: practicing and improving Catalan or Galician, but also the sociocultural: discovering the cultural and sociolinguistic reality of Catalan and Galician lands and to comprehend in this way the minoritized situation that both languages share. The elements of promotion, formation, support and evaluation of the program will be explained from our own experience, together with the challenges to which we have to confront in order to make possible the exchange. All this, without underestimating the testimony of the linguistic pairs of these recent years, which are the authentic protagonists of this formative modality and real responsible of the linguistic tandem.