Irish and Ulster Scots in council’s language plan

A NEW five-year language strategy to make Belfast a more inclusive city has been launched.

With more than 70 languages now spoken in Belfast, the city council has committed to developing and delivering a strategic approach to language diversity in line with the aims of the city’s long-term development plan, the Belfast Agenda.

The strategy, which will run until 2023, follows public consultation with stakeholders including the many communities themselves.

Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister, who launched the strategy yesterday, said: “Linguistic diversity is just one of many factors which impact on achieving the aims of the Belfast Agenda, our long-term development plan for the city.

“This has four pillars to support inclusive growth — Growing the Economy; Living Here; City Development and Working and Learning. The language strategy is part of that inclusive work — it establishes a transparent set of principles for promoting, protecting and enhancing the linguistic diversity of the city.”

She added: “The strategy develops five work strands promoting Irish Language; Ulster-Scots; Sign Language; New Communities Languages and Languages and Communications for disabled people.”