Open Access

Heiko F. Marten, Sanita Martena

• This introduction provides the theoretical context of the Special Issue on Literacy Development in Regional Collateral Languages of Europe and an overview of the papers in the collection. For this end, it first discusses contemporary perceptions of the terms ‘literacy’ and ‘literacies’. These go far beyond traditional understandings, even though expressing one's thoughts through writing texts and meaning-making through reading are still at the core of literacies. Then, readers are introduced to the concept and the ideological contexts of ‘regional collateral languages’: These are varieties which are, on the one hand, structurally and ideologically closely related, or ‘collateral’, to major languages, often the main languages of nation states. On the other hand, they are deeply rooted in their regions; the paper therefore argues that they deserve specific attention along the lines of other efforts to maintain and develop autochthonous varieties. Finally, the introduction summarises the papers which focus on Scots in Scotland, Low German in Germany, Csángo in Romania, Silesian, Masurian, and Kashubian in Poland, Võro in Estonian, and Latgalian in Latvia, before identifying common denominators of the case studies and possible topics for future research.