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From: =James Birkholz= <>
Subject: [POSEN-L] Minority languages in modern Germany (Article)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 20:15:24 -0500

This may be of interest to many subscribers....

James Birkholz, list manager


WITH NEW YEAR, NEW PROTECTIONS FOR GERMANY'S MINORITY LANGUAGES

Five languages used by minority communities in the far corners of Germany got a
new lease on life when the Council of Europe's convention on the protection of
minority languages went into effect New Year's Day. Signed by the Kohl
government in late 1992, the treaty obliges Bonn to protect and promote the use
of Sorbic, Danish, Frisian, Low German and Romany within Germany's borders.
Language experts say the convention will affect at least 150,000 German
citizens. Some 50,000 people in the states of Saxony and Brandenburg speak
Sorbic, a Slavic language that has been used in the region for centuries.
Northern Germany boasts about 20,000 Danish speakers, while thousands of
Germans in the northern states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein speak
Frisian, a Germanic language closely related to English. The area is also home
to several hundred thousand speakers of Plattdeutsch, or Low German. While
programs supporting Sorbic and Danish have been in place for decades, Frisian
and Low German will be getting an official leg up for the first time. Romany,
the Indo-Iranian language of the Sinti and Roma, will also be enjoying its
first official boost from German authorities. The language is spoken by an
estimated 70,000 citizens, primarily in the industrial areas along the Rhine,
the Ruhr and the Main.
The convention on the protection of minority languages calls for specific
changes in cultural policy, public administration, education, and business
practices, but the form of support will vary with each language community. In
Frisian-speaking areas in Schleswig-Holstein, for example, bilingual road signs
are to be installed. Depending on the population density of minority language
speakers in a given region, the minority language may also get taught in public
schools, broadcast in television programs, or used in official documents
alongside German. In the case of Romany, which is specific to an ethnic group
rather than a region, supportive measures will need to take a different form,
and the Federal Ministry of the Interior has organized a conference to explore
the needs of this language group. "The promotion of Romany is difficult,
because the population is fragmented and not concentrated in any geographic
area," a ministry spokesperson explained to the German Press Agency (dpa). The
convention, the spokesperson added, applies only to Sinti and Roma with German
citizenship.
Since the convention covers only what it terms regional languages, not dialects
or immigrant tongues, the ministry has had to call on linguists to determine
which languages fit that description. Some officials were surprised to learn
that Frisian and Low German could be added to the list. "We used to think Platt
was a kind of dialect, but it's actually a separate language that developed
independent of High German," explains one language specialist. "In the
Hanseatic period of the 14th century, Platt was the language of trade on the
North Sea and Baltic coasts." By preserving Plattdeutsch and other minority
languages, the convention promises to fight language-based discrimination and
promote cultural richness throughout participating nations.

From:

THE WEEK IN GERMANY
German Information Center
871 United Nations Plaza, New York NY 10017

Editors: David Lazar, Margaret Dornfeld
Date: January 8, 1999

A mailing from
"German News (English Language)" <>

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