Minority language
A minority language is a language that is spoken by a minority of the population in a defined area (state, federal state, district) and that differs from the language of the majority .
Basics
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 5 November 1992 defines a minority language as a language that is used by a minority in a national territory , is different from the official language and is neither a dialect nor the language of immigrants. The Charter does not distinguish between minority and regional languages - scientifically, the former are often determined by ethnicity, the latter by regional distribution. In many cases, however, both distinguishing features overlap.
Definition problems
The definition of minority languages given by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is incomplete in many areas. The special situations of individual minority languages are not taken into account, for example the Irish language . The autochthonous sign languages of Europe were also not included in the list of the European Charter, although they also form minority languages.
The undifferentiated treatment of autochthonous (long-established) and allochthonous (non-indigenous) minority languages in common definitions is worthy of criticism. The criteria of ethnicity and regional distribution, on the other hand, are often used in an overly general sense. For example, ethnicity is a characteristic that is determined by both self and external perception.
Threats
Minority languages are often under pressure to adopt the majority language, which can often lead to language death via language drift . Since languages are part of cultural values and identities both of the individual speakers and of entire speaking communities, language death leads to great losses. The languages of politically less influential groups in particular, such as indigenous peoples , are threatened and require language protection (see also list of threatened languages ).
Examples
In Germany , North Frisian , Sater Frisian , Danish , Upper and Lower Sorbian and Romani fall under the definition of a minority language. The regional language is Low German , for example , which has also been recognized as a minority language since 1994. The Plautdietsch language is something strange , because on the one hand it is a variant of Low German , but on the other hand it is not a regional language.
In Austria , Burgenland-Croatian , Romani , Slovak , Slovenian , Czech and Hungarian are recognized as languages of autochthonous minorities. Hungarian, Slovenian and Burgenland-Croatian are the official regional languages in the respective main distribution area.
Among the minority languages, the sign languages, which have an official status in Switzerland and Austria, occupy a special position: they are not assigned to an ethnic minority, but to a group that falls under the status of disability . Regardless of this, the deaf each form an independent population group with an identity-creating linguistic tradition and culture.
See also
- Regional and minority languages in Europe
- European Charter: List of Protected Languages
- National language (high or standard language of a nationality)
literature
- Joachim Born, Sylvia Dickgießer: German-speaking minorities - an overview of the state of research for 27 countries. Institute for the German Language on behalf of the Foreign Office, Mannheim 1989, ISBN 3-922641-39-3 (research report on German as a minority language).
- Jan Wirrer (Ed.): Minority and regional languages in Europe. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 2000, ISBN 3-525-26535-2 ( online at Digi20).
Web links
- Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN): Homepage.
- Council of Europe in Strasbourg: Reservations and Declarations for Treaty No.148 - European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jan Wirrer (Ed.): Minority and regional languages in Europe. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 2000, ISBN 3-525-26535-2 , p. 8 ( side view at Digi20).