What are the minority language policies in your country?

Italy tires since 30 years to erase french from val d'Aoste, separated Trieste and Gorizio from the sloven unity, and tries to erase german in italina Tyrol and you want to tell us France is only ipocrite. Make pressure on Venetie Frioul, San Marino...

Before to speak, you should ask what you are talking about


Tiffany, you are stupid!

especially with a fascist like Berlusconi, I agree Giani.

Romans have been the 1st to erase languages in Europe. So Tiffany, WHY DON'T YOU KNOW HISTORY?!

<<I do not know what the policies in Germany are, but they do have a sizeable minority of Sorbians in the East, who speak two West Slavic languages. In the past, they were the target of ferocious Germanization. I believe this must have changed now.>>

As I know, the Sorbians are the last remnant of the former Slavic population on East German soil (in the Middle Ages, the whole of the territory east of the river Elbe was Slavic: Polabians, Obodrites, etc.). As for its sizeability, this ethnic group comprises several tens of thousands of people, on the whole around 60 000, and their language has two distinct dialects: Upper and Lower Sorbian. Here is what i have found about them (about midway of the webpage below):
http://www.germanlife.com/Archives/2002/0208-01.html

By the way, talking about minority rights, I think most if not all countries with an exemplary minority policy have a rather small percentage of minorities (like the Scandinavian ones), more sizeable minorities have always had to fight hard to resist assimilating tendencies (France and some East European countries provide good examples for this, although even in the latter the situation is slowly changing, for example in Romania). The only real counter-example I know of is Spain, it still may not be ideal, but as I know, minority languages there are official in the autonomous provinces where they are spoken by a majority of the population (Catalan for one certainly is).

Judging from the above posts, Italy and Greece should perhaps be included along with France as counter-examples of what should be "good" minority policies.

By the way, I don't see anything in Tiffany's post which would justify calling her "stupid". She only mentioned France as an example. It is also possible to express disagreement in more civilised ways.

Yes she indirectly showed Italy as an example of justice for different minorities language. This is wrong!

Swiss is a good example

Dear Easterner,
Catalan is official in Spain in three autonomous regions: Catalonia (75% speak Catalan), Valencian Autonomy (55% speak Catalan also known as Valencian in this region, and the Balearic Islands (75% speak Catalan). Catalan is also spoken in a long strip near the Catalan border in Aragon and it is expected to be official there, within the near future, although it already is in some districts. Catalan is also spoken in a small valley in the province of Murcia where it is not official although students often go to school in the neigbouring Valencian district in the province of Alacant (Alicante). We have two television channels in Catalan in Catalonia and 2 in the Valencian Autonomy (one of them is 50% Spanish). There will also be a Balearic Catalan Television in 2005 in the islands. We can all see these channels in the Catalan territory and there are small differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. There are also radio stations and papers in Catalan and we produce 10.000 books per year.
Basque is official in the Basque Country (perhaps 30% of the population speak Basque and growing in the younger generations) and also parts of the Autonomy of Navarre where Basque is spoken in the north of the region with sizeable minorities around Pamplona, the capital city.
Galician, closely related to Portuguese is official in Galicia and is spoken by more than 75% of the population.
Occitan is spoken in one small Catalan valley on the Spanish side, known as "Val d'Aran" with about 10.000 speakers. It is the only place in the Occitan area where Catalan is official, together with Catalan and Spanish.
Things are still far from where they should be but it does prove your point. 40% of the Spanish population live in bilingual-regions where the native language of the territory is co-official next to Spanish. Nevertheless, Castilian-Spanish is currently the only official language for all the state and the language used in Parliament although there is a project for MP, especially in the Senate, to be able to use their territorial languages.
I imagine some of my French friends must be thinking we've gone crazy but I can assure you we haven't. There are, of course, conservative circles in Spain who are against this but it would be impossible, right now, to go back to the situation of full denial that existed during the Franco regime. Catalan was also an official language during the II Spanish Republic in the 1930s. and was banned by Spanish fascism.

What I meant is that the Val d'Aran is the only place in the Occitan-speaking world where Occitan is official since it isn't official at all in France or the Italian valleys in the Alps where it is spoken.
Catalan is obviously the only official language of a small sovereign State known as Andorra and when Andorra entered the United Nations the speech was exclusively done in Catalan and spoke of the area where Catalan is spoken from Salses to the north of Perpinyà (Perpignan in French) to Guardamar to the south of Alacant (Alicante), 600 km. south of Barcelona although the Catalan language never goes more than 150 kms. inland.

Easterner... in the interest of fairness, I think Canada has a very good minority language policy and the French population here is not small.

Of course I meant that in general, and I was speaking mainly about Europe, where large minority groups are often regarded as a threat, or power conflicts are very common between various ethnic groups living within one country (as in Belgium or some East European countries). I am aware that the situation is completely different in Canada due to historical reasons, as it is in Switzerland, which latter country follows a policy of "positive discrimination for the local linguistic majority". This means, for example, that if you happen to be a German living in a French-speaking area, your children can be educated in French only, unless you decide to send them to a school in a German-speaking area, perhaps further away, even if the absolute majority of Swiss are German-speaking.

By the way, as I know, even if French and English are official languages in Canada, the use of English tends to be discouraged in Québec.

Giani: "Yes she indirectly showed Italy as an example of justice for different minorities language. This is wrong!"

Really how? I am American. I merely speak Italian. I never mentioned Italy's policy on minority languages, simply because I don't know it. If it is as you say, then shame on Italy.

Would you like me to say this in Italian?

I almost forgot to thank you Easterner

Alec Bald - "Romans have been the 1st to erase languages in Europe. So Tiffany, WHY DON'T YOU KNOW HISTORY?!"

Why are both of you acting as though I mentioned Italy (or the Romans) anywhere? As I recall, the only nation I mentioned was France.

We have a saying about the word "assume" in English. Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.