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Bilingual nations in Europe
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Styrbiorn View Drop Down
Caliph
Caliph


Joined: 04-Aug-2004
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Posts: 2810 		  Quote Styrbiorn Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Bilingual nations in Europe
    Posted: 02-Nov-2006 at 05:06
I guessed that, just clarifying to the others. :)
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Consul
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Joined: 29-Sep-2006
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Posts: 353 		  Quote Joinville Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Nov-2006 at 09:56
Sweden:
 
Official language:
Swedish
 
Languages with special status:
Finnish, Menkieli (the special Finnish language spoken in the Torne river valley), Sami, Romani, Chib and Yiddish.
 
The three first are recognised as being geographically tied to Sweden and have stronger protection than the three latter, with no specific geographical ties to Sweden.
 
Then there's things like lvdalska, which can be classified as a "dialect" but is more like very oldfashined Scandinavian.
The dialect of the island of Gotland is linguistically different enough from standard Swedish that it could warrant being labeled a separate language.
And my girl-friend is from Pite way up north and had to learn Swedish to go to school. At home she was speaking the local dialect, of which I literally do not understand one word, and it's still a Swedish dialect.
One must not insult the future.
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Consul
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Posts: 353 		  Quote Joinville Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Nov-2006 at 10:04

Are we talking about contries with more than one official language, or about what languages were/are spoken in various contries?

All European contries contain lingustic minorities. The official language is usually just the biggest one, and historically it was decided to make it the exclusive administratibe language at about the same time in the 16th c.
 
Henry VIII made sure English was to be used in the administration of his realm. Too bad for the Welsh, especially as they saw the Tudors as "theirs" ("Tudor" was originally the Welsh "Tewdwr").
 
The same thing happened when French became the exclusive administrative language of France at about the same time.
 
In 16th c. France was spoken AT LEAST French, Basque, Catalan, Occitan, Gascon, Lorrainian (German dialect), Italian and Breton. Most of them still are, more or less.
 
The situation was pretty similar in most other countries at the time.
One must not insult the future.
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