Non-State Minority, Regional and Unrecognized Languages, and Written Dialects in Central Europe, Nineteenth Through Twenty-First Centuries pp. 93-99. In: Kamusella, Tomasz. Words in Space and Time: A Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe. 2021 CEU Press (original) (raw)

Non-State Minority, Regional and Unrecognized Languages, and Written Dialects in Central Europe, Nineteenth Through Twenty-First Centuries pp. 93-99. In: Kamusella, Tomasz. Words in Space and Time: A Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe. 1 ed. Central European University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7829/9789633864180 It is often remarked that in Europe there are very few languages in comparison to other parts of the world per a unit of territory or population, be it sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, or Central and South America. However, this conclusion does not stem from dispassionate observation and analysis of the sociolinguistic reality on the ground. The perceived paucity of languages in Europe and their multitude elsewhere is caused by the application of two different sets of observation and analysis guidelines in the case of Europe and the rest of the world. What is counted in Europe is predominantly the standardized languages, officially endowed with the status of state or national languages. The “other languages” are brushed aside as mere dialects, jargons, tongues, vernaculars, idioms, kitchen gab, village talk, or other unbecoming mixed speech. From this hardly realized or commented on, and highly normative perspective, in Europe a language is not seen as a language (Einzelsprache) unless it is recognized by a state as official, and widely employed for writing, publishing, administration and education. On the contrary, the European and other Western explorers and scholars doing research in the colonies and non-European territories chose to see, through the lens of anthropology, a multiplicity of languages. Basically, whenever they identify an ethnic group, they deem their speech a language. This tendency has been reinforced by Christian missionaries who, before decolonization, ensured a modicum of education and local administration in colonies, apart from affording useful legitimation for a myriad of colonial conquests and projects. Missions multiplied, as each (Western) Christian Church or denomination wanted to carve out a “spiritual share” for itself in the field of evangelization. They were driven, as some still are, by the millennial compulsion to spread the Gospel by making it available in all the world’s languages. The assumption was, and still remains, that every single person needs to have learned about Jesus through the medium of their language before the