--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > Unfortunately, that ideology might be what upholds the group of
> > the proponent in question, and giving up the belief will make it
> > crash. Look what happened in the socialist block after they gave
> > up the doctrine. It's all more complicated than you would like to
> > believe. Linguistics is a dangerous thing. Most East European
> > nations owe their existence to it.
> >
>
> Could you please explain what you mean by saying that most East
> European nations owe their existence to linguistics? I have always
> understood linguistics to mean the study of language -- how can that
> figure in the history of East European languages? Obviously you are
> referring to something else such as linguistic identity perhaps, but
> I can't figure out what you mean. Could you explain?
Most of the present nations of Eastern Europe were created as states
in the Treaty of Versailles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
and associated treaties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon
cf. the section on the 'Dissolution of the Empire in 1918' in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary
But the idea that these linguistic minorities in Germany,
Austria-Hungary (also known as the Hapsburg Empire in the
English-speaking world) and Russia (but not in France and Britain!)
were entitled to have each an independent nation was an idea born of
Romanticism.
Sociologically, it's a long and complicated story, for details in
linguistics read Holger Pedersen: Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth
Century: Methods and Results is invaluable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holger_Pedersen_(linguist)
Now the linguistic history of a language is of course inextricably
linked to the history of the people who speak that language, and once
people (or its elite) start to identify with that history you have a
threat to the underlying social contract of the land in which that
people is situated: why should we follow their rules, if their rule
has been imposed on us by conquest? So: conflict.
In other words, if Germany and Austria-Hungary had won WWI, Central
and Eastern Europe would now be German-speaking, and the Estonian,
Latvian, Lithuanian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Croatian, Slovenian etc
languages would be rural minority languages facing the same fate as
today faces Lusatian, Byelorussian, Breton, Irish, Livonian, Danish in
Southern Schleswig etc: oblivion.
Torsten