Now, in Belgium there’s Flanders (Dutch speaking), Wallonia (French speaking) and the Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft Belgiens (which never joined Germany and is actually a very small part of Belgium). In Belgium there’s still a strong seperation between Dutch speaking and French speaking communities, marked by it’s borders.

Your comments about the Yiddish speakers being persecuted in Israel makes sense to me. In my research for this post I read that there were rumors of a bomb being placed at a meeting held in Yiddish. The rumors part seemed sketchy to me so I used the word “sometimes” just to be on the safe side. I was still a little doubtful. The line from the 2005 movie “Munich” that said, “How do you think we got the land in the first place? By being nice?” was ringing in my ears. Again, it’s obvious that you’ve read up on this subject. Thanks for sharing.

First off, Yiddish is in no way a dialect of German; only about 70% of Yiddish words have their source in German, much lower than the say 90% mutual comprehensibility between danish and swedish.

In addition, the Jews of eastern europe were not a “defeated minority”; they were a large minority and well-integrated into eastern european culture and society. Of course, the spectre of anti-semitism did hang over the Ashkenazi community (see chelminicki, the shoah).

In reality, the primary reason that Hebrew was chosen to be the official language of Israel was the fact that all Jews knew it (or had basic knowledge of it), as opposed to the 1/3 of Jews who did not speak Yiddish. Another important factor is the fact that the Jews of mandate palestine (who were overwhelmingly from Eastern Europe) wanted to create a new Jew; ashekanzim (and by extension, their language) were seen as being weak, and more importatly, too religious.

Could have been for other reasons though.

Another interesting question is whether the history of Israel would have been different if they had chosen Yiddish instead of Hebrew. For so many reasons, I think the answer is clearly yes. And the same is true for other language decisions in other countries.

TEFLtastic blog- http://www.tefl.net/alexcase

Travis: It’s true, Hispanics will not “take over” the USA for a variety of reasons, one being that they usually integrate after the first generation. I’m sure you had some other ideas though. Care to expound?

Otherwise, a great read covering an impressive amount of the world. As your examples suggest, all kinds of things could happen in the US, languages do matter, and government policy can have a huge effect- in fact, it is the main difference between a dialect and a language

Some other random points:

Were the pre-unification Spanish states (self) defined as countries, or like the French did they have an idea that they belonged to a larger country that just hadn’t come together yet? (genuine question)

In Born to Kvetch, the author suggests that Yiddish could never be the language of Israel because everything about it reflected the mentality of a defeated minority. I know nothing about this subject, but interesting theory.

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase

It’s late and there is plenty I could (and will, later) say about the topic broached in the final paragraphs. But to answer the last question: Yes, it is silly for Americans to think that Hispanics are taking over their country.

Y punto.