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rfmcdonaldI recently came across a recent article (in English) from Deutsche Welle that made reference to a recent push by German conservatives to enfranchise the German language as the official language of the Federal Republic.
The article goes on to suggest that this push has multiple motivations, with German's enfranchisement being seen alternatively as a vehicle for social inclusion and as a tool to be used against unpopular non-Germanophone immigrant minorities like the Turks, with concern over excessive influences from English on German vocabulary complicating the matter.
One thing that interests me is the emphasis placed on the German language's decline. There has been a catastrophic disappearance of mother-tongue speakers of German east of Germany and Austria, the disappearance German minorities in central and eastern Europe occurring as a consequence of the post-Second World War expulsions and a citizenship law that granted the ethnic Germans remaining in the region (and East Germans, too) automatic citizenship in the then-West Germany, while most of the countries once in the German sphere of cultural influence ended up falling in the sphere of the Russian language during the Cold War and then in the sphere of the English language afterwards. I wonder what this debate would look like--if this debate would exist at all--if speakers of German weren't concentrated in Germany (and its southern neighbours of Austria and Switzerland, to be sure).
[M]embers of Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) [. . .] at their recent party conference in Stuttgart[, o]verwhelmingly[. . .] approved a resolution -- despite Merkel's reservations -- calling on the German parliament to enshrine the German language in the constitution.
Article 22 of the constitution already states that the nation's capital shall be Berlin, and the flag shall be black, red and gold, but hitherto has made no reference to the German language.
That will change if the CDU's proposal wins approval in parliament and the sentence, "The language of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be German," is incorporated in the constitution.
[. . .]
German has never been a very popular language, despite the efforts of its classic writers Goethe and Schiller.
Its popularity plummeted after two world wars, but in the early 1990s German enjoyed a temporary renaissance after German reunification.
Of the 20 million people learning German around the world, two-thirds of them were in Eastern Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union.
In Poland, the number of German students tripled from 500,000 in 1988 to 1.5 million by 1994.
Now, however, interest in learning German is down. In Britain, the number of students studying German has been on the wane for years.
The article goes on to suggest that this push has multiple motivations, with German's enfranchisement being seen alternatively as a vehicle for social inclusion and as a tool to be used against unpopular non-Germanophone immigrant minorities like the Turks, with concern over excessive influences from English on German vocabulary complicating the matter.
One thing that interests me is the emphasis placed on the German language's decline. There has been a catastrophic disappearance of mother-tongue speakers of German east of Germany and Austria, the disappearance German minorities in central and eastern Europe occurring as a consequence of the post-Second World War expulsions and a citizenship law that granted the ethnic Germans remaining in the region (and East Germans, too) automatic citizenship in the then-West Germany, while most of the countries once in the German sphere of cultural influence ended up falling in the sphere of the Russian language during the Cold War and then in the sphere of the English language afterwards. I wonder what this debate would look like--if this debate would exist at all--if speakers of German weren't concentrated in Germany (and its southern neighbours of Austria and Switzerland, to be sure).
