LL-L "Language politics" 2010.05.13 (05) [DE-EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 13 May 2010 - Volume 05
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From: Helge Tietz <helgetietz at yahoo.com>

Subject: Language politics



I just read the following in the German magazin Der Spiegel:

.... sagte Tillich und forderte als Alternative..........."inhaltliche
Ziele" wie "die Schulabbrecherquote verringern oder flächendeckende
Sprachtests vor der Einschulung einführen

meaning in English:

Mr. Tillich (Prime Minister of the East German federal sate of Saxony,
however, I prefer the term "Upper Saxony" here in order to avoid confusion
with the Saxons and Low Saxon because the Upper Saxons speak a middle German
dialect which has nothing to do with Low Saxon) has demanded as an
alternative.......content relevant aims such as reducing the number of
students leaving school without a degree or general language tests for
children before they start school".

If the latter would become state policy it would clearly mean that children
when aged 6 are expected to speak fluent and faultless High-German which
effectively would also mean the final nail in the casket of the recognized
minority and regional languages Frisian, Low Saxon and Sorbian and probably
also of East Limburgian, Allemannic, Bavarian etc. The irony here is that
Tillich himself is Sorbian and speaks Sorbian as a native speaker and
probably had failed the language test he now demands when he was six years
old. It also means that I do not need to consider to ever send my little boy
to a German school because he will be raised in Dutch and Low Saxon (with
perhaps some Danish) so he will clearly fail any language test if it comes
to that in Germany. Fair enough, I am anyway not planning to have my little
boy educated in the German school system, so if they think that a linguistic
absolutely uniform country is a great educational advantage, please go
ahead. However, I cannot see multilingual Luxembourg, Switzerland or
Catalonia doing worse than Germany when it comes to education, rather the
other way around...

Groeten,
Helge



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