LL-L "Language politics" 2010.09.24 (04) [EN]

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*L O W L A N D S - L - 24 September 2010 - Volume 04
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>

Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2010.09.24 (01) [EN]



From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>

Subject: LL-L "Language learning"

You wrote:

Sarrazin wrote a book about how the Germans will go extinct if they don't do
anything about it ("Deutschland schafft sich ab"). He had nice populistic
theses like "I do not want to excuse myself for being German", "German must
be spoken on German schoolyards", "too much young resident aliens are
criminal", "lock away child molesters forever" etc., and in interviews he
offered nice wisdoms with enormous scientific depth like "all Jews share a
gene"


Sarrazin's family name doesn't make himself sound über-German: < Saracens.
Always happens with the "last who got in"...they seem to have these "Après
moi, le déluge" feelings more than any other.


Boundary value problem for human geographers.


Sarrazin has Huguenot roots. That means his family is in Germany for more
than 300 years. And if you would confront him with his foreign roots he'd
take it as acknowledgement of his arguments ;-) He's not an outright racist.
He's more focused on culture like "assimilate or stay away from Germany".
(Although he sometimes resorts to arguments that are hard to interpret in a
non-racist way.) So he'd take his own French (and possible Saracen) roots as
a positive story of assimilation (the euphemism "integration" is used when
"assimilation" is meant in Germany's public discussion).

Interestingly enough Sarrazin is a member of SPD, the Social Democratic
Party, not CDU, the Christian Democratic Union and more conservative party,
or any of the right-wing parties.

The discussions around Sarrazin are also interesting in another respect: the
total ignorance of the German public for their autochthonous minorities. You
would think that in a nation-wide discussion about language, culture and
integration the perspective of the native minorities like Sorbians,
Frisians, Romany, Low Saxons, and the Danish would be relevant and part of
the discussion. But it doesn't happen. Nobody mentioned them anywhere.
Sarrazin did not, the 'Bild' did not, none of the more respectable
newspapers did it, none of the big TV stations, none of the politicians that
commented the situation. Nobody did. Most worryingly not even the
representatives of the minorities themselves tried to give their
perspective. It seems everybody accepts their gradual vanishing and not even
the organized language activists develop enough energy to even say "Hey
there, we do exist!" when somebody proclaims that Germany should be
German-only. It's sad and it's the certain path to extinction. I should
write a book about it! It certainly will sell 650,000 copies ;-) "De
Plattdüütschen schafft sik sülms af".

Marcus Buck


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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject:Language politics

Marcus, might fear of seeming disloyal play a role in the silence,
especially in the Low Saxon community which has pretty much lost its
separate ethnic identity?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

P.S.: OK, everyone. Let me remind you to keep topics apart.



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