ELL: German school-atlasses will carry sorbian placenames

[Maximilian Hartmuth]

German school-atlasses will carry sorbian placenames

The conference of the german secretaries of the arts
(Kultusministerkonferenz der Länder) agreed on tuesday 1/7/2000 that the
atlasses used in german schools will as well carry sorbian placenames for
places in Germany, where the indigenous slavic minority lives. The goal of
this innovation is "to make pupils in other parts of Germany aware of the
existance of the sorbian minority". The Sorbs are a west-slavic minority in
eastern Germany. About 4.000 Sorbs live in Saxony and some 20.000 live in
Lower-Lusatia (Brandenburg).* The proposal was originally made by the
former chairman of the "Domowina-Bund Lausitzer Sorben" (founded 1912),
Jakob Brankatschk.

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maximilian hartmuth, vienna
melange at gmx.at

* UNESCO reports of estimates of between 20.000-110.000 speakers of the 2
Sorbian dialects, Upper- (around Bautzen) and Lower Sorbian (around
Cottbus/Chósebuz), "but the factual number may be approx. 20,000".







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