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Popularity of German in East Europe? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 25 of 31 05 July 2012 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Are you between Russia and Germany? My view of geography is different. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 26 of 31 05 July 2012 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Your view of Geography is different from the view of Hitler, Stalin and other country-
leading criminals of, not only, last century. It is not the trouble of the Czech Republic only, whole Central Europe paid for this geographical inconvenience and having a few more countries in between our borders and Russian borders didn't help much back then. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tennisfan Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5361 days ago 130 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 27 of 31 09 July 2012 at 6:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Romania has a small population of Germans, called Transylvanian Saxons, who are the descendants of the last Saxons that lived in Romanian and chose to stay after WWI and WWII. After the end of WWII there were something like 500,000 living in Romania, but there was a program with Germany that allowed many to move to Germany, where they were then allowed to settle
Most of those who stayed still live in Translyvania, I believe that as of the last census there are about 50,000. The vast majority of them speak both German and Romanian. I've heard that in some of the smaller villages there are still some people who speak only German, which would be quite remarkable, though I've never visited any of these places myself. But in Sibiu, Brasov, and some of the rural areas surrounding them, there is a healthy amount of these "Sași," (Saxons). A lot of the signs on the cities will have the German name alongside the Romanian name, for example "Sibiu," whose German name is "Hermannstadt." There is a small party representing this minority. And even some famous German Romanians, Klaus Iohannis being the most famous probably---he is the current mayor of Sibiu, and a few years ago was close to becoming prime minister of Romania! In fact he has mentioned recently that he might run for president as well. A well-known journalist said about him running for president: "Klaus Iohannis is a good politician, but he has one major problem: he cannot change his name." i.e., that Romanians would never elect a German to be president. Edited by tennisfan on 09 July 2012 at 6:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 28 of 31 09 July 2012 at 8:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is the 2005 data for CROATIA
49% speak English 34% speak German 14% speak Italian 4% speak French 4% speak Russian 2% speak Spanish So, German is the 2nd most popular/spoken foreign language in Croatia. My grandmother speaks Italian, my grandfather speaks Russian. My parents speak English only. When Croatia was a part of Austria-Hungary, German was the most important language. Russian was popular in the 1950ies, but was soon replaced with English. German and Italian are important because 90% of Croatian trade and tourism involves Germany, Austria and Italy. English is virtually useless in Croatia (just like Spanish), most people can learn it by watching sitcoms, soap operas, movies and listening to music...English is our connection with NATO and EU only. It is Italian and German than make difference on your CV, and not English (since most young people can speak English). Edited by Medulin on 09 July 2012 at 9:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Theodisce Octoglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5887 days ago 127 posts - 167 votes Speaks: Polish*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Czech, French, English, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Portuguese | Message 29 of 31 19 July 2012 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Actually, Czechoslovakia had borders with both Germany and Soviet Union and even lost a significant part of its territory and population to the latter. Edited by Theodisce on 19 July 2012 at 7:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 30 of 31 20 July 2012 at 10:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The popularity of German in Russia has fallen in the last two decades, because German was
replaced by English in many places. Many people used to learn German at school in the Soviet times, and now it can be only the second language (practically, not according to the law), but many schools do not offer the second language. The same is in institutions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 31 of 31 20 July 2012 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
One could also argue that the Soviet-annexed territory was settled primarily by the East Slavic (Carpatho- )Rusyns - not Czechs or Slovaks, who were the ruling ethnic groups in Czechoslovakia - and that Czechoslovakia wouldn't have even existed after 1938 if it weren't for the Soviets... But that's a whole new discussion that always gets triggered by discussions of E. European history... Edited by Merv on 20 July 2012 at 1:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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