I don't think I agree with this.
Certainly Swedish is a minority language in Finland, and I think that
Finnish is a minority language in Sweden. But the Polish and
Icelandic examples don't fit the model, because they have no official
status in the countries cited.
Sigrun's argument really relies on that status - if it didn't, there
would be an awful lot of minority languages in (for example) London.
Nick
On 9 Mar 2006, at 08:50, Sigrun Helgadottir wrote:
> The discussion about "minority languages" on this list puzzles me
> slightly. My understanding is that a "minority language" is a
> language spoken by a minority. In other words it describes a
> relative situation. Swedish is a minority language in Finland just
> as Finnish is a minority language in Sweden. Icelandic is mainly
> spoken by the 300 thousand or so inhabitants of Iceland but is
> certainly not a minority language there. However, it is a minority
> language in Canada for example where it is spoken by the
> descendants of Icelandic immigrants. Polish is not a minority
> language in Poland but it is a minority language in Iceland where
> it is spoken by Polish immigrants who make up about 1% of the
> population of Iceland.
--Nicholas J A Sanders _____________________ semiotek
T: +44 [0]7092 153 409 F: +44 [0]8707 059 093
nick@semiotek.org _____________________
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