By Autumn Mozeliak
We’ve all heard of Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, Dutch and so on….but have you heard of Flemish, Sámi and Rusyn? Europe is an extremely linguistically diverse continent with so many languages to choose from. Although there are only 24 official languages in Europe, there are approximately 200 languages in use, today. We can probably name the home language to each country, but you’d be surprised just how many hidden languages that either don’t have too many speakers or we just don’t hear enough about! Choosing only a few to talk about was really difficult, because all 200 of them have their quirks and unique aspects that make them so tempting to learn. Alas, I’ve managed to gather 3 cool languages (or language-dialects that are up to controversy) to dive into where they are, what they look like and who speaks them! Let’s take a look!
Belgium: the land of chocolate, soccer and waffles. More importantly, the land of many languages. Belgium is split into three languages- German, French and Dutch. But this section is titled ‘Flemish’, so where does that fit in?
Flemish is native to Flanders, situated in northern Belgium and spoken by Flemings, the predominant ethnic group of the region. Outside of Flanders, the language is spoken in French Flanders and Dutch Zeelandic Flanders. Though, Flemish isn’t exactly a language on its own. This is a low Franconian ‘dialect of Dutch’. I say ‘dialect’ since it’s actually a dialect continuum (a chain of language varieties that are colloquially described as ‘Flemish’.) This language is rather controversial, since, despite the title of this blog post, it's not really a language at all. In fact, it might be the exact same language as Dutch.
These two languages are mutually intelligible, so a Dutch speaker and a Flemish speaker can understand each other just fine. The differences are so close, they are comparable to American English versus British English. They both have different (and some the same) loan words, the accent and word usage is slightly different and Flemish in general has more French influence. The most prominent differences aren’t any of these, though, but mainly within the pronunciation. For instance, Dutch’s ‘g’ sound is far more guttural than the Flemish who pronounce this letter more like a ‘ch’. The word nationaal is pronounced nasional in Flanders, more nasally such as it is in French, and natzional in the Netherlands, giving more of an English-y vibe than a French one. Although slight, if you listen close enough you’d be able to tell if the language spoken is Dutch or Flemish.
Not to mention, some words are completely unrecognizable from the other language. If you’re in the Netherlands, using standard Dutch, you’d want to ask for ‘confituur’ on your toast- from the french word for jam, ‘confiture’. Whereas, if you’re in northern Belgium, you’d want to ask for ‘jam’ on your toast. If you want to refer to your brother-in-law in the Netherlands, you’d use ‘zwager’, but if you’re in Antwerp, you might want to say ‘schoonbroer’.
The Sámi languages are a group of Uralic languages found in the northernmost part of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. With an estimated amount of about 100,000 ethnic Sámi, there are ony about 30,000 speakers. Considering a wide geographic distribution, this language group is divided into parts. North Sámi, which is spoken by two thirds of the Sámi speaking populace, is spoken predominately by northernmost Finland, Sweden and Norway. East Sámi is spoken on the Kola Peninsula of Russia and by two groups in Finland- Inari and Skolt. Some sections of the language have formed a dialect continuum, making many of them mutually intelligible amongst one another. However, this does not count for all the dialects. In particular between Northern Sámi, Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi, these dialects are quite difficult to understand without learning them, even if you speak another Sámi dialect. These dialects have gone through many years of almost complete isolation (thanks to geographic barriers), which has provided a sharp boundary for the dialects’ mutual intelligibility.
Nearly all Sámi speakers are bilingual, but the languages are seldom used in any education or government. However, these languages do not have uniform orthography at their disposal, nor a standardized version that could be widely used for things such as said education or government. Although with a relatively low percentage of speakers compared to these countries’ populations, many efforts have been made to preserve the language. Many people marry into other languages and as a result, their children seldom learn the Sámi language. Despite this, there is potential for the language to continue to grow as the Sámi speaking populace surprisingly young. This is rather unique as many endangered languages’ speakers are from the older generation, not the younger. Thankfully this is one of the results of keeping the language alive, by making sure it is passed down to the younger generations. In fact, as of ‘98, every Sámi child in Norway has an individual right to learning this language as an individual subject in comprehensive school between ages 7 to 15.
Although there used to be many more, in modern day, there are only nine living Sámi languages with us. Most of these use the Latin alphabet:
Spoken by many ethnic Rusyns in a variety of central and eastern Europe, the Rusyn language can be found in Transcarpathia, travelling westward into eastern Slovakia and south-east Poland. Like Sámi languages, Rusyn is spoken by the ethnic minority of the countries it is found in. And like Flemish, the categorization is of some controversy and in some cases, depends whom you’re speaking with. Some American, Serbian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian linguists categorize Rusyn as its own distinct language. Whereas, Some Ukrainian, Polish and Romanian linguistics say its a dialect of Ukrainian.
Either way, Rusyn is separated into two (geographically made) subdivisions.
Carpathian (Carpatho-) Rusyn is spoken in:
the Zakarpattia Oblast of Ukraine.
northeastern regions of Slovakia.
southeastern regions of Poland. (The variety of Rusyn spoken in Poland is generally known as Lemko language.)
northeastern regions of Hungary.
northern regions of Romania (in Maramureș).
*For fluent speakers of Eastern Slovak dialects and Western Ukrainian dialects, Rusyn is generally mutually intelligible. However, for other Slavic language speakers, Carpatho-Rusyn may be quite tricky to understand.
Pannonian Rusyn is spoken mainly in parts of Slovakia, Hungary and by the Pannonian Rusyns in the region of Vojvodina, Serbia and in a nearby region of Slavonia, Croatia.
*If you are a standard Slovak speaker (and in some cases another west Slavic language speaker), Pannonian Rusyn is also generally mutually intelligible.
Autumn Mozeliak
