I was following tennis this summer and I noticed that Jannik Sinner is an Italian but his native language is German. I learnt that in the Italian province of Trentino Alto Adige, German is spoken by more than 60% of the people, and it is an official language, and the province has many common things with Austria. I remember being similarly surprised by Tessin, the Italian-speaking canton of Switzerland.
That got me thinking, do other countries in Europe have regions where a majority, a plurality, or a significant minority speak language of a neighbouring country? Here in the Netherlands, we have only two neighbours – Belgium and Germany. The Belgians that live next to us speak Flemish, a variant of Dutch. On the other side, I cannot think of a significant community of ethnic Germans in the Dutch provinces that border Germany.
What about your country?
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I think I’ll surprise you even more.
Frisian, one of the two officual languages of the Netherlands, is spoken in parts of Germany.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
The border between Denmark and Germany was, after the wars in 1848-50 and 1864, settled by a referendum in 1920. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Schleswig_plebiscites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Schleswig_plebiscites)
There is Danish and German minorities on both side of the border, but it is mostly Danish on the German side.
The Danish minority in Germany have their own political party, that even has a member in Der Bundestag. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Schleswig_Voters%27_Association](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Schleswig_Voters%27_Association)
For about 5 years I believed my downstairs neighbor was a Spaniard. He has a Spanish-sounding name, speaks Catalan (I was aware that’s his native tongue) and Spanish and we often had chats in my somewhat basic Spanish. I’ve asked him about recommendations for food and stuff to do in Barcelona and Catalonia, since that must be his homeland.
After almost 5 years I found out that he is French and is from a village where many people speak Catalan. Feel like an idiot.
So apparently that’s a thing haha.
Switzerland has French, German and Italian speaking regions.
There are some German speakers in the bordering regions of Belgium and German is the lesser used one of three official languages. But Belgium is a well known hodge podge of languages.
Interestingly enough, there are large communities which speak a neighbouring country’s language across most of Ireland
Only a few.
Southern Turkey has some Arabic speaking communities esspecially in Hatay.
If you count the Kurdish majority regions in Iraq and Iran, our Kurdish speaking region is bordering them.
Also on Greek and Bulgarian borders there are certain villages that have people having Greek or Bulgarian ancestry, they might be speaking their language, but this one might be true for all of our neighbours tbh.
Well … I’m Swiss. We are the definition of parts that speak like the neighboring country, for all intents and purposes. As I was just travelling around, a funny example is also South Tyrol in Italy. Crossed over from Austria via cycle. Architecture changed a bit, but everyone still speaks German. Surreal.