The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe

The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe

By Madison Grant Mr. Dominians book on The Frontiers of Language and Nationality is the logical outcome of the articles written by him in 1915 in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society under the titles of Linguistic Areas in Europe: Their Boundaries and Political Significance and The Peoples of Northern and Central Asiatic Turkey. In the present work the problems arising from the distribution of main European languages and from their relation to political boundaries are discussed with clearness and brilliancy. The text embodies a vast collection of facts and data laboriously collected by the author, who has applied to the subject his familiarity with Eastern languages, as well as an impartial vision which is hard to find in these days when our judgments are so warped by the tragedy of the Great War. The difficulty of depicting conditions geographically in colors or with symbols is of necessity very great. The peasants who form the majority of the population of most European states often speak a different language or dialect from that of the educated upper classes, and such lines of linguistic cleavage frequently represent lines of race distinction as well. For example, in Transylvania the language of about sixty per cent of the inhabitants is Rumanian, while the literary, military and land-owning classes speak either Magyar or German, and these Hungarians and Saxons, in addition to forming everywhere the ruling class, are gathered together in many places in compact communities. A similar condition of affairs exists along the eastern boundary of the German Empire, except that here the speech of the peasants is Polish and that of the dominant classes German. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 58205
Author: Dominian, Leon
Release Date: Oct 30, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English