Answers: Language and Turmoil
I posted this quiz on February 21, a day recognised by the United Nations as International Mother Language Day to promote and celebrate linguistic and cultural diversity. It honours protesting students who were shot and killed by police in then East Pakistan on February 21, 1952. They were opposing the Pakistani state’s imposition of Urdu as the sole official language on the overwhelmingly Bengali-speaking East Pakistan. The language movement finally led to the breakup of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
Answers
1) A was an official language in this country along with B until 2018 when a new law made B the sole ‘state’s language’ while A was demoted to ‘special status’. Name the country and languages A and B. (A is the native language of 20 per cent of the country’s citizens)
A is Arabic, B is Hebrew and the country is Israel. More here, here and here.
2) Reading that Jannik Sinner, winner of the men’s Australian Open in tennis is from Italy piqued my curiosity. He is from a predominantly German-speaking province of Italy. The German language was repressed by Mussolini. Subsequently there was separatist violence in the 1960s. The province was given autonomous status within Italy in 1972. Name the province.
South Tyrol. More here, here, here, here and here. South Tyrol (Alto Adige to Italians) was cut off from the Austrian province of Tyrol and handed over to Italy in 1919 after the Austro-Hungarian Empire ended up on the losing side of the First World War. Cold War-oriented western calculations ensured the region stayed with Italy after World War II. Austria went to the United Nations in 1960, calling for autonomy for the region. The two sides ended their dispute at the UN in 1992. More here, here and here.
Thriving agriculture and tourism sectors have made South Tyrol/Alto Adige the wealthiest region in Italy and one of the richest in the European Union. Unlike most of Italy where the population is shrinking, generous benefits to families have helped keep the birth rate steady in South Tyrol. More on Italy’s population decline in my earlier quiz here on Global Demographic Trends.
3) After elections threw up a hung parliament in July 2023, the acting Prime Minister’s efforts to cobble together support from regional and separatist parties included allowing the use of three minority languages in parliament for the first time in September 2023, a move denounced by the conservative opposition. Which country?
Spain. The languages allowed to be used in parliament are Basque, Catalan and Galician. More here, here and here. Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez formed a new government in November 2023 with support from Catalan separatist parties, in exchange for promising amnesty to separatists involved in the banned independence referendum of 2017. More about that referendum and others in my earlier quiz here.
4) This province made French its sole official language in 1974. In 1977 it mandated that French should be the only language used in outdoor commercial advertising (From 1993 other languages have been allowed, as long as French signage remains). Name the province and country.
Quebec and Canada. More here and here. The question of primacy for the French language continues to reverberate in Quebec, most recently in the decision by two English universities in Montreal to sue the provincial government for hiking tuitions for out-of-province students. Both McGill and Concordia universities have seen a decline in applicants and argue the hikes amount to discrimination by weakening English-language universities. More here, here and here.
5) The parents of Fañch Bernard had to wage a legal battle to keep the ñ with the tilde in the child’s first name. They succeeded in retaining the Breton first name in 2019. Which country?
France. More here and here. Breton is spoken in France's northwestern region of Brittany. The number of Breton speakers has shrunk to less than 200,000 compared to one million in the 1950s and UNESCO has warned the language is at high risk of going extinct. While France has only French as the national language, 75 regional languages covering mainland France and the overseas territories were inscribed in the constitution in 2008.
France’s Eurovision contenders in 1996 and 2022 performed in Breton. More here and here.
6) This island’s had one official language since 1945. In 2019 multiple other languages were designated as national languages. The government is also implementing a ‘Bilingual 2030’ policy in an effort to dramatically boost English proficiency. Where?
7) This predominantly English-speaking country recognised an indigenous language as its first official language in 1987. While English is the de facto official language, the country’s current right-wing government has promised to introduce legislation formally making English an official language. Which country?
New Zealand. Maori became an official language in 1987. More on the current government’s promise to make English an official language here, here and here.
8) Which country has four national languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh?
Switzerland. More here, here and here.
9) This ex-Soviet state changed the way its official language is referred to in the constitution and official documents in 2023, overcoming opposition from pro-Russia legislators. The language is effectively the same as the language spoken in the country’s western neighbour, a NATO member (the two countries were merged between the two world wars). Name the language and the two countries.
Romanian. The ex-Soviet state is Moldova and its neighbour is Romania. Moldova (then known as Bessarabia) merged with Romania following World War I. At the end of World War II the Soviet Union gained control of Moldova. More on the change from Moldovan to Romanian in 2023 here, here, here and here.
10) This country was under Spanish colonisation for centuries until 1898. While Spanish was abolished as an official language in 1987, a large number of people in this country have Spanish surnames, a legacy of colonial mandates forcing people to adopt those surnames. Which country?
Philippines. More here, here, here and here.
11) Voters in which country overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to make Russian a second official language in a referendum in 2012?
Latvia. More here and here. Ethnic Russians make up a quarter of the population in Latvia and Estonia and 5 percent in Lithuania.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Baltic states have clamped down further on the use of the Russian language. Latvia in September 2022 adopted a law intended to make Latvian the sole medium of instruction in its schools by September 2025. More here. In December 2022 Estonia mandated that all schools should switch to Estonian by 2032, with the process starting in the 2024-2025 school year. In Lithuania where ethnic Russians make up a far smaller proportion of the population, the education minister proposed phasing out Russian schools only to backtrack. More here, here and here.
12) This language is spoken by a minority ethnic group of the same name who live in Laos, Thailand, China, Vietnam and Myanmar. But it does not have official status in any country. Many were forced to emigrate to the U.S. after the community backed the failed American military effort in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s and efforts are being made in the U.S. to preserve the language. Name the language/community.
Hmong. More here and here. You can read more about the Hmong in my earlier quiz answers here on the Asian American Experience.
13) This Pacific country’s constitution in 1997 included a version of Hindi among three official languages, the others being English and the main indigenous language. The country hosted the World Hindi Conference in 2023. Which country?
Fiji. More here. There are linguistic tensions within ethnic Indians in Fiji pitting formal Hindi against Fiji Hindi, the widely spoken variant that emerged out of indentured labourers from India coming into contact with the colonial language English and indigenous languages. Fiji’s 2013 constitution prescribes the teaching of Fiji Hindi in primary schools. More here and here.
14) This state in the northernmost tip of Germany was known for a complex territorial dispute in the middle of the 19th century. Then British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston remarked, “Only three people have ever really understood the — - business: the Prince Consort, who is dead; a German professor, who has gone mad; and I, who have forgotten all about it.” Its seizure in 1864 was part of Bismarck’s integration of German-speaking regions into a nation-state. In 2021 SSW, a party representing the main minority community in the state, made it to the Bundestag for the first time in nearly 70 years. Earlier in 2012, SSW was part of the governing coalition in the state, making it the first German state government to include an ethnic-minority party. In an unusual exemption from German party law, the SSW is legally funded by a neighbouring country. Name the German state and the neighbouring country.
Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark. Prussia and Austria combined to defeat Denmark in 1864. Prussia then took on Austria and its claims to the region, defeating it in the battle of Koniggratz (also known as the battle of Sadowa) in 1866. You can read the New York Times describing the Prussia-Austria tussle over Schleswig-Holstein and Otto von Bismarck’s machinations in 1865 here. After the German defeat in World War I, Northern Schleswig opted for Denmark in a referendum while Central Schleswig stayed in Germany, leaving linguistic minorities on both sides. A good explainer here by Jonn Elledge on Substack as he tries to ‘become the fourth’ person to understand the Schleswig-Holstein business.
Image: Jutland_Peninsula_map.PNG: Rokederivative work: Kolomaznik, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
More about the Danish party SSW and contemporary Schleswig-Holstein here, here, here and here.
I first read about Schleswig-Holstein in George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman novel Royal Flash, in which the fictional Flashman encounters Bismarck.
15) This Asian country had two major ethnic/linguistic groups as it became independent from Britain in 1948. The majority ethnic group’s language was made the sole official language in 1956. The minority group faced discrimination and separatism gained steam. In 1987 the minority group’s language was reinstated as an official language as part of a failed peace accord that year (the conflict continued until 2009). Name the country and the two languages.
Sri Lanka. Sinhala and Tamil. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike ran a populist ‘Sinhala Only’ campaign as head of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party in 1956 and made Sinhala the sole official language after securing victory and becoming the Prime Minister. More here and here.
You can read the answers to my quiz on the same theme from three years ago below.