Thanks Alex for the information. By the way, I am interested in
linguistical borders and enclaves as much as in the international
ones. These boundaries are not guarded as heavily as country borders,
but you notice the change when you cross one all the same, or
sometimes even better...
A language map that is dated 1990 can be found in the Swiss Historical
lexicon at
http://www.snl.ch/dhs/externe/protect/card.html. Comparing
the two maps, the one with the enclaves in Berne canton seems to be
indeed rather old (the 1990 one doesn't have the enclaves). When you
compare the linguistic situation in Graubuenden canton, you can see
that on the 1990 map the German language is spoken in a much larger
area than on the map at www.eye.ch, at the expense of Italian and
Rheto-Romance. Which, I believe, is the actual trend in this area.
Peter S.
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., Alexandre Mauron <alexandre.mauron@m...>
wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was happy to find your forum : I had always thought that my
fascination
> for enclaves and boundaries was a mild form of eccentricity better
kept
> private, lest my friends should send me to a shrink...
>
> I think the "language enclaves" depicted on this map correspond to
> Mennonite communities in the otherwise French-speaking Jura area.
The
> Anabaptists and Mennonites were fiercely persecuted in Canton Berne
from
> the 16th to the 18th century and settled in what was then a rather
remote
> area controlled by the Prince-Bishop of Basel (and out of reach from
the
> authoritarian government of Berne). They also went to Alsace,
Southern
> Germany, Holland and ultimately America. These tightly-knit
communities
> were small German-speaking islets in the Jura, which however have
been
> largely diluted out by emigration and secularisation. I don't know
what
> period the map is meant to refer to, but I doubt that it represents
the
> present situation. The history of languages in Switzerland is a
hugely
> complex problem and you will not find two language maps that are
exactly
> alike.
>
> Best,
> Alex Mauron, Geneva, Switzerland
>
>
> At 20:01 07/03/01 +0100, you wrote:
> > Hello!
> >
> > You can find a map of languages used in Switzerland at
> > http://www.eye.ch/swissgen/chspra.jpg .
> >
> > This map is interesting, because the map shows three small areas
with
> > German language in the northwest of Switzerland where the language
is
> > actually French. I have never seen this before (though I knew the
German
> > speaking spot in the Italian speaking area in the very south).
> >
> >""? I could not
> > find any town names that sound German in that areas on my maps.
> >
> > Best regards
> >
> > --
> > mailto:Manfred.Haertel@r...
> > http://rz-home.de/mhaertel
> >
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