Thank you for the info. There are three Germanophone enclaves in the
middle of Francophone territory (allbe it very small ones), and this
is fascinating news to me. I wonder how these enclaves came into
being. Are they the remnants of a much larger Germanophone community,
or are these enclaves pockets of settlers that came over when the
French-speaking Swiss were already there?
You are of course correct in rebuking us, using these little maps,
but this is for want of anything more precise. Apart from the scale
issue, these maps don't show areas with very sizable minorities (e.g.
almost 50%) either (that is, when it's not the biggest group of
course).
Anyway, I would really like to know how these German-speaking Swiss
got there! Anybody has any information on this?
These numbers of German-speaking Swiss are very small. I wonder how
much longer these pockets will hold....
Peter S.
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., ". s a r a ." <sara@g...> wrote:
> Greetings!
>
> > Sorry! The link should be:
> > http://www.snl.ch/dhs/externe/protect/sprached.html
> > Peter S.
>
> Besides the interesting topical discussion on language boundaries,
the key
> issue that we are dealing here with, is the one of SCALE. A key
concept
> that Geographers are grappling with for a very, very long time.
> Certain processes are visible at one scale, but not at others. This
issue
> is also known as the modifyable areal unit problem (MAUP) or in the
social
> sciences, as ecological fallacy. One cannot assume that if a
> (statistical) relationship exists at a finer spatial level of
detail (e.g.
> local level, such as communes in Switzerland), the same
relationship will
> be existent at a more generalized or coarser spatial level (e.g.
Canton
> level in Switzerland). MAUP goes both ways, scaling up or down.
>
> The web pointers have one crucial item in common: they are at a
> coarse spatial level of detail, or how cartographers would say, the
are
> small scale. If one selects a map at the communal level, thus
higher level
> of detail (e.g. commune boundaries are shown), the 'odd german
speaking
> spots' in the French speaking part of the Canton of Berne become
clearly
> visible:
> -Mont-Tramelan (pop 125) german speakers 107 = 85.60%
> -Chatelat (pop 128), german speakers 72 = 56.25%
> -Rebevelier (pop 43), german speakers 25 = 58.14%
>
> They all share a border with the French speaking Canton of Jura, by
the
> way.
>
> (source Atlas of Switzerland, interactive CD ROM, 2000, data is
from the
> 1990 Swiss census).
>
> The Mennonite connection is interesting, as the above communes seem
to
> have a rather high proportion of catholics, relatively higher than
most
> neighbouring communes (81, 89, and 92 percent, same source as
above).
>
> Just a couple of thoughts that might be of interest,
> sara
>
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