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  #41  
Old January 17th, 2013, 01:02 PM posted to rec.travel.europe
Tim C.[_5_]
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Posts: 920
Default German language in south Tirol Back on topic - Lake Garda

On Sun, 30 Dec 2012 00:39:19 +0000 (UTC), Erilar wrote in post :
:

but people in the
German-speaking areas all understand Hochdeutsch.


It's not always easy for them though and they can't always speak it. Or
speak it well enough that a tourist might understand.

--
Tim C.
  #42  
Old January 18th, 2013, 03:29 PM posted to rec.travel.europe
Erilar
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Posts: 599
Default German language in south Tirol Back on topic - Lake Garda

"Tim C." wrote:
On Sun, 30 Dec 2012 00:39:19 +0000 (UTC), Erilar wrote in post :
:

but people in the
German-speaking areas all understand Hochdeutsch.


It's not always easy for them though and they can't always speak it. Or
speak it well enough that a tourist might understand.


Tourist German can be rather one-sided8-). But average tourists tend to
stick to areas where plenty of people are multi-lingual. I'm not average
anything 8-)


--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad
  #43  
Old January 20th, 2013, 03:50 PM posted to rec.travel.europe
didier Meurgues
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Posts: 335
Default Back on topic - Lake Garda

Le mercredi 10 octobre 2012 11:13:52 UTC+2, Giovanni Drogo a écrit*:
On Tue, 9 Oct 2012, Surreyman wrote:

On the contrary the province of Bolzano (aka Alto Adige, aka S�dtirol)

has always been majoritary german-speaking (there were limited italian

communities only in the main towns in the valleys) and was annexed to

Italy after WW I mainly for military reasons.


Giovanni,
One day I was curious enough to see if the limit between italian and german town toponyms was due to a clear geographical barrier in the province of Bolzano/Bolzen in Alto Adige/Südtirol. I didn't find an obvious one between the valleys, the line of alpine summits being a bit northward IMO, at the difference of the limit between French and German languages in south Switzerland.

I agree that these borders anomalies were often motivated for military reasons including the bought of Corsica by Louis XV... or the temporary annexion of Pinerolo! Nowadays these reasons have disappeared and in fact Corsica should never have left Italy... Just imagine, Corsica is even today the reason why the French don't care about the anglo normand islands "anomaly" helped nevertheless by sea separation like St Pierre et Miquelon for Canada.
They don't care neither of the decline of french language in Val d'Aosta because its behind the alpine summit line! They leave this concern to the... Swiss. :+)
The French were happy enough... when they obtained Savoy which is indeed in geographical continuity with Dauphiné, even it was hard to swallow for the Italians from 1790 to 1860 because of the origin of the Italian kings dynasty (Chambery, Hautecombe). A bit like for the Germans with Alsace... where the Vosges mountains or the Rhine river, as best geographical limit, was the subject of a controversy for 3 centuries between both countries.

On the other hand we can now precise better than in the XVIIth century, at the Pyrenees treaty, where is the source of the Garonne and it's a bit "annoying" that the really tiny ONLY WESTERN slope of mountain that the river follows on only few kilometers is in fact in... Spain, because this then most inaccessible part of the Pyrenean mountains and of course the eastern bank of the Garonne declining towards the North... was in fact NEARER from a village whose own valley opens more widely towards the South!

So, no need to say that the French normally (except Napoleon :+)) favours/ed the geographical limits thanks to their miraculously natural hexagone, either by sea, river or mountain, as the best ones. What made them swallow a little easier the lost of Philippeville in FLAT Belgium in 1815. :+)
  #44  
Old January 20th, 2013, 03:53 PM posted to rec.travel.europe
didier Meurgues
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Posts: 335
Default German language in south Tirol Back on topic - Lake Garda

Le mercredi 10 octobre 2012 11:13:52 UTC+2, Giovanni Drogo a écrit :
On Tue, 9 Oct 2012, Surreyman wrote:

On the contrary the province of Bolzano (aka Alto Adige, aka S�dtirol)

has always been majoritary german-speaking (there were limited italian

communities only in the main towns in the valleys) and was annexed to

Italy after WW I mainly for military reasons.


Giovanni,
One day I was curious enough to see if the limit between italian and german town toponyms was due to a clear geographical barrier in the province of Bolzano/Bolzen in Alto Adige/Südtirol. I didn't find an obvious one between the valleys, the line of alpine summits being a bit northward IMO, at the difference of the limit between French and German languages in south Switzerland.

I agree that these borders anomalies were often motivated for military reasons including the bought of Corsica by Louis XV... or the temporary annexion of Pinerolo! Nowadays these reasons have disappeared and in fact Corsica should never have left Italy... Just imagine, Corsica is even today the reason why the French don't care about the anglo normand islands "anomaly" helped nevertheless by sea separation like St Pierre et Miquelon for Canada.
They don't care neither of the decline of french language in Val d'Aosta because its behind the alpine summit line! They leave this concern to the... Swiss. :+)
The French were happy enough... when they obtained Savoy which is indeed in geographical continuity with Dauphiné, even it was hard to swallow for the Italians from 1790 to 1860 because of the origin of the Italian kings dynasty (Chambery, Hautecombe). A bit like for the Germans with Alsace... where the Vosges mountains or the Rhine river, as best geographical limit, was the subject of a controversy for 3 centuries between both countries.

On the other hand we can now precise better than in the XVIIth century, at the Pyrenees treaty, where is the source of the Garonne and it's a bit "annoying" that the really tiny ONLY WESTERN slope of mountain that the river follows on only few kilometers is in fact in... Spain, because this then most inaccessible part of the Pyrenean mountains and of course the eastern bank of the Garonne declining towards the North... was in fact NEARER from a village whose own valley opens more widely towards the South!

So, no need to say that the French normally (except Napoleon :+)) favours/ed the geographical limits thanks to their miraculously natural hexagone, either by sea, river or mountain, as the best ones. What made them swallow a little easier the lost of Philippeville in FLAT Belgium in 1815. :+)
  #45  
Old January 21st, 2013, 02:28 PM posted to rec.travel.europe
Giovanni Drogo
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Posts: 811
Default German language in south Tirol Back on topic - Lake Garda

On Sun, 20 Jan 2013, didier Meurgues wrote:

One day I was curious enough to see if the limit between italian and
german town toponyms was due to a clear geographical barrier in the
province of Bolzano/Bolzen in Alto Adige/Südtirol. I didn't find an
obvious one


I do not think there is one. The Brenner border was obviously chosen for
military reasons after WWI. The "cultural" border was probably near
Salorno, or between Mezzocorona and Mezzolombardo (lit. "half crown" and
"half lombard" ... where "lombard" means "italian" and "crown" means
"empire" in the sense of "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation"). The
"historical-political" border has been further south (with the territory
of the Prince-Bishop of Trento always been more related to the empire
than to the rest of Italy) and nobody was annoyed until 1800's.

On the other hand there were more or less secluded areas of German
language (probably due to immigration waves limited in time) in southern
places like the Valle dei Mocheni near Trento, or the 7 Comuni on the
Asiago Plateau ("cimbric").

Not to talk of the Walser around Monte Rosa, for whom alpine boundaries
where not boundaries but ways of connections (and in fact there are or
were German-speaking communities in the Gressoney valley (Val d'Aosta),
Valle Anzasca (Piedmont), and Valais (Switzerland), all surrounded by
other language areas.

The French were happy enough... when they obtained Savoy which is
indeed in geographical continuity with Dauphiné, even it was hard to
swallow for the Italians from 1790 to 1860 because of the origin of
the Italian kings dynasty (Chambery, Hautecombe).


I guess that was more a matter for the kings than for the people, and
they were fairly ready to make a barter with the expansion to the south.

Possibly at the time, Nice was more of a problem for the people (I think
at that time ligurian dialects were spoken all the way to there).

I have no idea of what people spoke or speaks nowadays in the few
mountain places of the Tenda valley which were annexed to France after
WWII. Incidentally, to go back in topic, I quite liked the train ride
through there. One can do both Nice-Limone and Ventimiglia-Limone, with
the two lines from the coast joining in Breil. I did the first one.

I wonder what one can do nowadays, The Piedmont Region (unlike few other
regions) has been cutting lots of railway services, and I heard for
instance there are no more direct trains Ventimiglia-Turin via
Breil-Limone.
 




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