Page 224 - Manj razširjeni evropski jeziki in jezikovne politike

Summary

tutions, most other European countries, on the contrary, solved the prob-
lematics related to this question simply by passing either a special law or
legal regulation about it. The Parliament of the Republic of Slovenia had
passed the Law on the Use of the Slovenian Sign Language (zuszj) al-
ready in 2002, whereas in 2021 Slovenian Sign language was enshrined in
theConstitutionoftheRepublic ofSlovenia.Inparallel,asthefirstcountry
in the world, Slovenia enshrined Tactile Sign language in its constitution,
i.e. the language for the deaf blind. Accordingly, Slovenia has become one
of the few countries in the European and global context which recognises
the special status at the highest institutional level of those with hearing
difficulties, to the deaf and the deaf-blind minority as well as their fam-
ily members. Up to now, it is International Sign (is) which has reached
the maximum degree of development, from the quantitative point of view
this means that experts have developed approximately one million ges-
tures, whilst for instance Slovenian Sign contains merely around 20.000
gestures.
A substantial part of this work studies the mutual influences of micro-
languages and dialects in the area of the Slovenian-Italian state border or
in other words on the border between the Slavic and Romance linguistic
spheres. The study of the Alpine-Romance/Rhaeto-Romance triplet, i.e.
the chain Friulian-Dolomitic Ladin-Swiss Romansh, extending from the
coasts of the extreme north of the Adriatic across the Carnic Alps and
Dolomites to the Alpine valleys of southeastern Switzerland, some lin-
guists adding even a part of Croatian Istria as the fourth member, and the
Ladin Question, It. Questione Ladina, i.e. the dilemma of the Romance lin-
guistics experts whether or not these three (or four) language units con-
stitute a whole or not, introduces the reader to longer research on Friu-
lian, one of the Slovenian language’s two nearest western neighbours. The
native speakers of this less widely spoken language with the status of an
official minority language in the Italian autonomous region Friuli Venezia
Giulia (fvg) mainly refer to their local idiom as marilenghe, Frl. mother
tongue. It is a language characterised by a rich literary pedigree which has
recently entered the process of revitalisation on a large scale and in differ-
ent fields of life, but in spite of that, is considered a seriously endangered
language. It is being intensively standardised: Friulian lexicography, scien-
tific discourse, developing professional vocabulary etc. have been a chal-
lenge over the last three decades. One of the biggest problems connected
with its development is the lack of authentic texts in Friulian, which is why
writers and scientists and teachers/professors too often use Italian texts as

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