The term that I’d like to address in this month’s Sprachspielen is “minority.” This is such an important term for us with so much nuance that it will definitely take more than one month to unpack it. I’ll try to get that process started with this instalment.
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In this month’s Sprachspielen, I’d like for us to look at a word that you have undoubtedly seen us use with great regularity. It is the word “indigenous.” Another word that we often use in a similar way is “autochthonous,” a borrowing from Greek, which is generally less familiar to English speakers, but actually fairly commonly used in Romance languages such as Spanish, Italian, French and Romanian. But for the moment, I’d like to focus on the more familiar word “indigenous.”
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Last month, I described “Language Affinity” as representing the relationships that languages have with other languages. By adding “Group” to this, I’m describing how the principles of linguistic affinity actually become a useful, if not essential organising principle for our vision and ministry among all the indigenous minority language groups of Europe. To explain this significance for us, let me start with the scale and scope of the task.
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The term Sprachspielen is German and means “language games.” It is a term coined by the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein to describe the nuance and difference of meaning that words can have, depending on the rules of the context of the situation, or language game, in which they are used.
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