typology of language use by minorities in Central Europe
In the twentieth century, minority groups in the Central European region became predominantly bilingual, while the majority nations of the region are almost exclusively monolingual. Bilingualism also allows minorities in the region to be distinguished according to whether the mother tongue or the second language is dominant.
The predominance of the mother tongue is typical for Hungarians in Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania and Serbia, Slovaks in Romania and Serbia, Rusyns in Ukraine and Serbia, Poles in the Czech Republic, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belorussians in Poland, Serbs in Croatia and Romania.
In the case of bilingual but second language-dominant minorities the state language, as an ambient or second language, dominates in everyday language interaction and increasingly also in language use within the family. This group includes all minorities in Hungary, the Slovenian, German, Slovakian and Czech minorities in the region, as well as Hungarians in Slovenia and Croatia.
We also distinguish between two groups of linguistically assimilated minorities. One subgroup includes minorities where the original language and dialect of the minority is preserved by older generations and younger generations learn the literary version of the minority language at school. This includes Hungarians in Burgenland, the groups of minorities in Hungary who already indicate Hungarian as their mother tongue in the census, and part of the Gypsy communities. The other subgroup includes communities where language change has already taken place, but where the memory of ancestry and common cultural heritage still remains. Such communities include the Armenian, Yiddish and German communities of memory.