on August 21, 2006
Still today many topographic names (mountains, valleys, rivers and territories etc.) clearly show their Slovenian origin, for example Austria's largest glacier at the Grossglockner has still today the Slovenian name Pasterze.
There is still today a considerable number of Slovenian speakers living in some regions of Carinthia and when there was a voting in Carinthia after WW 1 whether the South of Carinthia should remain Austrian or become part of the former Yugoslavia (what was claimed 1919 even supported by military actions) a clear majority of these Slovenian speakers voted for Austria.
As in most of the civilized countries in Europe also in Austria bi-lingual roadsigns show where such autochthonous language minorities are living. In Austria this is even granted by international treaties and elsewhere in Austria (in Burgenland for the Croatians for example) such bi-lingual roadsigns are no problem at all but for many Carinthians a bi-lingual roadsign seems to be a stigma, even for those who claim to be German speakers but are speaking Slovenian at home and often have big troubles to speak a correct German. They sometimes use to call themselves "Windische" in contrast to the others who declare themselves as Slovenian speakers. The fact is that in the daily practice even in the officially monolingual capital city Klagenfurt (Celovec in Slovenian) Slovenians coming over the border for shopping can meet in every shop enough locals speaking Slovenian...
Despite the fact that bi-lingual roadsigns are required by law in bi-lingual regions and this was enforced by Austian federal authorities the Carinthians up to the regional and local authorities try by all means to prevent "too many" such roadsigns and when there was no other way to pervent the replacement the mono-lingual one was moved some meters from its original place just to win some time to delay the replacement...
on January 12, 2004
