My ancestral languages, Boarisch (Bavarian) and Schwäbisch (Swabian), are routinely described as German dialects. That might sound like a technical linguistic distinction. For me, a Boarisch-Schwob scholar and community member, it raises a practical question: What happens to a people when their ancestral language, which carries their identity and “Weltanschauung” (worldview), is excluded from protection under a European language treaty because the modern state and dominant culture reduce it to a dialect?
