Gottscheer Endangered Language

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The Gottscheer language has gone through many events, both historically and more recently , that have severely affected its status as a language. The largest single impact was World War II, but the twentieth century as a whole was oppressive towards Gottscheer and its people. It is considered an endangered language because the population that speaks Gottscheer has shrunk significantly and has a very small presence in their original homeland, the area called Gottschee, in south Slovenia. The basic reasons for the continuous loss of Gottscheer and its status as “endangered” are the oppression that it has always faced because it was never fully Slovenian or German and the relative isolation of the language. Historical records, as summarized by Erich Petschauer (21-28), indicate that Gottscheer was spoken by people in Carinthia in the area Carniola (known as Slovenia today), Styria, an area in Austria, and what is today Yugoslavia. Although it has always been considered a language island, it began as a settlement by nearby counts and dukes, founded around 1325. The land that makes up the Gottscheer region changed ownership many times, having at various points been a semi-independent duchy, under Italian control, and part of Lower Styria, before becoming a…show more content…
By the late 1500s, the Gottscheer people had developed a desire to leave the feudal system that had existed until then but failed to separate from it. Despite a shift from the former exploitation that they had suffered as a region with the status of a colony to a system in which they were ruled over, the people were still resentful of this and tried to rebel without success
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