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OpalsMarch 7, 2025(Edited March 7, 2025)

‘Austrians don’t speak a Slavic language’

Don’t Austrians speak Slovene? Or does no true Austrian speak Slovene? In Carinthia, where Slovenian is spoken by quite a lot of people, Jörg Haider became notorious for tearing down bilingual German/Slovene signs. In Burgenland, there has been a Croatian speaking minority for a long time and for obvious historic reasons, there are quite a lot of Czech and Slovak speakers in Austria. And many Austrian words are influenced by Slavic languages.

You’re ignoring any connection between the countries based on the fact that you can’t see past what language they speak. I wonder if you would be willing to say that part of Switzerland is actually France because they speak French or that part of Sweden is actually Finland and so on… it seems to be the same sort of thinking that has underpinned ethnic cleansing in Europe for centuries. In fact ‘they’re Germans and they being in Germany’ was a good reason to steal the Sudetenland… which is now mysteriously back in the ‘Slavic’ Czech Republic.

And even on that count, to borrow a phrase… educate yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carinthian_Slovenes … there are Austrians who speak a Slavic language, Italians who speak German… the borders of that religion have changed many times over the past century or so.

I don’t see how ‘they speak a Slavic language’ actually makes countries that similar at all. Russia is massively different to Slovenia. Yugoslavia didn’t function as a country in spite of most people basically speaking the same language.

And of course Russia is an Asian country. More than half of it is in Asia, hence the term ‘European Russia’ for the part that is not. Most people just think of particular parts of Russia and forget that the rest exists…

It’s a very superficial analysis to say ‘they are Catholic’ or ‘they speak a Slavic language’. Sweden speaks a Germanic language but it is not much like Jamaica. Poland is Catholic but is not much like Ireland or Mexico and so on. There is huge variation between Catholic countries in Europe and Ireland is rapidly becoming one of the least religious Catholic countries, more like Spain than, say, Slovakia. And it’s generally accepted as a core member of the Anglosphere, except, apparently, by people who can’t see past the country being nominally Catholic.

Think it’s likely that you are posting your own opinion video and opinion here.

arete [OP]March 7, 2025

Lol I'm impressed by your vivid imagination, and as if I didn't know that some Austrians speak Slavic languages!

OpalsMarch 7, 2025(Edited March 7, 2025)

Thank you. Sounds like I've hit the nail on the head.

Edit: coming back to this, I realise it’s interesting how you categorise Ireland as ‘non-Anglosphere’ because it is ‘Catholic’ (arguably increasingly only nominally the case) but lump together all Slavic countries as ‘just Slavs’, irrespective of cultural, linguistic and religious differences, e.g. the Czech Republic is not really religious, Slovenia is Catholic and Russia and Serbia are Orthodox, but they’re lumped together because ‘they speak a Slavic language’. Interesting double standard there… Ireland has less difficulty communicating with the USA than Poland does with Russia but somehow Ireland is deemed too ‘other’ to be an Anglosphere country