Language
Austrian German is used as official language.
The people are predominantly German-speaking with a unique (and easily recognizable) Southern Austro-Bavarian dialect typical of which is that all short German vowels before double consonants have been lengthened ("Carinthian Vowel Stretching").
A Slovene-speaking minority, known as the Carinthian Slovenes, is concentrated in the southern and south-eastern parts of the state. Its size cannot be determined precisely because the representatives of the ethnic group reject a count. Recommendations for a boycott of the 2001 census which asked for the language used in everyday communication make the figure obtained (12,554 people or 2.38% of a total population of 527,333 ) questionable.
Read more about this topic: Carinthia (state)
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“He never doubts his genius; it is only he and his God in all the world. He uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare; and though there is not much straight grain in him, there is plenty of tough, crooked timber.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.”
—Richard Rorty (b. 1931)
“There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)