This may be a stupid a question, but being from and island (Ireland) I’ve always wondered how language changes at country’s border. Like for example do people just stop speaking polish right at the German, Lithuanian, Czech border etc.
Are border towns in two different countries able to communicate with each other, would the majority of inhabitants be bi-lingual?
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I think it depends a lot on the border and the people who live there.
Italy has several international borders.For example,many people living in the region near to Austria can speak German,as that area was historically part of Austria.
OTOH I’d say very few Italians living in Friuli can speak Slovenian.
It depends *allot* on the borders, how often the moved, how easy they are to traverse, how new they are, how close trade there is today etc. I know many people on the German side of the border speak Danish, and many people on the Danish side speak German, but this border has moved quite often and been quite open for people.
I live by the Czech border and here it stops directly at the border. Or rather if people speak the other language it’s because they learned it like any other foreign language they might speak and not because they “naturally” speak it due to the proximity. There’s a lot of Czech workers here that commute for work and of course those people speak German and I’ve been told by Czech friends that it’s a popular language to study in school generally. So Czech people that speak at least a bit of German are fairly easy to find. The other way round it’s not the case at all. It’s rare to find any Germans that speak Czech.
Depends on the specific border. Let’s go clockwise around Germany:
* Austria: same language, similar dialects on both sides of the border. If you’re a local, you can still tell which side of the border somebody is from.
* Switzerland: Similar story, but much bigger differences. In particular, Switzerland uses spoken Standard German a lot less, and uses local dialects almost like a separate language. In Germany, in-between versions mixing local features with standard German are much more common.
* France: the traditional language border is within modern day France, so the regions of France bordering Germany (most of Alsace/Elsass, some bits of Lorraine/Lothringen) used to be German speaking, with dialects very similar to the adjacent ones in Germany. But since France isn’t the best in terms of upholding local languages, especially in the past, this is now largely restricted to old and/or rural populations.
* Luxembourg: It’s a trilingual country (Luxembourgish, German, French), and Luxembourgish is very similar to the German dialects across the border. But unlike them, it has the status of a language, with an official spelling, etc.
* Belgium: There are a few German speaking towns and villages in Belgium, right at the border. Following WW1, Belgium got that territory from Germany, and instead of making the people there speak French, they made German the third official language of the entire country, because they’re really nice. Especially considering the destruction Germany had caused there in WW1.
* Netherlands: The local dialects of German and Dutch used to form a dialect continuum. But due to the standardization of both languages and people speaking less in local dialects, it’s a relatively hard border now.
* Denmark: There is a Danish minority in Germany and a German minority in Denmark near the border. The border was drawn following votes after WW1, and it was considered to be so fair that not even the Nazis wanted to change it back.
* Poland: The western parts of Poland used to be a part of Germany until WW2. After the war, the German population was expelled. Meanwhile, the Polish population in eastern Poland was expelled by the USSR, and those areas were annexed, so effectively the country of Poland along with much of its population was moved westward. True Stalin level ethnic cleansing. So today it’s a very clear language border.
* Czechia: Before WW2, Czechoslovakia had a large German speaking population along its borders with Germany and Austria. Those German speakers were collectively seen as traitors because of what happened in 1938, and were violently expelled after WW2. Again, clear language border today.
Yeah basically. When cross Spanish / Italian border people no longer speak your language.
In practice it’s not uncommon for people near a border to have at least notions of the language on the other side but it’s not guaranteed at all.
> Do people just stop speaking Polish at the German, Lithuanian, Czech border etc.
Yes. You have to remember that the Iron Curtain wasn’t just between the West and the East. It was also between Eastern Bloc countries. For almost half a century leaving a communist country wasn’t an easy deal. Even to another communist country (although a bit easier). This resulted in language borders to be very sharp between countries.
Today, maybe in split border cities such as Zgorzelec/Görlitz or Cieszyn/Těšín people can speak both languages or at least get by with basics.
Whenever you go to Hungary from a bordering country, people immediately stop speaking the neighboring country’s language. The exception is the city of Sopron on the Austrian border which is bilingual in Hungarian and German.
There is also a strong cultural border. For example, you visit the first village on the Hungarian side of the border from say Austria, Serbia, or Slovakia, and people immediately know nothing of modern Austrian, Serbian, or Slovak culture, don’t know what is a Bosna, a Pljeskavica, or an Utopenec. It’s like you arrived in the center of Hungary furthest from any border.
I live in Austria (with many languages around) and – except for Südtirol (a part of Northern Italy with a predominantly German speaking population) and obviously the other German speaking countries – it changes abruptly right at the borders. I think it used to be different before WW2, when there was more overlap, but in the aftermaths a lot of German speakers had to leave then Czechoslovakia, while vice versa speaking Czech in Austria was very much shunned. 40 years of iron curtain did the rest. But even towards Italy (that border region that is not in the German speaking part) is pretty abrupt as well, even though it’s not uncommon to find people on both sides who speak German/Italian as a foreign language. With Slovene it’s complicated. There’s a somewhat significant Slovene speaking minority in Austria, that has a right to road signs in Slovene, but there has been a lot of nationalistic bullshit towards oppressing their rights and a strong process of assimilation. So also here the linguistic border feels hard and abrupt. The same process has been the other way round in Hungary discouraging the German speaking minority from keeping their language. Nationalism sucks. It may be noted that in all the border regions un Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia you’re likely to find people with good command of German as a foreign language, while it is very unlikely the other way round, with the exception of members of the ever decreasing Slovene minority. With Italy it’s more even. But all things considered, unless you go to Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Südtirol, the linguistic borders are hard, abrupt and very obvious.
Depends, we share a border with Belgium and Germany. With Belgium there isn’t any problem since most of the country borders the Dutch speaking area. At the part where we border the French speaking part there are more problems, most likely you won’t find many Walloons there that speak Dutch, the Dutch people at the border would be a bit better, especially older folks but most definitely aren’t fluent.
Germany is interesting since both Dutch and German are closely related Germanic languages, so that makes learning the language easier. We learn German in school and in border areas there are a lot of visitors from Germany so on the Dutch side there will be quite a few people with good German skills. On the German side there won’t be many people adapt at Dutch though.
Nowadays the linguistic border is pretty hard compared to the past because less people can speak dialects. But for people that speak a dialect it will often still help them communicating since the dialects often have vocabulary and other traits that are more similar to their neighbors standard language. This is especially the case for people from Limburg since the dialects took part in the High German consonant shift, and in the southeast people speak Ripuarian which is considered a German dialect not a Dutch one.
Language borders used to be quite vague, but have become a lot sharper in modern nations.
In Belgium, the language borders have been strictly defined since the 1960’s, but the Brussels capital region is bilingual and there are other [towns with ‘language facilities’](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipalities_with_language_facilities#/media/File:Faciliteitengemeenten_en.png) (= towns with one majority language and another recognised minority language).
In France, there has been a strict ‘one language’ policy since the 19th century, so the regional languages have all but disappeared now. In [French Flanders](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans-Vlaams#/media/Bestand:TaalverhoudingFranseWesthoek.PNG), there used to be a Dutch speaking majority in most towns in the 19th century, but those have all become bilingual a century later. Nowadays, they’re almost completely monolingual French-speaking. So the country border between Belgium and France has also become a language border, which it didn’t use to be.
I grew up on the border between French and German speakers and Switzerland as a whole is not exactly big.
The border to the Italian regions are mountains, so before you can enter an Italian speaking settlement, you have to actually make an alpinist effirt or rely on modern engineering.
Between French and German, it’s easier.
The cities of Biel/Bienne, Fribourg/Freiburg and Sion/Sitten are actually bilingual (officially or unofficially). People speak one language and enough of the other to get by. Many are from mixed families/households/streets and speak both fluently and belong to both cultures.
Outside of these cities, it depends a bit on the geography.
In some places, there is this river that is kinda hard to cross, historically, so the language border is quite clear. Where the terrain is more permissive, people have more contact and the villages have minorities of the other language.
The Rumantsch border is a bit special. This language is dispersed over many valleys, some more isolatid than others, and there are various dialects, a bit like your Gaeltacht. Then, German speakers in the area historically come from two sources: Firstly, from the Rhine upwards, secondly as Walser colonists from over the mountains.
Anyway, you have many bilingual Rumantsch/German villages, lots of monolingual German villages and a few monolingual Rumantsch villages. The people there all have German too.
Italian, as I said, is in all cases cut off by a mountain pass.
Depends by the type of border. Hungarian, Ukrainian and Serbian are more commonly spoken near the border being a land border. With Bulgarian is more difficult the border being the Danube
If you cross the Finnish-Swedish border the change is marginal, because you are already in Finnish-speaking territory before you leave Sweden. The biggest difference is that you can’t be sure that Swedish works to make yourself understood when you’re on the Finnish side.
When you’re in Haparanda you get by both in Swedish and Finnish, virtually everyone is bilingual so it usually doesn’t even matter which language you start the conversation in. When you’re in Tornio across the river everyone speaks Finnish, and a quite a lot of people know at least basic conversational Swedish, partly due to the mandatory Swedish education in Finland, and partly because of the decent amount of Swedish-speaking visitors to Tornio. But it’s not as bilingual as Haparanda on the other side.
This is true for most of the border area, you get by in Swedish and Finnish on the Swedish side without issues, but on the Finnish side you’re more likely to struggle if you only know Swedish.
(And before anyone mentions _Meänkieli_, it’s mostly mutually intelligible with Finnish apart from a bunch of Swedish loanwords. Having half of my family in the area, we mostly just call it Finnish, anyway.)
Well, if you go to Andorra you will see an amazing mix between spanish and french speakers xD
In general it used to be a lot more fuzzy before deportations and assimilation in the 20th century, today it’s mostly the language just changes at the border in most cases.
Specifically in Romania’s case, it is a bit fuzzy. Of course with Moldova it’s the same language both sides of the border, but with Ukraine for example there’s plenty of Romanians on the other side of the border and Ukrainians on our side. With Hungary it’s mostly Hungarians in the first like 10-20 kms of our side of the border as the border was drawn so as to include some railways(+ some Romanian settlements in Hungary just across the border in one sector). There are Serbs on our side of Banat, and Romanians across the border in Serbia too on the Timoc Valley. With Bulgaria most Romanians South of the border were assimilated and so were most Bulgarians North of the border. Also, many times, people in border regions might know the other language for practical purposes. I met people in Bulgaria who spoke pretty damn good Romanian for example.
For croatia, on borders with serbia, bosnia and montenegro it’s de facto the same language so local language just kind of merges. Similar with slovenia with the caveat being that in lots of places local dialect is much closer to slovenian than to standard croatian. The biggest “cut” is with hungary, with it being completely different language so it is mostly a strict border (one side of the river vs another). But, just like with other borders, lots of people at the border area are bilingual.
Romania: it’s a very hard border With south-Western Ukraine, near the Danube-Delta. And Also a pretty hard-ish border with Bulgaria. There are still some Romanian speaking communities across the border in Bulgaria, especially along the Black Sea coast. However the situation is not reversible. Very few Romanians speak Bulgarian north of the Border.
With Serbia, again a one-sided soft-ish border. There are still some Romanian communities in Serbia, and in some provinces it’s an official language. But that is about all. Big differences in dialect though.
On Northern border, with Ukraine, it’s a soft one, because that land used to be owned by Romania and there is still a big Romanian community in the area. But once you leave the historical area, there is a pretty hard change.
With Hungary, well, the situation is reversed. We have a pretty big Hungarian population inside our borders and very little Romanian population inside Hungary (proportionally speaking). In some regions in Romania you could swear you are in Hungary if not for the shitty infrastructure.
Finnish-Swedish border: Many people spek finnish on the other side.
Finnish-Russian: Abrupt chnge because all the finns were evacuated.
Finnish-Norwegian:???
On the Swedish border: you can manage pretty well with Finnish or Swedish in Tornio/Haparanda. Especially with Finnish on the Swedish side as Finnish/Meänkieli is natively spoken by some people, but also with Swedish on the Finnish side as people live, shop and work etc across the border. And it’s taught in school to everyone, which helps a bit but doesn’t make anyone fluent.
On the Norwegian border: Population is pretty low in the border area, but AFAIK it’s not uncommon to know atleast the basics of all three languagues (Sami Finnish Norwegian) of the border area. I know that some people work across the border, and Alko stores in Utsjoki are popular for norwegians due to lower prices
On the Russian border: Karelian/Finnish is still spoken natively by a small minority in the Russian republic of Karelia. Russian tourism used to be pretty big in southeast Finland until Feb 2022 and some russian was available in hospitality/customer services. But for the vast majority it’s a full switch at the border.
People speak their country’s language on the two sides of the Norwegian-Swedish border, however from my experience most people have little trouble at all in understanding each others language. In addition to this the dialects that are spoken on each side are fairly similar. I especially find Varmländska (dialect in Varmländ) and Dalmål (dialect in Dalarna) to be very similar to Eastern Norwegian dialects.
My main experience is within Switzerland, where there are 3 main languages (German, French, Italian). In some places the language border is fuzzy and there are lots of bilingual people (eg around Biel/Bienne), in other places it’s pretty abrupt and it’s not uncommon for people only a few kilometers apart to not be able to communicate very fluently (eg around Rougement). The Italian-speaking regions, and Italy itself, are mostly separated by mountains, so even though there are now tunnels making for quick travel there is not much historical merging of peoples and the language transition is abrupt (though there are lots of German-speaking tourists, so quite a lot of people do speak German).
I’ve lived close to Lithuanian border, and here it’s interesting – you won’t be able to get by with the other language if you visit either side of the line, however at least on the Latvian side seeing Lithuanians that live here isn’t uncommon, especially among elderly people, and they speak both languages. Don’t know if there are Latvians living in Lithuania’s side, though. People do go either way for shopping or other reasons, and most commonly use Russian to communicate.
Closer to Belarusian/Russian borders, yeah, the large influence of Russian is even more widespread. Some regions speak more russian than latvian/latgalian (a dialect).
On the northern side, our languages just are very vastly different with Estonia. If with Lithuanians we can understand a couple words and maybe sometimes general meaning of something, especially if written, and Russian is just generally widespread in the country, then Estonian is a different beast. I’ve honestly never spent any prolonged time there, so can’t comment too much, but for example, there’s even a town Valka, that borders the Estonian town Valga right in the middle of it. From what i’ve heard, people just use Russian or English, and cases of people speaking both Latvian and Estonian are rare.
Lets see, Montenegro. We are bordering Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania. So, with Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, its de facto one language, and you will not notice much of a difference. Biggest one is ekavica/ijekavica, but part of Serbia bordering Montenegro is not quite either of these, they kind of mix it, so not really hard border (I mean, Pr**ije**polje). As for the border with Albania, Albanians can tell more, but on most part, it is not a hard border. Ulcinj, Tuzi and Gusinje have Albanian majorities, and are on border. Zeta and Plav have hard language border, it is smaller part of border with Albania. Language border towards Kosovo is mostly hard border.
Depends on the border, at the Flemish border the accents change slightly, but it also depends on where you cross it. The German border is a bit different due to the variety of unstandardised regional languages spoken in the bordering regions on both sides. I was told that people speaking some varieties of Low Saxon or Limburgish can communicate in their respective regional languages across the border as long as the person they’re talking to is able to speak those languages as well. Many Dutch people near the border speak German and I believe many Germans in certain areas can speak Dutch. The standard language changes, but some varieties regional languages can be used on both sides of the border as long as both people are able to speak them. The usage of regional languages is generally a countryside thing in The Netherlands and I believe even more so in Germany. I don’t know the situation with the Walloon border but I guess it just switches to French because most Walloons don’t bother learning Dutch.
I live by the Portuguese border. The closest village literally is in another country.
We used to have some loanwords form Portuguese. A huge amount of my fellow citizens have a Portuguese surname. We have a languages school where I used to study Portuguese. However, at that time I was the only student who was a local, the loanwords are virtually gone, and nobody here,not even those of a Portuguese background, speaks Portuguese.
I guess in the old times, when you interacted more with foreigners than with most people of your own country, there was more of a linguistic continuum, but not anymore now that everybody has permanent access to their national media and everybody has attended school.
On the other hand, for some reason there are many Portuguese people who speak Spanish. You can get quite far into Portugal speaking Spanish before you need to improvise some Portuñol.
When I approached old Portuguese people in Portuguese, they would reply me with their thickest accent, so I didn’t understand a thing, but young people would reply to me in Spanish instead when they spotted my accent, so it was equally pointless for the opposite reason. As a result, I ended up forgetting my Portuguese 🤷🏽♀️
I live in the Basque Country, separated between the French state and the Spanish state, and what was once an easy transition between Basque (spoken massively and universally on both sides of the border since before there was a ‘border’, since before there was a France or a Spain) has almost completely broken down in most places thanks to centuries of French and Spanish oppression of our language, so that only *some* people can communicate in Basque with only *some* people in the neighbouring town.
The nearly smooth linguistic transition has been replaced by the cold, abrupt, harsh borders of nation-states that have imposed their monolingual ideology and separated people who used to talk to each other in one language. Now, if most Basques of Spanish and French citizenship want to talk to each other, they have to use Spanish or French or even English, given that most Basques no longer know Basque. It’s sad and pathetic watching two Basques pantomyme in the shitty French and Spanish that they’ve learned at school with each other.
For a large portion of Hungary’s borders, Hungarian is the majority language on the other side as well (in areas close to the border). Though interestingly, people on the other side tend to speak in the local dialect, while standard Hungarian is generally used on the Hungarian side.
The only exception to this is Austria, where the boundaries were drawn along ethnic lines after WW1.
>Are border towns in two different countries able to communicate with each other, would the majority of inhabitants be bi-lingual?
In most cases no, unless there is a further connection, like the older generation in Czechia who might have learned German
Yes and no.
Hungary lost 72% of its former territory and millions of ethnic Hungarians were stuck in new countries after the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. As a result if you go to any neighboring countries there’s a chance you could run into [Hungarians](https://cdn.abouthungary.hu/media/9/9c/9cf/9cf19704e455b5f214b862a7a7.jpg) but it’s much more likely in some parts of some countries as in others. In Southern Slovakia it’s really common to run into Hungarians while Romania for example has forcefully deported lots of Hungarians from near the border with Hungary, especially after World War 2, so now it’s less common to run into them there, and you are more likely to run into them in Northern Transylvania, specifically Székelyland, where there are still a lot of majority-Hungarian towns and villages.
When it comes to ethnic Austrians, Slovaks, Ukranians, Romanians, Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes however, the language absolutely stops at the border. Local Hungarians might be bilingual, but the locals will likely not speak Hungarian. The inhabitants of border towns are not bilingual either, other than the few people who might have frequent dealings or business with members of the other nation. The situation is furhter exacerbated by the fact that Hungarian belongs to a [completely different](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Linguistic_map_of_the_Uralic_languages_%28en%29.png/1920px-Linguistic_map_of_the_Uralic_languages_%28en%29.png) language family from most [others in Europe.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Language_Families_in_Europe_%28en%29.svg/1920px-Language_Families_in_Europe_%28en%29.svg.png)
Yes, just like Americans and Mexicans, Hungarians and Serbs, all bilingual NOT!
* Latvia. While most of Lithuanians can passively understand some Latvian, it is still a foreign language. There are no significant Latvian communities in Lithuania or vice versa, so the language border corresponds to political border: Lithuanian border areas speak Lithuanian and Latvian areas speak Latvian. However, borderland Lithuanians have way better skills of Latvian than me from Kaunas. Older Lithuanians/Latvians mostly talk to each other in Russian, younger – in English.
* Belarus. The language border is clear cut for most of the border, except for southeastern parts of Vilnius County that have Slavic majority. Here the language border is quite fluid with Lithuanian → Lithuanian/Slavic (Polish/Russian/Belarusian) → Slavic (Russian/Belarusian/Polish)→Russian/Belarusian transition from Vilnius and its western surroundings→Lithuanian borderland→Belarusian borderland→deeper Belarus.
Since more than 60% of Lithuanians are fluent in Russian, it is mostly used to talk with Belarusians.
* Poland. Mostly clear cut except for few km stretch near Punsk. Punsk is a bilingual commune in Poland with absolute Lithuanian majority.
* Russia. Clear cut border; 60% of Lithuanians speak Russian as foreign language.
Belgium is a good example. We have an internal language border. It’s in most areas a switch from almost 100% Dutch-speaking to almost 100% French-speaking. The area around Brussels is an exception, with a minority of French-speakers living in the Flemish surroundings, and with Flemings living in Walloon-Brabant (because of the cheaper land/housing).
There is a bit of porosity, but not that much.
For instance, in Menton, the last French city before the Italian border, French is spoken 100%, but a lot of people are fluent in Italian too. Same in Ventimiglia, the border city in Italy. Italian is spoken 100%, but you’ll find a good number of people who can speak French.
We’re talking about 10 kilometres between the two cities.
Same phenomenon at the French-Spanish border.
I guess it is the same with the French-German border, but I have no personal experience.
It is quite amazing how borders matter in terms of language and even culture.
Not a stupid question at all! People have already explained how it works, I’ll try to get to the _why_ as someone who grew up literally on the border.
The main factor here is that most of our social life is structured around institutions that are _national_. School is obviously the biggest factor: this is where you learn language (besides home ofc) and you’re normally enrolled in your country, no matter how close the other country is.
Same goes for sport clubs (structured in national leagues), religious organizations, and so on. It’s by no means watertight but the path of least resistance is to stick to your country.
Another aspect to keep in mind is geography. It’s much easier to conceptualize a hard linguistic border when it is physically manifested by a giant mountain range, or a massive river that’s a pain to cross. It never stopped anyone, but here as well, it makes it easier/more natural to look “inward” instead of trekking across a natural AND linguistic border.
Yes, and no
Well, hungarian is a hard (non-indoeuropean) language. So people who are not native speakers rarely learn it.
However since, the international borders drawn after WWI clearly follow ethnic boundaries, no hungarian diaspora ended up outside the border of hungary, that could make edge of neighbouring countries be filled with natuve hungarian speakers. Thats just a revanchist hungariannconspiracy theory.
Sarcasm: OFF
Yes, crossimg borders from hungary is really not crossong the border, since its not the histoeic border, but one set up punitively. (Yes, some adjustment was justified, but the end result was a travesty)
Ofc. some countries – like Austria that started WWI got only a minor chunk, even though i can hardly fathom why said action needed to be rewarded with territorial concessions.
Let’s not forget that national languages are mostly common languages. It’s what people learn formally to be able to communicate smoothly with other people in the country on top of any other language or dialect. This is usually the product of a top down effort to get some unity on a territorial entity.
But that’s a strong force after ages, so people in border regions will have a lot of exposure to that other national language and usually learn that, almost automatically.
In Poland it follows the rule: was there a post-ww2 ethnic cleansing. If not, like in Czechia and Slovakia there’ll be an overlap, even some joint dialects. If yes, like Germany, than functionally yes, cities right on the border will be closer to Berlin or Warsaw than a town 3km away. However with Germany a lot of Poles learn German as a second language as Germany is richer so they want to work there or sell to Germans, but this is relatively recent with entrance to the EU. An exception is Ukraine, where the Polish side of the border has recently become very Ukrainian.