 Rhaom, sleidio'n eich lleoedd i gael, fel rydych chi'n gael, ac felly, rwy'n mynd i'n mynd i Nicoll, mae'n rhaid yn swyddwyr o Polig yn gyda'i newydd. Ond Nicoll ydych chi'n gofo chymae, conenol i'n gweld i gyfnodol. ac mae'n rhaid i, wedi mynd i gael eich llwyfio, Fyint eich llwyfio. Mae'n ddwych, tra ffodol i'ch lasagav, a'r gweithdoeth, ac yn ddullio'r cyrraedd ac diolch yn oedol yng nghymru yng Nghymru, ac yn ymwneud o'r sengfyniadau cyrraedd eich Llywodraeth. Yn ymgyrch i'r Uned, ac yn ymgyrch i'r Llywodraeth, ac yn ymgyrch i'r Llywodraeth, ac yn ymgyrch i'r Llywodraeth, I'm a minority language in Germany. I've also worked in Wales, in Caesubia. I'm a language expert. I'm in Brittany. Welcome. Thanks. I will measure my time to speak too long. Thank you very much for inviting me here. It's a real pleasure to present you some of my thoughts concerning the assessment of ethno-linguistic vitality. I hope my English will not be too bad, so you can understand everything. I hope that I will be able to understand your questions. The first part would be about some existing databases and scales of language endangerment and of assessment of ethno-linguistic vitality. Then I will share with you some of my thoughts concerning methodological and ethical problems when dealing with the assessment of ethno-linguistic vitality. It will be based on my personal research experience. The research project I carried out with Dr Claudia Soria from the Italian National Research Centre in Pisa. As you all know for sure, in recent years there is a really grown-up and important rise in the significance of the notion of language endangerment. It is not only in scientific papers that you can read about it or hear about it, but we can hear about it from everywhere. There are many different popular magazines or some papers concerning its programmes in radio or in television. We can hear it from all around that there are many languages that are being endangered and there is also the danger of their death. When it became popular, there is also a need to present it in such a way that people are touched about it, so that they start to care about the fact that many of languages are endangered. There are also many pronostics concerning the moment of language that has been created. There are a lot of papers telling that, for example, for the Sorbian language or Sorbian languages, which is one of my research subjects, that, for example, the lower Sorbian will be dead within the next 10 years. But this is something that is important for me as a researcher and something I would like to share with you. It's the fact that all these pronostics have also an influence on these languages' condition. I think that from the point of view of language revitalisation, it is really important for us as the researchers, because most of us here are linguists or people dealing with languages, so we also have to keep it in mind that what we do and how we do it and how we present it have also an impact on the object of our studies. So, there are a lot, maybe not a lot, but some databases and scales of language endangerment that became popular and that became the reference resources for language endangerment and also for finding evidence of the risk of extinction of actually any given language. And when these kind of scales or databases want to embrace all the possible languages that exist in the world, of course, most of them are oversimplified and they are not taken with the necessary caveats and especially exceptions. And here is one example that is really deep in my mind. I told you before I am studying Sorbian languages. For example, in the UNESCO World's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, there is only one Sorbian language. Even if there are two, they are described as one language and, moreover, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian find themselves in a totally different situation. One of them, the Upper Sorbian, have maintained intergenerational transmission and there is a group of about 10, maybe 12,000 people who are using this language in all age. I mean, there are children who communicate with their parents and grandparents. But for Lower Sorbian, the situation is very different and there are only some older people who know this language but who have little occasion to communicate with themselves. So even according to these scales, those two languages should be described as finding themselves in a different situation but they are not. So anyway, all these databases or these scales serve as the reference for all the languages. And now I would like to tell you something, how they are constructed and what it means different level and these grades of language endangerment. So this is the most famous, I would say, Egypt scale, which is based on the scale constructed by or created by Joshua Fishman, but extended. And so there are levels from 0 to 10 with two 6 and two 8 grades, so 13 altogether, showing what does it mean that the language is in what kind of state the language is. So we start from what is below, so from 10th level. When the language is extinct, of course, no one retains a sense of ethnic identity associated with the language, even for symbolic purposes. So here I would say that it is important how it is described because it is distinct between extinct language and dormant language because when people within the community do not have the sense of having connection with the language or they do not feel really that the language serves them for any kind of occasion, it means also that there is a lack of potential speakers of those who could become like new speakers of the language in a good condition. So dormant language is the language which have this potentiality, even if it is not spoken by people, but it exists some relations or some symbolic meaning of this language. It can serve as a, like it is described here as a heritage identity for people. Now, 2.8, so level 8, 8b and 8a, nearly extinct at Moribond, the difference here is like in the example of lower Sorbian, which I would say should be described like nearly extinct. So there are only older speakers who know this language but have little opportunity to use it because, for example, they do not live in the same village or they are afraid to use this language or they have another practices or habits to use this language. And the language which is Moribond, it means that it is also used by other people but they are active in using it. Then shifting language like the most probably, this is this stage which is the most problematical for languages when the child bearing generation can use the language among themselves but they do not normally transmit it to their children. But also it means that the generation of children possess kind of even passive knowledge of the language when hearing their parents using it. So there is still this kind of possibility to reverse language shifts to change this path going to language extinction. 2.6, threatened languages and vigorous languages, they all both to concern the languages which are used orally, only orally and one of them like the oral use of the language is full, is the situation is sustainable, in the situation where some of the possibilities to use this language is lacking, we can say that the situation is getting worse. But what is important here that when constructing this scale I've got the feeling, especially when we will go to other points, other levels that it is also the western perspective that is taken to describe the situation of languages that is not really taking into consideration those languages which exist in oral forms or these communities which do not really use or need to the written forms of languages as it is described here, the developing language, so the level 5 would be the language which is in oral use also but have also the literacy forms in the developing, it is not sustainable in the educational level, so level 4 literacy is, there is a transmission of literacy especially in formal education which is also interesting because we do not have here any reference to other forms of education only formal education which also means that there must be a kind of a school or institutional education and any kind of transmission other than official institutional, so the western education is like of lesser value and then we've got from level 3 to level 0 different forms of languages that are let's say saved, wider communication level 3 the language is widely used in work and mass media but without official status to transcendent language differences across the region and this is the first time we talk about any kind of language status or recognition of the language so it is also important that it is not taken as the most necessary factor of the language condition and then from provincial national to international so it refers to the different range of the use of the language so as I said at the beginning concerning this kind of scale the lower Serbian language would find itself at the 8b level because actually when speaking about native speakers there are only older people who know this language but they rarely communicate between themselves in this language but there were a lot of efforts to revitalize this language different programs that have been launched to revitalize lower Serbian so we've got also children who are learning this language at school in immersion programs and in bilingual education there are also different forms of cultural and informal education which should be taken into consideration during last few years we can speak about a very small but existing group of new speakers of lower Serbian so actually it would be very difficult to say where exactly having this kind of description the lower Serbian should be placed so let's now go to the UNESCO scale which concentrates itself most only on transmission of the language so we've got safe languages which are spoken by all generation and where the intergenerational transmission is uninterrupted vulnerable most children speak the language but it may be restricted to certain domains like home definitely endangered children no longer learn the language as mother tongue in the home severely endangered language is spoken by grandparents and older generation while the parents generation may understand it they do not speak it to children or among themselves critically endangered the youngest speaker are grandparents and older as they speak the language partially or infrequently extinct there are no speakers left and according to this scale and having in mind that UNESCO recognizes only the Serbian language and not upper Serbian and lower Serbian it is placed here as in general Serbian language as definitely endangered which may be like a description of upper Serbian but I'm not sure about the lower Serbian language so what do we have like conditions of language vitality according to these scales in Egypt scales for sure the most important is intergenerational transmission there are also domains of use but especially education and especially literacy so the formal education we don't really have status it is only mentions one mention once when when speaking about the official recognition but we don't have anything concerning the prestige of the language we don't have anything which would concern the attitudes of people toward this language and we've got a territorial range of the language it seems that in the scale of UNESCO there is only transmission of the language that matters but when looking at factors of ethnolinguistic vitalities that are leading to this scale the sixth great scale I showed you before we can see that it is quite different so there are nine factors that are taken into consideration when assessing ethnolinguistic vitality in UNESCO meaning the first factor is of course intergenerational transmission and it is quite obvious when there is no speaker the language is extinct so the great zero and then when it is used by all the age groups it is great five so safe the second factor is the absolute number of speakers so the total number of people who use the language and here I have to tell say that I've got a problem with this factor I mean of course when we deal with a very small community it is easier or faster that the process of language shift can can have place or the total shift of the language but on the other hand UNESCO there are different papers which states that well we can speak about the language it is safe only when the number of speakers is higher than 100 000 people who use this language but the medium for languages it is 10 000 speakers and as we know most of the language of the words are endangered but for example for Upper Sorbian language I will I will speak today a lot about upper about Serbian languages as I said before the transmission of this language is saved and there are children who use this language and like you can go there and communicate only in Upper Sorbian if you know with whom to to talk and there are other languages much much bigger where the situation is where the transmission of the language do not exist or it is threatened and so the situation of this language can can develop can be changed much quicker than in the case of small languages so this is this is one factor that is treated as a very important by UNESCO but I'm not really sure if if I do agree with this totally the third factor proportion of speakers within the social population so from no speakers grade zero to all members of the community who are the speakers of the language grade five but here one more time I would add not only the proportion of the speakers within the community so those who feel themselves members of community but also the proportion of speakers of the language within the whole society or the whole community which inhabits the the the region or territory where the the minority or endangered language exists because even if there is a small community within which most of people use the language but they create a very small group who communicates all the time with people who are not this language speakers in most of domains they would have to use the dominant language so it is also needed to take into consideration how the language practices among people from belonging to the community looks like when dealing with people from outside of the community then trends in existing language domains so where and with whom is the language used and for what range of topics and of course when it is it is quite clear that if the language is used by everybody and in the in any situation it would be grade five and if it is not used grade zero then we've got the factor number five response to new domains and media of course the ideal situation is when the minority or endangered language is used in all new domains for example in the internet when when it appeared and notes the dominant language or the language of other other group so it would be grade five. Six factor materials for language education and literacy and this is exactly the same thing I have problem with as with Egypt scale so there is the question of whether written material is available and if it is used in the formal education so scores are from zero if no other orthography available to the community if there is an established orthography literacy tradition with grammar dictionaries text literature and everyday media so a part of this language or written language is used in administration and education so still we've got here this concentration on the western world which probably exclude at least some of languages or cultures that are connected with other languages. Factor seven governmental and institutional language attitudes and policies including official status and use here we've got official external attitudes not restricted to institutional protection great grades range from the prohibition of speaking minority language grade zero to official protection grade five and here also I would ask not only like the official status and governmental or institutional language and attitudes but most of all the attitudes of community or dominant society towards minority group and towards the use of minority language within the territory they are living in and probably it is I think and according to my research it have much stronger influence on people's language practices that only like governmental and institutional language attitudes which are also of course important then factor eight community members attitudes toward their own languages and of course here with that when when people have very strong and positive attitudes this is grade five and when they are ashamed of using the language it would be a great great zero and the last factor its amount and quality of a documentation it is especially important when we deal with the languages which are dormant or nearly extinct and we have to somehow help people to revitalize them or to protect that it won't disappear so this is where the documentation of the language is especially important so my after a while when I was dealing with this scales and I was using them as all we do there was something I was always looking for and missing in this scales so how exactly the research are constructed where from these status are coming so especially when I was reading the explanation or the description of languages I knew and the communities I knew I had this feeling that well these numbers are not really sufficient or they are not really close to what I have in my mind when dealing with this languages and I was trying to find a project which is dealing with ethnolinguistic vitality and which is based on the proper research so one of this kind of project is European language diversity for all it is a project that it ended a few years ago and it concerns as you can see probably at this map most of all the Baltic languages and Scandinavian languages but I think that I found that it was the methodology of this research was really interesting so the tool was the European language vitality barometer which was based on the idea of measuring the vitality of a language which term of the speakers being able and willing to use the language having the chances of using it in a wide variety of public and private context being able to develop it further and being able and willing to transfer it to the next generation so we can see that it is quite close to to these scales and databases that I referred to before but this research was based on the concept of COD so capacity opportunity and desire by to François and François Viencourt and so they thought that language for language to be used three different conditions must be met so the first one is capacity so people must be capable of using a language and what is interesting here the capacity is was treated in a kind of subjective terms so it is not only the real competence of the language but also speakers confidence of their competencies of using this language which is quite important because sometimes we can have a very developed skills in language but we've got this feeling we cannot say anything and we will not even try to to use this language because we've got fear with that kind of language barrier the second opportunity so not only of course the knowledge of the language is important to use a language but also people have to have an opportunity to use it and it is like on one hand this opportunity depends on existence of a speech community because it will be very difficult to use a language when you don't have another speakers to practices or to to talk with with this person in in the language we are talking about but on the other hand it is also the existence of institutional arrangements like legislation regulations at school workplaces etc so all this fear that makes it possible for people to use the language or it prohibits them to to use it and the third condition which is the most difficult to achieve and after years of my research I feel that it is also the most difficult part in the language revitalization process is the concept of desire so the speaker must also wish and be ready to use the language and of course it is reflected in the attitudes of toward the language with emotions with but also with all we can call the consequences of linguistic trauma of this person or other generation who are using this language and also influence of different language ideologies with which speakers have to deal consciously or unconsciously in this project there was another area another factor so language products or services that are available in the language and here there were both material and immaterial materials like books, papers, webpages, news broadcast etc but also for example art or different forms of of transmission so there are there are four areas so opportunity capacity desire and language products and language vitality is evaluated along four other dimensions so legislation whether there are laws which support the endangered language or multilingualism in general whether the speaker know about these laws and whether and what they think of them there is education so all types and levels of education both language classes courses and the use of language in education people's opinions attitudes and feelings about education so it is also important not only that education exists but whether people want to participate in it or not there are media and also it relates to all types of media but also existence of minority languages and minority subjects within majority media and the last language use and interaction so what we can call language practices so how the language are is used in communication and social interaction in different situation with different people at etc so what I really like within this research and if you want to know like know it better it is really they've got a very good website and you can have the questionnaire how they formulate the questions because it is all the research was based on on the questionnaire and it was a very very I would say developed questionnaires with I don't know 100 questions so it was only a huge demand for the language users to feel it and they have to devote their times and attention to to use it properly but then the results were presented like this so we don't have here the scale we've got the very difficult to understand grapheme with different colors and so we've got these four areas and then we've got also these four dimensions within which the vitality of the language is evaluated in different areas and in different spheres so to read this grapheme and to know what is the ethno linguistic vitality we have to really analyze it before giving people like the closed and ready answer in what condition your language is so this is something that I really like because it is not like something simple it is not something that would allow other people for example those who are popularizing the research to just to neglect the very complicated situation of this community and its relations its relation with the language so now I will at the end of this presentation I will go to this what was the subject of of it so to ethno linguistic vitality I understand ethno linguistic vitality as a group's ability to maintain and protect its existence in time as a collective entity with a distinctive identity and language so it is not about language itself but it is about the language which exists in correlation with the community and not as an object that we can observe in isolation so it is something that is opposite to the essentialized concept of the language which can be very often when we read about language revitalization or any other processes concerning language endangerment we imagine the language as something that just exists that we can isolate that we can observe that we can revitalize and then put it somewhere and people would start to to use this language but language never exists in isolation to to the community that is using it or not using it does have some attitudes towards this language and some feelings about it and wants to use it or do not want to use it so in that meaning ethno linguistic vitality assessment serves not to show really rather to show the current condition of the language but most of all to help to identify those areas in the maintenance and use of the language that needs particular attention and support as it was shown in this graphon that it is really something that that is showing where the problem can be placed but not to say well this language will die in next you know seven years or something so essentially ethno linguistic vitality assessment can be used as an important tool in the language revitalization process and it can be used as a tool by different actors of this process from one hand by decision makers or language policy planners in taking a decision where direct directing for example financial or political support which would be really the support for the community and for the language and not just a political gesture which we deal quite often it could be also be used by stakeholders to understand what risk the language is facing and most of all it could also influence individuals so users of the language or potential users of the language to understand the situation of their language and maybe also to influence their like private language practices or their like home language policy so but for in any in any case it shouldn't be used for predicting the future of the language rather to show some tendencies but we have to remember that whether a language dies out or survives it depends on the number of individual decisions and very very complex circumstances that may influence the decision to use the language or not to not to use it and as I as I said at the beginning also this kind of statement or predicting language that can be dangerous for language itself for the revitalization processes because it can also discourage people to take some activities or to discourage them to be strong in their like language home language policies or the language choices that is why so after saying all this what I wanted to say that I think that assessing ethnolinguistic vitality should be based on the proper research and I think that here I wrote a social linguistic plus ethnographics research but I think that these domains should be it is not really distinct I mean it shouldn't be distinct researcher must know the field must know the community must know different aspects of of and problems with which this community is is the link and I'm I'm sure that there is a need of direct and in-depth contact with respondents and here I will tell you just one story from the research project on assessment of ethnolinguistic vitality I carried out with Claudia Soria so it was like comparison of ethnolinguistic vitality of two regional collateral languages so of Kashubian which is in Poland and Piemonteese in Italy and what is what was common for these languages is that they belong to the same language family as the dominant language and it also produce a kind of common problems for both these languages especially with the status of the language but also with how to say with the social perception of of this language and what kind of language revitalization efforts are undertaken and what meaning do they've got I will not go into details to it not to to make my speech longer I just want to to tell you one story it was we decided as this project was had a very very small funds and it was a short-term project we decided to provide a questioner we constructed a questioner with about 30 questions and constructed quite similar to the LGF project I showed you and we wanted to like it was our model model project for this what we did we decided to spread the questioner among people we knew or to ask them to spread the questioner among their friends etc during this time I had to go to Kashubia for my the other other things and I took some questioners with me thinking that maybe I will have this possibility to spread the questioner and have some some more collected forms and I met the man he was the Kashubian man like 80 plus and asked him to fill this questioner for me and he said well I would like to do it but I don't have classes with me so maybe you will sit with me read the questions and I will tell you what to mark and I said okay I've got time so normally feeling this questioner took about 30 minutes at most between 20 and 30 minutes I was sitting with the man for four hours and it was the most one of the most important stories I heard from a person from the oldest generation any question from this form which had like a very simple answers normally was full of different stories about how it was how it is about hesitation also what kind of problems we are dealing with even if there was a question do you use the language at street or in the supermarket or whatever there was so many different situation that the language could be used or not and so many stories the small stories this man told me that I and especially the questions concerning language trauma or the attitudes towards the language which was really I heard the very very difficult stories from the past of this man and then it was a question I don't remember exactly how it was formulated but did you ever suffered because of using the language and he told me like for I know half an hour the stories from his childhood how he suffered and then he said but you know it is better to mark no and not did you suffered no and I realized that all the all this data we have without like we are collecting and we create we built kind of a picture of language vitality or of etnolinguistic vitality well it gives us some ideas of in what condition the language is but to understand really what people feel about the language and how how complex the language practices are it cannot be just a form it's there is a real need for the ethnographic research and contact with people who who are language speakers potential speakers members of of the community et cetera so from from this research we had with Claudia Soria we really had this feeling that some factors of the research of this scales or databases are overestimated and here especially the number of speakers and the existence of literacy form literary form it was also connected with the fact that we were dealing with the languages that are most that were most of all functioning as a dialect so it was the fact of using this language and using it in informal situations which was much more important for this language users than the literary form and its existence so also we thought that other factors are underestimated like especially people's attitude desire to use the language and experienced stigma the other things is concern also the situation I I try to describe through the my my conversation with the the old Kashubian men so the problem as I as I said before with assessing ethnolinguistic vitality is that it always influence language conditions for example sorts are really afraid of any kind of research of any kind of a social linguistic research concerning their languages situation because they are afraid or that their thoughts would be cut off that if Germans realize that the number of Serbian language speakers is much lesser than they think it would be very dangerous for them so and we as researchers have to also think that no matter how for us it is obvious in what purpose we are providing our research and how we analyze the results with God it can be also used by different people and sometimes it also can serve against for example the community we are researching but also the results can can influence the users of the language in both directions on one hand it can discourage them for example to use the language but on the other hand it can like give them the power if they hear that the situation of their language is much worse than they thought sometimes it mobilized people it is just important not to leave the results alone but also to give them back to the community we research and like this is the role the additional role of of the researchers who are dealing with minority languages or languages that are endangered not to leave the community by itself to analyze this research but also to give them some feedback or some advice I think it is my my perspective so thank you very much and if you have any questions I hope I could answer them thank you very much for your talk and I think some good critical discussion of tools that a lot of people take for granted I you mentioned a couple of times very briefly and I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more you mentioned um popular discussion or media discussion around Sorbian and endangered languages and it wasn't quite clear to me but is your concern that they are just taking these labels that say nearly extinct or extinct without thinking about the larger context and how does that relate to your work specifically? Well I was rather talking about the impact of general discourse of language endangerment that it's it's oversimplified the situation and that many times to make it attractive for people they are like they exaggerate or they they they give some very strong like statements about the condition of language which is never simple yes they it is much easier and from the point of view of for example media it is much more effective to present the situation in the worst possible way which also influence people attitudes and concerning Sorbian if I mixed it it is probable that I had a very like one example in my mind it was a year ago about a year ago there was a talk of one professor from Poland who came to to to to to Lusatia where the sorbs are living and it was in the lower Sorbian community and he said he gave a lecture stating that all possible numbers and I don't know what else states that lower Kashubian will not live more or exist more than next let's say 50 years I don't remember exactly what what's the date he gave and it became so so hot subject of discussions among not only lower sorbs but also upper sorbs in the Sorbian community in general concerning on one hand there were people who said yes I thought it is the end so so what for we are putting all this money or this effort in this revitalization process in this language preschool education immersive preschool education which is very difficult and we can see that results are not as we expected now we can understand it and there was this the huge disappointed which also we're dealing with this kind of way of thinking that this is the end so now we give up it is the end the professor said it's the end so so it is the end but on the other hand there was a huge there was a group of language activists that that said not only it is not the end and we cannot say that it is the end until we are living and there are people who want to do it but who also said we will prove him that it is not the end and around this one lecturer that then became an article also in in in the Sorbian press there was a whole amount of actions that were taken on behalf of language of course well it lasted for a few months yes this kind of movement around it but it is a good example to show how this kind of statement here it was also based on the authority of the professor it is something even more because when you read in the popular press the language would die in the next 10 years you you can say okay the journalist doesn't know anything and he just looked on some UNESCO databases but he doesn't know the situation but this was stated by the professor who who was dealing with the problem of Sorbian languages before and what he said was so strong that it created also the very different reactions from the part of the same of the same community so that is why I think that the responsibility of researchers and how they present their results is also very important I think that's very true I've been as a person myself having my own comments you know kind of taken up and and garbled as well so yeah so if I say I only know in the case of Guernsey I know of say five or six people under the age of 16 who can speak the language to a fluent sort of extent and that's and then I kind of try and kind of qualify that by saying what I mean by that but that of course gets left out and then it gets garbled so someone says oh well such a so and so and so says all the latest estimates are that there are only 10 people on the age of 65 I didn't say that you know but this is what gets kind of then spread around and you know you have to really careful yeah what interests me and I think I don't think you've really touched on was the the question of how we count speakers and what does it mean to actually speak a language and it's it you did mention semi speakers for example but you know when one you did you said you did say you know how how do you know this you know what data that we are relying on where are the surveys yeah but also there was it mean to speak a language so I think that this is something that for us in the project I had with Claudia sorry I was important especially when we tried to figure out what we don't like in in this kind of databases or kind of research that we know already is that the most important here are intergenerational transmission and whether there are speakers and speakers when when we hear speakers we always think so this is a child who spoke with the parents in the language so it he or she is the native speaker of the language speaker native speaker but also in in the case of these languages we we are dealing with so Kashubian, Pymontis, Sorbian or other most of minority European languages now we've got so different forms of of transmission of the language we've got not only education the formal education but we've got a lot of different forms of informal education we've got media which is I think the subject which is also very interesting and from different points of view because it is not only there are all this movement of social media in minority languages which also influence peoples like active language practices and there are different forms of art or transmission through art or some other forms of communities that are creating created on the basis of the use of the language even if it's not the native language for for speakers for for those who are participating so of course it is not it is when I think about speakers of the language I think that is why I try to say always speakers or potential speakers so those who are in the midway let's say those who can become the speakers of the language even if they won't ever be the native speakers they will be learners there would be new speakers they could be semi speakers or heritage speakers or whatever we call them but from the point of view of language revitalization I think in many cases they are the most important force to push it forward and it is but it is also problematic and it is problematic for all all these communities I had contact with how to count speakers and whether these other forms of speakerness should be counted or not if new speakers or learners are really speakers or it is also the question of the relation between the language and identity and identity and being a part of the community and if becoming a part of the community is the natural process so something that you know we are we born with or you can become a member of the community even if you were born I don't know where in in another continent so it's it's true it is very very difficult question it's very delicate questions and I think that different communities also with different history with different social linguistic situation and context in which they are dealing and different kind of language movements have different answers for for this question also I think community you're working in some you know it's it's not only intergenerational transmission that matters by any means yeah it's kind of community transmission peer peer transmission um people who use different languages for different purposes so the different domains and all sorts of things yeah and also while you did speak a bit about it the um like how to define different speakers in different communities but also particularly in the last point there I mean you highlighted it as a methodological problem but how to assess people's attitudes on a given territory but also across territories as well so I don't know if in your research and for example also so the speakers lives outside the traditional community area and they would count so yes yeah because some of the vibration is a huge factor and and we cannot neglect it as I mean it is it is something that uh it is also it is like with with this with speakers I mean I've got this feeling that it is much easier to research and to like think about the community or the speakers when we uh when we attach it to the place and we think okay here we can try to start this kind of the other crisis of of revitalization process because there are people who are living here and we can work with them but um in any case we've got a lot of speakers or a lot of members of the community potential speakers or whatever who are not living inside of the community and the problem is whether they've got influence on the language maintenance or not and I'm telling it because it is like opposite also to this kind of thinking that the intergenerational transmission which also in the scale of fishman this is this the sixth grade yes which are which is attaching intergenerational transmission and use the language within the community within with members of the community neighbours and friends etc so but what's to do with this all these new forms of transmission and those speakers who are not really or not active members of the community even if they in their way of thinking they are attached and sometimes also they use the language this is a huge question which I think that also researchers start to deal and start to work on this even if it's very difficult uh also not only to to measure it to research it but also uh you know to say that well their attitudes and their language practices could influence also the community which is somehow attached to the territory it's a very very interesting also question about things like the reliability of questionnaires and they need to do really in depth obviously this is what I was thinking about how to present the questionnaire and what happens in reality because we always go from the field work thinking that we can what we should do but effectively what it happens is something totally different and we cannot follow always the pattern that we decided before this was one thing not that we were discussing but no I was wondering one thing um you said uh I totally agree when you say the language cannot be disconnected from the community I cannot be taken as an object that should be observed um and in order to evaluate what is the vitality of language within a community we should also understand what is the attitude of speakers toward the language uh what I wonder is how can we know what is the attitude of speakers when we are inside the community um on which we do not know and talk the language it is I mean we don't we we don't have any um we have to communicate through another language if possible or we have to rely to someone on someone else for communicating so how to how to deal with the the issue related to attitudes of speakers in a context where the field work is carried out in a community of which we do not know the language because we can if we are in a in a group or which we know the language and we can communicate we can present certain kind of questions and we can gather some kind of information but if it is the first time that we are entering the community and we have to learn basically the language and we have to describe the language so how can we gather the information useful for the description of the language the identification of the language without leaving without forgetting what are the attitudes of speakers which have to identify the language I don't know I I can understand it perfectly and I would say that my answer to this question is that after many years of going there having different contacts with people and so this is what I would call this in-depth research then you can start to form your opinions about this or some some answers to this question I I unfortunately and it is unfortunately for all the research system with God and the way of financing research etc it is totally in the opposition but I think that in this kind of social research which are dealing with very delicate subject and with the community we have to know we've got to have a lot of time and sometimes it is not even the knowledge of the language which is the most important but like confidence of people you speak with that they can trust you that they can share with you some stories that they can be with you that you can observe practices of these people it is much more important that you know the direct question what do you think about something or what is your attitude so I would say and from my this is my anthropological background maybe which is talking through me now that it is not possible to do it other way it is it must take a lot of time so unfortunately for all us who have to deal with the short term research funds and the need to publish all the results after so I can tell you that there is also the problem with God now as researchers that there is no place to fail like to have the projects which the results are useless and I think that to some point what the project I told you about this comparison of ethnolinguistic vitality of Kashubian and Piedmontis was this kind of project but it was a milestone in my way of thinking about the research so the influence of this project on my consciousness was much more important than the project which had the results I could publish here I would say that after three years of this project we realized and the last analysis we had is that we learned a lot and if we start now the same project we would do it completely different and and it was great to know it I mean it was such a fantastic feeling to be able to say we failed but we learned something and there is but there is normally there is no place for this kind of knowledge in our life but I'm trying to say to students we know no is an acceptable answer to the research question yeah no I was wondering about this you mentioned the detachment of the language from its speakers and we're there we're talking about speakers of the language but what about non-speakers is it the language do you think the language is already detached from non-speakers who might still identify with the community like as a national identity maybe but they don't speak the language of that community is the language technically already detached from them or do they still have some kind of connection so are you presenting the language as a kind of as an entity to them or is it detached or do they still have a connection because they are still part of the community well I think it depends also on individuals but in general I would say that until there is any kind of connection even you know only imagine connection it is important and for example the lower Serbian community there are a lot of the disruption of intergenerational transmission of lower Serbian took place in 1930s so we are dealing now with two or three generations of like without language without the fluent transmission of course there are some families who maintain this transmission but these are really individual families but as a group as a community for many of people the relation to lower Serbian is still very important so from when I was talking with at least some of lower Serbs who cannot say maybe a word they know some basic words but they cannot use it they don't understand it they even use German when dealing with some folkloristic life aspects so when there are like songs sung for special occasions most of them are sung in German and not in the lower Serbian but for them they were explaining me how important the language is for them but then I went to the Upper Serbian community and I was living with people really who speak Upper Serbian it was much easier for me because I am also a speaker of Upper Serbian so when I was also trying to question how they feel about the relation between language and identity they were really often given me the example that you know for us it is you cannot be Serb without the knowledge of the language if you don't know the language you are excluded from community and actually it was something I discovered that even children in the school are often saying that well my grandmother was speaking Serbian she was Serb my father he is speaking only German and he is German so my father is German he wouldn't say my father is Serbian who do not speak the language but then a lot of people say but you know it is not so easy because our brothers the Lower Serbs have this situation for them it is important so even on this kind of level even if I spoke with people who really identified use of the language with being a member of the community because of the knowledge of Lower Serbs and their situation they could make this distinction that it is not like this for all and I would say that this problem between you know the importance of the language to create the identity is also a very very individual thing and I would say that if not basing on the proper research on the community and you're also the anthropological background is important we cannot say that the relation between language and identity is such or such it's it's very very differentiated I this word problematised again I like to problematise the notion of community because you mentioned it meaning different things different people a lot and I think we tend to overuse it as a term and I tend to essentialise it if you like and if you mentioned you know there can be widely dispersed communities online communities who belongs to a community is a fluid thing in different people's views and yes it's like the same problem with the notion of speaker community but even I would say maybe more difficult because we overuse the term community and it is like very difficult to attach any like precise definition to it because we use it every time in any occasion but yes I think it is also very important to have it in mind when using this note especially when describing like the speech communities well thank you very much for your questions and anyway thank you