Unlike anywhere else in the world, in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Central Europe national movements and politicians made language into the paramount instrument of politics, and of statehood and nationhood legitimization. In this order of things, each nation wishing to be recognized in the inte[...]
Languages are formed into discrete entities, as we know them nowadays, by the technology of writing in the service of power centers, usually state capitals. All the choices made on the way - planned or not - amount to standardization which intensifies as the literate percentage of population increas[...]