Bavarian conservatives demanded that foreigners living in the country speak German not only in public places but also at home
“Public tranquility is achievable only when everyone speaks the same language,” confidently assert the authors of this document, demanding that foreigners switch to German even when at home in their apartment. As Russkaya Germania writes, CSU politicians expect every immigrant to “start learning German.”
At the same time, those foreigners who entered Germany with no linguistic knowledge at all are offered help to learn a foreign language. Bavarian politicians also note that such assistance should be provided to people “taking into account their life situation”, that is, considering both the age and education level of immigrants.
In fact, no one in Germany has doubted the need for foreigners to have at least a basic knowledge of German. After all, it is clear to everyone that without this, normal integration of immigrants into German society is absolutely impossible. The other thing is that attempts by CSU politicians to force foreign residents of Germany to speak German at home clearly go beyond what is reasonable and cause nothing but bewilderment.
This position has already been clearly formulated by the secretary general of the Bavarian Social Democrats, Natascha Kohnen, who stated literally the following: “This is called a complete misfire. Now all we need is a language police to control everything. Then the absurdity of the CSU proposals will reach its peak.”
The leader of the Bavarian Greens, Eike Hallitzky, also sarcastically commented on the “innovative ideas” of the Christian Socialists: “It is impossible to imagine a greater disconnect from reality. All we need now is for the CSU to prescribe that residents of the country have a white-and-blue carpet (the colors of the Bavarian flag) at home.”
Even the CSU's closest political partner, the Christian Democratic Union, hastened to distance itself from the Bavarians' proposals. CDU Secretary General Peter Tauber, recalling the cult film series Star Trek, ironically wrote in his Twitter microblog: “I believe that politics should not care whether I speak Latin, Klingon, or Hessian at home.”
The CSU leadership now claims that the party's new proposals on future integration policy are not yet fully developed. This is only one of the projects that needs to be discussed. Thus, it is proposed to somewhat soften the wording, leaving only the requirement to use German “in everyday life”. The only thing that the Christian Socialists are now insisting on is a demand to the European Union to allocate additional billions to help the refugees who have poured into Germany in recent months.
BY THE WAY
The Klingon language, mentioned by Peter Tauber, actually exists; it was invented by the famous American linguist Marc Okrand, who specializes in creating languages for peoples from fantasy worlds featured in Hollywood films. This artificial language, used in the series Star Trek (Star Track), has a clear grammar and syntax, and a large vocabulary. In Pennsylvania, there is the Klingon Language Institute, which among other things publishes dictionaries and phrase books of this language, and also translates works of classical literature into Klingon. By the way, the Google search engine supports the Klingon language, and there is also an online translator from Russian to Klingon and back.