In wich european country the official language was not spoken by the majority of its population?

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

In wich european country the official language was not spoken by the majority of its population in the XIX CENTURY?

[Batavia]

In Austria-Hungary German was one of the official languages, but I think most people had other native languages.
Most understood little German though imho.

[Anaximander]

U forgot the first Hellenic Republic of 1830, Albanians claim majority was speaking Albanian.

[Universe]

Latin was official language of Hungary in most of its history, until 19th century.

[Universe]

In Austria-Hungary German was one of the official languages, but I think most people had other native languages.
Most understood little German though imho.

Fun fact: Must = muszáj in hungarian, which comes from the german "es muss sein".

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

U forgot the first Hellenic Republic of 1830, Albanians claim majority was speaking Albanian.

Yes, I thought that the hellenic republic and kingdom of greece will bring a lot of controversy, but the poll is already quite big.

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

BUMP

[Tooting Carmen]

Until the 19th century, 50%+ of the population of France didn't actually speak French, and one of the purposes of the Revolution was to centralise the country and its education and impose French on everyone. Also, until WWII people in Italy mostly spoke only dialects, rather than Standard Italian.

[Universe]

Latin was official language of Hungary in most of its history, until 19th century. In official documents western name order was used (given name first, surname second) and people had latin given names (in documents anyway). Hungarians have been using hungarian name order since 1840s (or eastern name order: surname first, given name second).

From quora:
"Why was Latin the official language of Hungary (from 1000 until 1844 IIRC) and not Hungarian?"

Why? Because Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, remained a living language in much of Europe until the mid-19th century. For example, in the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) too, Latin was the official language until 1847 (at that time, Croatia was an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Hungary which itself was part of the Austrian Empire).

Back then, most of the Croatian and Hungarian clergy, nobility and professionals like lawyers and doctors would have been educated in Latin and many if not most learned books were printed in Latin only. The advantage of this was that the educated classes (at least) throughout Europe could communicate using one common language — like we can today in English.

On the other hand, peasants and manual workers would have had rudimentary education only, but of course in their own language — Croatian, Hungarian, German or whatever. This gradually changed after the revolution in 1848 which brought many changes, eventually including compulsory universal education.

Because the Kingdom of Hungary was a very multiethnic state and (at least) educated people spoke Latin but it was not so obvious that they spoke also Hungarian. You should take into account that e.g. according to the first modern census cca 2/3 of people in the Kingdom of Hungary were not Hungarians. In addition, Latin is neutral and it avoids unnecessary ethnic tension.

Ah, Latin. The language of the elite — not of a bunch of Hungarian peasants.

The Latin language was used for literature, administration, and religious purposes. Meaning it was only devoutly studied and used by 1.) the nobles and royals and 2.) the clergy.

Sure, Hungarian was spoken then, even among the Hungarian elite — but what happens when a foreign diplomat comes to visit and wants to negotiate with the King? OR what if, say, you are the Hungarian King and you need to write a letter to the King of Poland? That’s right. Latin, baby.

Often these parties would use a “common language” that they both learned outside of their native languages in order to converse. These “cross over” languages were usually Latin or Italian.

This was also influenced by, you guessed it, The Church (those sneaky devils!) Back in the olde days the word of God was always preached in Latin. In order to understand those precious religious principles which were the very basis of a Medieval persons life, one must learn Latin.

It should not come as a surprise, however, that most common people heard these sermons all their lives never truly knowing what was being said, outside of what was translated or explained to them. Most peasants were pretty uneducated. They did not know how to read or write, let alone in Latin, nor did they have the means to learn any foreign languages. Therefore being able to extensively and intrinsically understand the word of God was reserved for the nobles and royalty.

Most non-Latin “mother tongues” did not even have solid written formats until after the “Age of Enlightenment” in the early 18th century. Notice I said “non-Latin” there as Latin based languages definitely had an advantage. They had written forms which circulated all over Europe well before Hungarian. Which means it was categorically better if you spoke Old French or Spanish or Italian in those times.

For example “Old Italian” was formalized (“standardized”) beginning in the 13th-14th centuries. The oldest document to exist in “Old Italian” so to speak is the Veronese Riddle which is dated in the 8th century. It goes like this;

se pareba boves in front of him he led oxen

alba pratalia araba white fields he plowed

albo versorio teneba a white plow he held

negro semen seminaba black seed he sowed

… Can you solve it?

The oldest Hungarian document which is dated 1192 is written only partially in olde Hungarian.

So it was a combination of political and situational factors. The Hungarian language took longer to mature into written word paired with the fact that Hungarian wouldn’t have made a very useful “official language” in those times; it would have been horribly inefficient. Imagine King Matthias Corvinus demanding that The Pope learn Hungarian just so they could correspond with each other.

Yeah. Probably wouldn’t have worked out that well.

Best,

A.

Hungarian was a bit primitive language before the language-reform that took place during the first decades of the 19th century. It was incapable of clearly expressing scientific concepts, and several scholars found the vocabulary a bit scant for literary purposes. It was not able to fill the role of an official language. Ferenc Kazinczy was the most notable leader of that movement which goal was to compensate for these imperfections. Some words were shortened; a number of dialectal words spread nationally; extinct words were reintroduced; and a wide range of expressions were coined using the various derivative suffixes, making use of the agglutinative structure of the Hungarian language. That movement produced more than ten thousand words, many of which are used actively today. The reforms led to the installment of Hungarian as the official language over Latin in the kingdom in 1844. Kazinczy’s contemporaries opposed his ideas, and often made fun of him, but his reforms contributed greatly to the survival of the Hungarian language.

I think that because the church language was Latin.

Secondly, because the Latin was the written language of the Church, and from this it became the written language in state.

Thirdly, because it was a rich language, and many people needed new terms, previously not existing in Hungarian.

Fourthly, because the Hungarians needed to communicate and back then it was difficult to translate from one language to another. Being in relation with Pope, Latin was used for political relations, especially the external ones.

These are just some of my guesses, I’m not an expert

It was the international language at the time used in diplomacy, partially due to the prominence of the the catholic church. People from different countries could effectively communicate without learning each other's language. It was similar to the way that French was the international language of diplomats to be supplanted, by English, as it is today.

Of course, the common people only knew Hungarian, and even educated Hungarians spoke Hungarian in their day to day conversation.

Since 1836, and not since 1867, the hungarian is the official language of Hungary. The Habsburg despota prefered the german, but the hungarian nobility sticked to the latin, and at the end they changed it to hungarian and not to german, as the Habsburgs requested. I think, that the latin language arrived to Hungary together with the christian religion. Of course the official language means, that if somebody had a request from the king, he wrote a letter in latin, but the peasanst at the fields used the hungarian language.

https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Latin-...-not-Hungarian

[Ruggery]

Until the 19th century, 50%+ of the population of France didn't actually speak French, and one of the purposes of the Revolution was to centralise the country and its education and impose French on everyone. Also, until WWII people in Italy mostly spoke only dialects, rather than Standard Italian.

Since French is one of the oldest modern European languages ​​since the Middle Ages (older than English and Spanish), it is strange that until just over a century ago the majority of the population did not speak French.

I believe that Italian and German were not spoken by the majority of the population until the 19th century.