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Article: Tongue watch
- Article from:
- Jerusalem Post
- Article date:
- December 3, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightProvided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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GWYNNE DYER
Jerusalem Post
12-03-1995
LAST month, the newly independent nation of Slovakia passed a law banning any language except Slovak in almost all public places.
This would be of no interest to the rest of the world - except that 11 percent of Slovakia's 5 million citizens speak Hungarian. Slovak law now obliges all public employees to speak Slovak.
As Ludovit Cernak, deputy chairman of the opposition Democratic Union party, pointed out before the law was passed, even Slovak opera singer Peter Dvorsky might now be liable to prosecution if he sang an aria in Italian. And the day after the law passed, the European Parliament passed a motion asking the Slovak government to "respect ...