And this Sorbian language has a lot of dialects. But the language still survived, all over the centuries. There were a lot of sovereigns all over Europe, who gave the order its forbidden to use the origin language. But this was nearly not possible to steal the people their linguistic identity.
In Tyrol (Austria) and South Tyrol (Italy), a lot of people speak both languages: Austrian German and Italian. But they still have an own language in South Tyrol, called Ladinian. And this language is completely different to Italian or German. They have also different dialects in the Ladinian language. This language is teached at school, that it might not get lost. Makes a lot of identification to their homeland.
Look at Switzerland: Three official languages German, French and Italian. But also "Rätherromanisch", an old language which is the fourth official language used in Switzerland. Or Belgium: they have their Belgian language, Dutch and French and also Flemish language. Its a kind of mixture between Belgian and Dutch - but an official language.
But also in Yugoslavia, they created an official language for authority stuff and each part of the country kept the own language like Slovenian, Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian, and so on. People didn't lost their identity keeping their language. During the cold war, in the east European countries every student had to learn Russian, because Soviet Union was the big brother. But normally they hated it, to learn the language of the occupying country...
We Europeans are used to a lot of languages...
Oh, maybe its a little bit like in America, where the immigrants brought their language with them and still nowadays they can speak a funny kind of German or other languages, which were used 200 years ago in the country they came from. Language can survive!
Biggi.