In the Dolomites, Thirty Thousand Speakers Keep Ladin Alive

France 24 has reported on the Ladin-speaking valleys of the Dolomites, where roughly 30,000 inhabitants speak a language the broadcaster describes as one of the oldest minority languages in Europe. The report sets that community against the mountains' growing popularity with tourists, which brings millions of visitors to the same valleys each year.

The story is a familiar one in the Alpine arc: a language that survives because it is spoken at home, in school and in local administration, in a landscape whose economy increasingly depends on people who do not speak it. France 24 frames the Ladin villages as refusing to give the language up rather than as losing it.

Emilia-Romagna has no Ladin valleys, but it shares the underlying arithmetic. The region's own mountain communities in the Apennines face the same thinning of year-round population while seasonal visitors increase, and the same question of which local institutions carry a way of life when the economy around them changes.