Ladin Holds On in the Dolomites as Visitors Multiply

France 24 reported this week that Ladin, described as one of the oldest minority languages in Europe, is still spoken by roughly 30,000 inhabitants of the Dolomites, even as the mountains around them draw millions of visitors a year. The broadcaster framed the story around refusal: villages that will not give up on a language only they understand. The report places Ladin among Europe's small, protected tongues rather than among those already lost.

The Dolomites are not the only Alpine range where a minority language sits inside a mass tourism economy. The same pressure — seasonal populations, second homes, service work in a language visitors do not speak — is familiar across the arc of the Alps, and the foreign coverage of Ladin treats it as a general Alpine question rather than an Italian curiosity.