German-Mandarin, Syrian-German or Slovenian-German? On the valences of multilingualism
The nation state idea aspires to perfect monolingualism. The field of linguistics, on the other hand, regards multilingualism as something normal. And not all forms of multilingualism are alike: While some educated middle-class parents may opt to send their children to Mandarin lessons while they are still in kindergarten, Syrian-German speakers receive very little societal respect. ad astra spoke to the linguist Alexander Onysko and the educational scientist Hans Karl Peterlini about the status of multilingualism.
