We'd have to carefully consider the political instability. Greece refuses to recognize the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, preferring to call it Skopje, after its capital. In Serb-controlled Kosovo, splinter of the former Yugoslavia, riot police this fall fought ethnic Albanian students who were protesting for the inclusion of instruction in their native language. Minority speakers, says Fantini, often see the political advantage of learning more widely spoken languages. But when the shift is forced, that's something else.
Language is so much who they are.
Persecution over speech There are plenty of examples of language politics giving rise to brutality - even an Old Testament precedent exists. During armed ethnic conflicts centuries later, language remained a tool for persecution. In the late 1970s during ethnic riots in Sri Lanka, Sinhalese forces at makeshift roadblocks stopped cars and forced passengers to say a phrase or two in Sinhalese, the majority language. Physically, they could not distinguish between Sinhalese and Tamils. But they could tell by word choice, accent, and intonation.