The entire story referred to a contribution from the "taz" from 2004, which described Austria-Hungary as an example of the difficulties of a culturally diverse state. According to it, differing foreign policy interests of the largely autonomous halves of the empire had complicated a common line; also, the introduction of Hungarian as a command language alongside German could have weakened the army. The contribution also portrayed the use of various national languages in the parliament of Cisleithania as an obstacle to common decisions: representatives could have spoken in their respective languages without any time limits, while there was no interpreting service. The historian Brigitte Hamann reportedly lamented, according to the text, that incomprehensible speeches could have blocked parliamentary work for weeks. As a comparison, the "taz" cited 440 possible translation combinations for Europe with 21 official languages in the future. https://t.co/bPBpAGYUKh #Multikulturalismus #Sprachenvielfalt #Geschichte (translated)
