Reading a minority language at school: The case of the Ladin reading book «Flus de munt»

This article starts from a special scientific interest regarding the historical textbooks of the Ladin school in the province of Bolzano. It subjects to a didactic and linguistic analysis the book «Flus de munt» [Mountain flowers], a reading book for primary schools of the Badia valley (South Tyrol), published in three editions between 1967 and 1978. Particularly, the question is asked, what didactic and linguistic relevance this book had and how it influenced the teaching of Ladin in the Ladin school in the years and decades following its publication. From a didactic point of view, it is of great importance to reconstruct with which objectives the book was produced and how this process was perceived by the authors themselves. Instead, from a linguistic point of view, «Flus de munt» stands out as one of the first schoolbooks written entirely in the Ladin language, using two Ladin variants for the same valley: the «Badiotto » and the «Marebbano». Moreover, the book plays a significant role in the development of a (linguistic and cultural) Ladin identity.