How has the Slovene language community changed in the last hundred years, since the first outlines of a sovereign state for the Slovene people began to take shape, until the current situation where the independent Slovenia is almost thirty years old and has been in the European Union for fifteen years? Can we say that over these hundred years the Slovene-speaking community has matured? I shall discuss possible criteria for measuring the maturity of a language community, including linguistic self-confidence, linguistic responsibility and linguistic caution.
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