In identifying causes of and influences on the abandonment of the use of the mother tongue among speakers outside the borders of the "mother country", in this case Slovene, research usually looks at factors that arise from the narrower (mainly family) environment and the wider socio-political context, whereas there seems to have been no research into the influences of the negative evaluation of dialects; at certain times this has even come from linguists in Slovenia and has been passed on by teachers of Slovene. This contribution is based on thoughts brought about by the testimony of a Carinthian Slovene who was directly affected by (un)professional behaviour of this kind, as well as the statements of other Carinthian Slovenes that similarly confirm the occurrence of this completely misguided attitude to dialectal varieties; sadly, this was one of the key factors in the mass replacement of Slovene by German as the language used at home and for everyday communication.
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