By Christy Nichols and Jessica Nicholas Translated from the French by Jessica Nicholas Christy Nichols was an undergraduate major in biology, minoring in French, when she composed parts of this blog piece on the local language of Alsace-Lorraine, a region of France, in spring 2012 in the European Union Center’s ‘Language and Minorities in Europe (418)’course. Jessica Nicholas is a PhD Candidate in the Department of French, specializing in French Linguistics. She has a particular interest in language ideologies, variation, and education. She is one of the associate editors of the EUC blog site Linguis Europae, and shaped Christy’s blog entry into its current form. The French region of Alsace-Lorraine is one of the most important territories in the European Union, because the region shares its borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Switzerland, and it hosts dozens of international organizations. It possesses a tumultuous history, torn for centuries between Germany and France....