The transmission of languages in multilingual majority-minority contexts is influenced by language ideologies and language attitudes. In this paper I explore language ideologies in the Upper Sorbian Catholic community and language practices related to them. Based on biographic interviews with members of a linguistically mixed family, I also ask about the impact of overt strategies in everyday language choices. The family in question came to adopt a conscious family language policy based on the members’ positive attitudes towards Sorbian and based on their consciousness about community language practices that hamper the transmission of Sorbian in linguistically mixed environments. A positive attitude towards the minority language is a necessary, but not sufficient prerequisite to question habitual community language practices and consciously modify them. The families’ language behavior suggests that consciously modified language practices are adopted in certain domains, in this case mainly in that of the home.
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