I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century. Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Ukrainian state rewrites history like there was no yesterday, but you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991. I wonder if you could find a school that will teach any Languedoc, anywhere in Languedoc.
I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
Sadly I gave up studying French and focused on Russian and German. I have experience in all countries and after being in France I was so disheartened I gave up. My uni grades for French reflect this :(
The joy of a Russian who hears you at least try to speak Russian vs. the French baker who barks at you in response in English
I lived in the Alsace region of France for awhile and there is a local dialect of German/French there called Alsatian. We used to ride our bikes down the Levee to a village called Le Wantzeneau and get the local version of Pizza from a food truck.
The language is, as I've suggested, a weird combination of both French and German, and it seems to be spoken through the nose somewhat. It reminded me a lot of Cajun French, which I heard a lot of as a kid.
I'm really for maintaining regional languages. I missed out on a Cajun French revival as a kid but I'm planning on sending my son down for immersion camp.
In an era where economies of scale are an overwhelming pressure on culture, maintaining a region's own weird language is kind of rebellion. It calls to mind the Cajun folk hero Dudley LeBlanc who skirted FDA regulation on his bullshit patent medicine (itself merely a way of bypassing the prohibition on alcohol sales) by advertising it on local Cajun French radio stations (which regulators had trouble understanding). Speaking multiple languages is anti-authoritarian!
I grew up here and was taught German and French (at least at an incredibly basic level) at school but I would by no means class myself as bilingual! I struggle even going on holiday to France!
Of my colleagues, hardly any remember any French or German from school, despite it being taught. I think there is a large gulf between being taught it at school and classing as bilingual.
True, the 'French republic' was never a friend of regional identity and it continues today. Unfortunate that the policies have diminished the mosaic that is France and also for intergenerational links and the economic opportunities that were lost.
I think of my Alsatian colleagues that learnt their regional language mostly from their grandparents. That skill is still very useful on the other side of the border but you wouldn't know it if you ask the ministry of education in Paris: the dialect of the Haut-Rhin is relatively close to Baseldüütsch and for those that didn't learn at home, bilingual school opened the doors of employment to a lot of people there. There is a net regression of Alsatians who are functional in German, either dialect or standard. Good job opportunities in Basel are being increasingly filled by Germans as the generations progress, while the economy stagnates in France. Back at home, the regional reorganization of France under Hollande is unlikely to help efforts to preserve the regional language since Alsace has been incorporated into a mostly francophone eastern megaregion that has little interest to spend money on the promotion of some 'backwards' regional language or even the foresight to encourage a second language that is not English.
Anyway, the discouragement of regional languages is not only a problem in France, as others have noted. Next door in Switzerland, the regional patois like arpitan (a variety of franco-provençal, perhaps related to Occitan) were discouraged for a long time. Completely different to the approach adopted in Alemanic Switzerland.
My personal opinion: the desire to 'live together' starts on the local, not national level so more efforts are needed in that direction for a functional society and regional languages help.
There _used_ to be many dialects spoken in France, like in most European countries.
They really disappeared in earnest at the end of the 19th century when school was made compulsory, and exclusively in French, with children being punished for speaking any other language.
Eh, France also has a number of languages that are distinctly not French. But it also has a long history of being a heavily centralized state where everything revolves around Paris, and other languages/dialects were ruthlessly suppressed for a long time.
> Back in the middle ages, when the French conquered Britain, the ruling class spoke French and the peasants spoke English.
This features quite a bit in War and Peace, too. As tensions increase between France and Russia as Napoleon takes over much of Europe and war between the countries looms, you'll find Russian nobility taking Russian language classes, because their first language is French!
Swiss here. Many if not most not actually speak two languages (we have 4 btw) or at least not enough to have actual conversations. I even know people who live in split cities (also that's a thing, one river side German and one french) who basically avoid the French side and barely speak it either.
There are many exceptions to this for sure, after all German part has french for like 4 years at school. And older people more likely actually learned the language to the point of speaking it, younger people are usually much more skilled in English as their second language whatever they are French, German.
That may be true for some languages such as Occitan or Picard but others were purposefully killed by the republic. Alsatian for instance was forbidden in schools. If prestige only was at play Alsatians may have mostly became bilinguals (similar situation exists in Africa, Hong-Kong, India) instead of unilingual speakers of French.
I have studied in France and this is not true from my experience. Greek and Latin were and will be for the good students (Hollande removed that but it'll be back).
The choice between German and Spanish is made by the parents except if there is a lack of German teachers.
If you try to speak Russian, no matter how broken, you will be encouraged and praised by every Russian person out there, no exceptions. The same is with Spanish. With French, it doesn't work this way, for some reason.
Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Ukrainian state rewrites history like there was no yesterday, but you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991. I wonder if you could find a school that will teach any Languedoc, anywhere in Languedoc.
I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
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