Coming from Quebec, I understand why people are worried about their language being strangled out and their culture dying with it. For Quebec this has always been a threat.
I live in Germany now. There are 10-15 times more German speakers in the DACH area than there are French speakers in Quebec. Even then, it’s weird that companies no longer bother translating their ads and slogans for the German-speaking market. It’s somewhat sad that every culture is slowly becoming a vaguely American, California-based culture.
Language and culture are intertwined. I feel that with the globalisation of both, something of value is lost. It’s only right to feel concerned about it.
>> Coming from Quebec, I understand why people are worried about their language being strangled out and their culture dying with it.
One of the most fascinating things I learned about language in college when I was working towards my degree in Anthropology, a graduate student who was my class did their Master's on the linguistic differences between European French and the French Canadian (specifically the Quebec version) versions of the language. She did extensive research on the origins of the language and why they diverged.
Absolutely fascinating work.
On a lighter note, I happened to play hockey with many, many Canadian players. My best friend was from Ottawa and everybody asked him if he spoke French and said he did and said, "Its like here, you feel like you're speaking French with a Kentucky accent." which always got a good laugh from our teammates.
The story I heard about how Rumantsch (~40k L1) became the 4th language of switzerland is that one day toward the middle of last century, after Mussolini said that rumantsch speakers were just a bunch of farmers who didn't know how to speak proper italian, the swiss people essentially said « Esti d'épais à marde ! » by voting to make it official.
Yes but actually the use is still going down, because so many people from those regions are moving to Zürich and larger cities. There are more speakers in Zürich now.
I know some people that talk to there parents in Rumantsch that but most likely wont teach it to their children.
It will survive but its not really thriving either. Other languages is a great way to push against an 'enemy' language, like the revival of Gaulish in Ireland.
But we will get pretty good AI of it since there is so much official documentation in it.
Quebec French has almost 8m speakers, including L1 use in urban agglos, so (pace the simpatics giuvens of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n9OPhX6GYw ) it's in a much better position.
I wonder if the spread of English is because it's like a barycenter pulled by multiple languages, so not too far afield if coming from any of those languages.
I think it has a lot more to do with the global British Empire pre-WWI followed by American dominance post WWII. Perhaps there's an argument that the success of both had at least a small contribution from the characteristics of the language.
My thoughts are that any language that can embed other languages in it has the capacity to be a global lingua franca. English was firstest with the mostest.
I live in Germany now. There are 10-15 times more German speakers in the DACH area than there are French speakers in Quebec. Even then, it’s weird that companies no longer bother translating their ads and slogans for the German-speaking market. It’s somewhat sad that every culture is slowly becoming a vaguely American, California-based culture.
Language and culture are intertwined. I feel that with the globalisation of both, something of value is lost. It’s only right to feel concerned about it.