What are the minority language policies in your country?

I thought you said the French province was boring and yet there seems to be quite a variety.

Yes it's boring, i just said all the people aren't the same. I have travelled around France a few time, especially in Auvergne, Dauphiné and Normandie and noticed bacause this is logic some differences.

But it still being boring, even if some places are beautifull (not all!), province stay province. So there is a variety, who could deny it? I don't...but all these places are not Paris.

Nicolas

It is one thing to say that you like or dislike a place. It's fine. Of course, everybody should be allowed to live wherever they want to.

I was referring to the linguicide that has been taking place in France for centuries. I mean, surely, it happened all over the developed world in the past, but the trend has mostly been reversed in the civilized world. Look at the steady growth of Welsh and Irish in the UK and Ireland. Look at the tremendous strength of Québécois French.

However, there are still places like France and Greece in the Western world, where linguistic minorities are persistently being denied their rights.

I think the EU should do sth. about it.

.

Dear Ved:
I agree and not only this, France is also doing everything possible to avoid co-official languages in neighbouring countries becoming official in Europe. Catalan is co-official for over 11 million people in Spain, as much as Greek, and yet France is frightened it might affect the status of Catalan spoken in an area of 300.000 people in France. The same with Basque spoken by almost 1 million people on the Spanish side of the border and perhaps 100.000 on the French side. Alsatian -actually a German dialect- is widely spoken by all generations in Alsace... What makes me more angry is when they all seem to agree that these and other languages are dead. We don't teach them because they don't exist. It is downright revolting and it makes me sick. Occitan is still spoken by over 2 million people within their homes, of course.

SO you must fight for that and vote no for the next referendum

I can assure there's much more than that, in a peaceful civilised manner, that can be done if the French insist in interfering with foreign policies. The first thing is to convince more French citizens that France is behing the rest of the civilised world as far as this issue is concerned.

behind and not behing

Lo único que quiero decir es que me alegro de que la situación sea mucho mejor en España. Espero que mejore en Francia también.

Que tengas un feliz año nuevo. Yo también me alegro aunque siempre se puede mejorar.

I'll have to add my two cents in Italian (and English so everyone can understand), but I understood both of you, Ved and Jordi.

Anch'io. È ovvio che in Francia la situazione è molto male e mi fa schifo perché Francia si descriva come aperto, però non è vero. In realtà, Francia è solo una ipocrita.

Buon anno a voi qui ad Antimoon!

I feel the same. It's obvious in France the situation is very bad and it disgusts me because France describes itself as open, but it's not true. Really, France is just a hypocrite.

Happy New Year to all of you here at Antimoon!

What kind of minority language policies does Germany have?

No one seems to ever talk about that?

What about Sweden, Norway and Finland? They have sizeable linguistic minorities. How do they treat them. I'm curious.

As far as the Scandinavian countries go, there are extensive and well-funded programs in place there to preserve linguistic diversity. (Immigrant languages across Scandinavia + Finland), Sami (Lapp) in all four countries, Swedish in Finland, German in Southern Denmark etc.

I do not know what the policies in Germany are, but they do have a sizeable minority of Sorbians in the East, who speak two West Slavic languages. In the past, they were the target of ferocious Germanization. I believe this must have changed now.

Toasté,


From north to south Germany, the german was not the same.

Tiffany,


It's the same in Italy, did they try to erase french from Val d'Aoste????!!!!!