But I don't think the French really care about how other cultures work. It's all nationalist nonsense and living in the glorious past for them. See Strasbourg.
I'm quite certain the position of French-Canadians has little to do with « entitlement », and more with how trapped they feel. Not that Anglo-Canadians would give a rats ass about the actual motives of Québec's cultural policy, as long as it can get weaponized for political currency.
Frankly this entire thread reeks.
Not that I believe that the rest of Canada somehow has the moral high ground or something but what is going on in Quebec language wise is frankly completely non-understandable from an outsider's point of view. From that both sides have good and bad arguments in the debate but at this point things are just silly. It feels like a never ending blood feud. The vicious cycle has to be broken.
Yes the Anglos weren't nice to French speakers. I sympathize.
Now the French speakers want to legislate doing the same to Anglos? Are they crazy? Sorry but sympathy withdrawn immediately!
Ireland kept its Gaelic language. And nobody speaks it.
Also I fail to see how this would impact the usage of French in France if the official language within the EU institution is English? The EU as an institution is comprised of a couple of thousand people from all over the EU, it would have no impact whatsoever on French as a spoken language. French is no longer the lingua franca, English is and therefore it makes more sense to use English as the common language within the EU institutions. Anything else is political currency as you so aptly mentioned.
French has also been a traditional common language or diplomacy and international relations. It's probably got more inertia going for it in those circles than German would.
If Quebec did not enforce language laws then English would end up driving out French except for decorative, heritage functions.
The result of the language laws is that we have a part of North America strongly bound in to not just a significant part of the EU but also to Vietnam, large parts of Africa and the rest of la Francophonie. Not a bad thing at all.
https://qz.com/africa/1428637/french-is-worlds-fifth-spoken-...
The European Parliament would love to pick up and leave Strasbourg, but it is legally bound to meet there several times a year for a full session despite the majority of its work being in Brussels.
Yes, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Strasbourg is the capital of a region which was highly contested between France and Germany and changed hands multiple times in the last two centuries and is seen as a symbole of the reconciliation between the two countries. It's also not linked at all with the fact it was already the seat of the Council of Europe when the parliament was put there.
Also, the EU doesn't have two capitals. It has none.
The symbolic rhetorical cover is interesting, irrelevant, and fulfilled by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and other CoE institutions. More importantly, the European Union already symbolically represents a reconciliation between its member nations encompassing more than merely Germany and France.
Basing the European Parliament out of Strasbourg for a time may have made sense as it could share a building with an existing pan-European institution, but to keep it legally bound to continue spending a minority of the year there when the bulk of the EU’s institutions that the European Parliament is concerned with are in another city in another country is just silly and entirely rectifiable.
That's what people call a de facto capital. Still the EU intentionaly has no capital in its laws.
> The symbolic rhetorical cover is interesting, irrelevant
It's in no way irrelevant nor a cover. It's the reason Strasbourg was selected as the seat of the parliement in the 50s.
You can't discard facts because they don't suit your worldview. I will personally stop this pointless discussion.
It’s also what people just call a capital.
> It's in no way irrelevant nor a cover. It's the reason Strasbourg was selected as the seat of the parliement in the 50s.
In the 1950s.
First: the given justification for any policy decision particularly in democratic societies is always rhetorical. Rhetoric is intended to persuade. Factual accuracy is not mutually exclusive with rhetoric.
Second: It was in 1992 that the decision was made to keep the European Parliament in Strasbourg per the decision of Edinburgh European Council of 11 and 12 December 1992.[1]
Prior to this it was already located in Strasbourg, which for a time did make sense. However when the European Union chose to revisit this issue, it chose not to consolidate its institutions into one location, but to keep them spread apart and thus the European Parliament now splits its time between what are effectively two capital cities with all the additional overhead costs this incurs in the time and money of the taxpayers and the productivity of the MEPs and staff.
[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/20492/1992_december_-_... [page 47] [pdf]