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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

This behavior isn't limited to France. French Canada sure would like it if more people spoke French.

Perhaps this can be generalized? Language entitlement seems to be a thing among French speaking regions. Whether it's French Canada, French Belgium or France?

Funny to see so much drab posturing about our supposed « language entitlement » while almost calling for languages to be rolled over and wiped out by English.

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.

Indulge us, what are those actual motives?

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 Sorry but sympathy withdrawn immediately!

Who is saying they want languages to be wiped out by English? Using the most common language seems like a no brainer that doesn’t have to anything to do with wanting to hurt other languages.

Speaking as an anglophone I think you are entirely correct. Quebec is majority Francophone and has a right to stay that way. In addition it is also fun and interesting. This thread is clearly pitched at people that get off on Freedom Fries.

This isn't about changing the native language to English, France gets to keep its French language. This is about using the language that most people understand in the entire EU. French is not that language, English is. The vote went probably like this... We can choose between French and German, cause Britain left the EU. German is disliked by more countries than French hence French won. The end result is we need more interpreters and it costs the tax payers more money.

>This isn't about changing the native language to English, France gets to keep its French language

Ireland kept its Gaelic language. And nobody speaks it.

That development took 2 centuries, that's a pretty normal evolution to be honest. Languages grow and die organically.

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.

> German is disliked by more countries than French hence French won.

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.

That's good point, I suspect it's more a question of time before English replaces French in the UN and similar institutions though.

Even more so in the case of Quebec which sees itself as an enclave surrounded by English-speaking nations.

Well, that is because it _is_ an enclave in which speaking French is the majority "normal" and surrounded by provinces in which speaking English is normal.

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.

With the advent of the internet and the new generations of Quebecers being mostly online, as well as being generally more educated in english than their parents through standard school curriculum, I expect this to change in the next hundred years. I’m 28 years old now and I welcome this future, being isolated has a great price.

The current government is certainly intent on reversing that tide though. Especially now with who has or hasn't the right to education in English.

It's mostly Africa. The presence in Vietnam and the rest of Asia has declined.

https://qz.com/africa/1428637/french-is-worlds-fifth-spoken-...

https://languagesinconflict.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/115/

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