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Comment by eeks | Hacker News Reader

It certainly is not "the French". It's the "French Republic". Local dialects lived happily in France for over a Millennia under the Monarchy. The French dialect, mostly spoken in the Jacobin circles in Paris, was imposed by the revolutionaries as a mean to achieve "equality".

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Also "the language"? The french republic started actively suppressing all local languages (breton, auvergnat, arabic, kabyle, …) starting from the mid 19th century and until late in the 20th, this ramped up significantly with the free, universal and mandatory education laws of 1881 and 1882: all education was done in french.

Alsatian is probably one of the local languages which suffered least due to Alsace having been conquered by Germany in 1870, and being reintegrated with its own set of laws and exemptions in 1918.

Hell, the republic just grouped everything which wasn't standard french under patois, regardless of them being languages, dialects, creoles, ….

Though just so we're clear, this is a long-standing issue of the french state and its centralised habits: Louis XIV banned Catalan back in 1700.

Although the French Revolution started the first concerted effort at suppression, L’Academie Francaise was created over 100 years earlier by Richelieu. I feel like the only reason the monarchy didn't impose its edicts is that they just didn't care about the common people that much one way or the other :)

> Although the French Revolution started the first concerted effort at suppression, L’Academie Francaise was created over 100 years earlier by Richelieu. I feel like the only reason the monarchy didn't impose its edicts is that they just didn't care about the common people that much one way or the other :)

They did though, Louis XIV banned Catalan in 1700.

Although I guess it was not really about the "common people" and more about legal and official acts being in Catalan in Roussillon/Northern Catalonia[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Catalonia

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.

This is not true. The standardization of the french language started with Francois I, centuries before the revolution.

I'd like to know more. In New France, the majority was from northwestern France (Normands, Poitevins, etc.) but somehow they managed to settle on a language that is surprisingly similar to Parisian French despite the accent and informal terms whose northwestern roots are clear (according to the linguists that I've read). So did the colonists of New France build on the efforts of François 1er?

The language divide was mostly north/south with also a few other languages at the margins (Breton, Basque, Alsacien).

Normands spoke French long before some emigrated to North America. Just ask the English.

True, but I think of the French author who visited Québec in the 19th century long after the conquest and noted that the purity of the language was better than in much of France at the time. Or something like that, I can't find the reference right now. Was the author talking of the division north-south or of a greater diversity than you suggest? Hard to tell.

The version of French that became standard French was not exactly the language spoken in Paris (the local Parisian accent has mostly disappeared now but it can be heard in old movies) but the one spoken in Western France, where the French nobility lived and spent time (the Loire valley is now known for the castles they built there).

In addition, when the colonists settled in New France and mixed together, standard French (the concept probably wasn't there at the time, but administrative French maybe) was the natural common denominator for them.

The ordinance of Villers-Coterets[1] was limited to legal documents, whereas the efforts led during the Terror were aimed at eradicating local languages[2], seen as so many shackles keeping the peasants from being enlightened.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_Villers-Cotter%C3... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France#Fren...

Languages in France were regional, not depending on your political views...

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