Comment by dmytroi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmytroi | Hacker News Reader

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As someone living in EU, there is a practical limit to this. Languages NEEDS should be satisfied: For example, a translator should be provided to someone not speaking common languages (for the area) trying to get medical care.

But language WANTS might not be economically viable. For example in Scandinavia, Sami people (estimated population <100k) demanded all government interaction (documents, services, etc) to be translated in all their dialects (there are 11+ dialects, which are different in writing). Amount of work to be done to support that request would be astonishing.

Ironically the same true for French. There are 20+ very different dialects, is Quebec ready to work in all of them on government level? Or are we talking about le français standard?

So there is some practical limits to this, and so far EU is handling it's ok-ish. EU-wide systems are available in all official languages of all members, and minority languages are embraced when practical.

Where are you coming up with 20 different dialects of French? Are you talking about the various French-based creole languages, which are totally separate languages (e.g., someone from France has essentially no hope of understanding a native Hatian Creole speaker). If that's what you mean it's a bit silly to call them "dialects" instead of "separate languages" because Haitian Creole and French are as different as English and French.

Or are you talking about the various regional languages/dialects/"patois" in France? If so, sure, many could be called "dialects of French" but they aren't spoken at all outside of France so it isn't really relevant to Quebec.

I'm referring to a fact that before economical needs created unified time / measurement system / language, each region had their own language-dialect. For example Gallo-Romance languages and so on [0].

- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France

Yes, you're right. And those dialects still exist; I know people (born before WWII in semi-rural areas) whose first language was something so different from the standard that it'd have been very difficult for someone from Paris to understand.

But as far as I know, none of them are spoken in Quebec...

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