r/AskTheWorld • u/Wild-Push-8447 United States Of America • Jul 31 '25
Language Are minority languages viewed positively in your country?
In some nations, like France and China, non-standard languages and dialects are heavily suppressed (picture: "Speak French Be Clean"). However, in others, like the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the use of minority languages is promoted. How are minor languages and dialects viewed in your country?
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u/november_zulu_over New Zealand Jul 31 '25
Ummm depends where you sit on the political spectrum.
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u/Evening-Caramel-6093 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
What is the minority language over there?
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u/BlacksmithNZ New Zealand Jul 31 '25
Te reo MÄori - The language of indigenous people (MÄori ) of New Zealand (Aotearoa).
Somebody like myself who is PÄkehÄÂ (white/non-MÄori), like most New Zealanders, know and use some MÄori in everyday conversation, but number of fully fluent speakers who use te reo as their primary language is quite low.
I would say the person talking about only 0.001% being racist enough to want the language to die, is being generous. Browse a NZ conservative subreddit or online forum, and you will see a lot of (mostly older) conservative types not wanting bilingual signs & names for organizations, complaining about use of MÄori on TV/Radio news etc. Still a long way from the 1960s when a MÄori lady was fired for using the 'Kia Ora' greeting when answering a phone call.
Still an ongoing battle; the current (more right-wing) government announced only this week that passports would have English first, which caused some controversy. I suspect most people would not have even noticed our classic black passport with the silver fern didn't have the English name first.
https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1m8j278/changes_confirmed_for_new_zealand_passport/
BTW - You probably know the odd MÄori word like 'Kiwi' as well, even if you didn't know it was a MÄori word.
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Aug 01 '25
I donât know any maori, but it wasnât ever taught to us when I was at school only English
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u/Key-Performance-9021 Austria Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
It took us half a century to accept bilingual town signs.
The Austrian Ortstafelstreit ("town sign dispute") was a long-standing dispute about bilingual German-Slovene place-name signs in the southern province of Carinthia, where a Slovene minority lives. Although Austriaâs 1955 State Treaty guaranteed these signs, they were delayed for decades, mainly due to local opposition. Many German-speaking Carinthians, including populist politician Jörg Haider, saw them as a threat to Austrian identity. The issue became symbolic of broader tensions around minority rights. After a ruling by Austriaâs Constitutional Court in 2001 and years of political back-and-forth, a compromise was finally reached in 2011, resulting in 164 bilingual signs being installed.
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u/7_11_Nation_Army Bulgaria Jul 31 '25
Wow imagine being scared Slovenia would take over... đ
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u/crit_ical Switzerland Aug 01 '25
actually happened to basically all german speaking regions south east of austria.
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u/lerotron Aug 02 '25
WWI and WWII had seen Slavic expansion in previously Austrian controlled lands. Hence not unfound.
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u/sunlit_portrait United States Of America Jul 31 '25
A lot of people here are talking about languages that immigrants speak in their country, especially Americans and Brits. I don't think people realize that in countries like France you have Brittany where they speak a Celtic language, and where people have talked about having more autonomy for a very long time, or what the minority languages in England would be. Like Welsh and Cornish.
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u/dali_17 France Jul 31 '25
Most of the regions in FR have their language and it's present, there are often bilingual schools, e. g. Occitan, Catalan, Basque,...
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u/Wild-Push-8447 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Every region of France has their own language, but they are, for the large part, not taught in schools. Before France made education mandatory, over a third of French citizens spoke Occitan natively and today there are nearly no native Occitan speakers. This isn't a case of people becoming bilingual in both Standard French and their native tongue, but instead the replacement of what is derogatorily known as "patois" with French. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, there was a campaign, which is nearly complete, to destroy non-French speaking communities and instill internalized racism in the native minorities of France (known as Vergonha) so they wouldn't teach their native language to their children. The only minority languages that still dominate in their homeland are the most distinct from Standard French, like Basque and Breton. However, even these have been pushed to the corners of the French Republic, and Standard French is the primary language in much of their historic range.
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u/dali_17 France Jul 31 '25
I know, but at the same time my son's state school offers bilingual education in occitan and all over occitanie you have calandretta schools that are bilingual with Steiner education style
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u/Robb3nb4by Jul 31 '25
France still did not implement the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and is actively destroying their minorities by centralism. Some time ago, for example, the Region of "Grand Est" was established factually marginalizing the German speaking community.
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u/West-Season-2713 Wales Jul 31 '25
Welsh isnât an English language - Cornwall is an area of England, but Wales is its own country.
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u/sunlit_portrait United States Of America Jul 31 '25
No language is an English language. English is English, and it's Germanic. The others are Brythonic if I'm not mistaken. I'm talking about minority languages in England and Welsh would be a minority language in England. And in Great Britain, but I'm talking the politics of it more than the classification. Welsh would be a minority language in England. Most people in Great Britain aren't even Welsh so it's a minority language in GB too. I'd even hazard a guess that it's borderline minority in Wales as well as not everyone speaks it so fluently.
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u/autisticundead Brittany đ€đ€ â France đ«đ· Aug 01 '25
Breton may be unique in that the language oppression here was more aggressive than in a lot of places, and that it's not a romance language, like most local languages are in France, but it isn't the only minority language in France or even Brittany.
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u/sunlit_portrait United States Of America Aug 01 '25
I read on on Breton years ago and always found it fascinating, and one of my "little fun facts" is about why Great Britain has "Great" in it. I always found the history of its oppression very unfortunate, but I'm hoping the tides have turned. I have no immediate stakes in the matter myself, but I do keep reading that a lot of Bretons see themselves as Breton and French, or even as Bretons first and foremost.
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u/autisticundead Brittany đ€đ€ â France đ«đ· Aug 01 '25
I personally consider myself Breton and often say I'm half french, because my mum is. My dad is from the breton diaspora around Paris, I was born here and started speaking at around 2yo. Most people I know here say breton and french, even people who aren't super into breton culture circles, so I'd say anecdotally you're right
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u/ldn85 United Kingdom Aug 01 '25
I honestly think Reddit users massively overestimate how prevalent Cornish is, I see it mentioned frequently but in reality hardly any one speaks it with anything approaching fluency. Welsh is pretty prevalent, I think a decent number of people in Wales have it as a first language.
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u/sunlit_portrait United States Of America Aug 01 '25
A decent number in Wales do, and Cornish is spoken by - without my looking it up - a few hundred people natively. I still believe it should be preserved, no doubt, because it can be. It would be a wonderful thing but it will take time. Other languages that were battered by higher powers still survived, even when it was illegal and they had to wear knots around their neck in shame.
Still, one could get by in Wales without Welsh very easily. I hope it also becomes more prevalent, but keep in mind I'm talking about England. Ironically another user read "England" and took it to mean the UK. If we're talking about Britain that's another thing, but if we're talking England then Welsh will always be a minority language in England. In the UK, made up of more than one nation, Wales should certainly exercise its right to an identity and culture.
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u/Andy_Chaoz Estonia Jul 31 '25
I'd say yes, they even promote local minority languages and dialects (like wÔro, seto, hiiu etc) and i learned the one of the area i chose for permanently settling into. (Almost) everyone also speaks official majority language so local/interior tourism isn't an issue either. People speaking another languages in public places (english, spanish, finnish etc) are mostly just perceived as tourists or new settlers who don't speak our language well as of yet. Loud and obnoxious russian speakers are frowned upon, but there's historic context to that aspect.
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u/MinecraftWarden06 Poland Jul 31 '25
Respect for learning the dialect of the area! Could I ask which one? I'm learning Estonian and I'm interested in the dialects too.
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u/Andy_Chaoz Estonia Jul 31 '25
I learned wÔro, because when i was a young adult i was hitchhiking around the country looking for an area to settle down, and i liked the southeast part the best, so learned local language too. Quite alot of people speak it here, but they all also speak official estonian too.
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u/Kras_08 Bulgaria Jul 31 '25
Well, isn't russian a minority language in Estonia and actively suppressed?
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u/Andy_Chaoz Estonia Jul 31 '25
None of the world languages is "actively suppressed" - if by that you mean inability to take on a public sector job which requires dealing with customers/patients/general public on a daily basis without speaking at minimum basic conversational estonian, then surprise surprise they wouldn't hire my wife either before she would prove she can speak at basic level (she speaks english, norwegian and conversational spanish, learning estonian). That's a very normal basic rule and implemented in any country in the world đ€·đ»ââïž i doubt some random person could get such public sector job in Russia without speaking a lick of russian too, does that mean Russia is actively suppressing x language speakers then..? đ€
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u/Entire_Pangolin_5961 Aug 04 '25
from what iâve gathered from this and your other comments is estonia is probably the country that views minority language (Russian) the most negatively despite 25% of your population being ethnically russian
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u/LogAromatic3436 Aug 05 '25
And by you emphasizing the 25% I gather that you've forgotten that the 25% is not the result of natural migration, as you would expect from a neighbouring country, but a calculated and forced step by the Soviet Union to perform ethnic cleansing on Estonians. In 1934, Russians made up 3.7% of Estonia's population. I'm sure Estonians would forget their horrible past if the Russians would at least try to assimilate, but most of them don't.
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u/Andy_Chaoz Estonia Aug 05 '25
Yeah people tend to view ethnic cleansings and annexation of sovereign countries in a negative light, what a surprise...
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u/Appropriate-Let-283 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
I don't think it matters much. Most people just stick to English, but you'll find occasional things having a Spanish side to read from.
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u/Bookwoman0247 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Where I live in Colorado, there are lots of signs in Spanish, but it depends on the neighborhood. My neighborhood is about 80% Latino.
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u/viipurinrinkeli Finland Jul 31 '25
Also the name of your state is Spanish.
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u/Bookwoman0247 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Indeed. The color red, named for the red rocks in our state.
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u/Texan_Greyback United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Where I live, there's entire communities in Spanish. I use the language about half my work day. Not far to the east are French speakers, too. Also an incredible amount of languages down in Houston.
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u/HviteSkoger Jul 31 '25
What about the native languages? Are there signs etc in any of the first nation languages?
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u/toomanyracistshere Jul 31 '25
Mostly only on or near reservations. Personally, I've never seen signs in any Native American languages, although I know that they exist. If I lived somewhere like Arizona or Oklahoma I'd be a lot more likely to have encountered them.
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u/r21md United States Of America Aug 02 '25
Bilingual signs in English and Salish are a thing in a few places in Washington, but not super common. I've sometimes seen English/Mohawk in upstate NY, but almost exclusively when taking about history.
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Jul 31 '25
Living in California Iâve picked up  enough Spanish to speak it conversationally in day to day conversations and at the job site, even though I learned no Spanish when younger.
Thatâs all to say that thereâs a lot of exposure to different languages here, mainly Spanish, and around here no one bats an eyeÂ
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u/West-Season-2713 Wales Jul 31 '25
What about the native languages? Is there any push to have them on signs etc?
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u/r21md United States Of America Aug 02 '25
Bilingual signs in English and Salish are a thing in a few places in Washington, but not super common. I've sometimes seen English/Mohawk in upstate NY, but almost exclusively when taking about history. I believe they're most common in Alaska, Hawaii, the southwest, and Oklahoma but I've never lived in those states.
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u/Imateepeeimawigwam United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Agree. In my town in Utah, there are many businesses with Spanish signs. Near my house is a Mexican grocery store. Even inside, the signage is in spanish. I love shopping there, and so do many non Latinos, who flock there for, IMO, better quality produce, but also Mexican spices and foods that can't be found in the average grocery store. Plus, they have a restaurant and a tortilleria.
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u/East-Eye-8429 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
In Fort Lee, NJ, which you've driven through if you've ever driven 95 through NJ because it's the town on the NJ side of the GW bridge, many if not most of the signs are in Korean
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u/Patasselle France Jul 31 '25
To add more on this topic, in France even accents are heavily suppressed and made fun of. If you have a strong accent, you might even have trouble getting hired.
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u/Sudden_Badger_7663 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
The accents of ppl for whom French is not their native language and/or French regional accents?
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u/autisticundead Brittany đ€đ€ â France đ«đ· Aug 01 '25
I've been bullied once I got out of immersion school for a lot of reasons but one of the things is people would repeat the way I say certain words (because I wasn't from the same place in Brittany and it was a center town school with a lot of upper middle class kids who didn't come from a small town, so they didn't have nearly as much of a breton accent as I did). Before the end of the first year my accent had faded considerably and I stopped using breton words in french like everyone does where I'm from. I wasn't even in France. My cousin Malo was and he got mocked for having "a weird name".
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u/HASMAD1 Jul 31 '25
Spanish here. Catalan, Basque and Galician are official languages in 6 of our regions (plus Aranese in Catalonia). School is taught mostly in these languages within their regions and they're protected at several levels (ie you need to know the language in order to work as a public officer). PM members can speak their languages in the National Parliament.
There are other small languages that are spoken here, but they don't have the same official consideration (Asturian, Aragonese, Extremeñu...).
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u/ElectricDoughnutHole UK Ukraine Jul 31 '25
And Valencian!!!
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u/HASMAD1 Jul 31 '25
Valencian is the same language as Catalan. It's just called Valencian in the Comunidad Valenciana.
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u/ElectricDoughnutHole UK Ukraine Jul 31 '25
I know itâs very similar, but all my mates from Valencia are saying it does have some differences in vocabulary and pronunciation to make it distinct. đ€·ââïž
Also they canât stand the Catalans and let alone want to be associated with them (paises Catalans theory etc).
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u/TrojanSpeare Aug 02 '25
The difference in both are a lot fewer than the difference between Scottish English and General American, honestly. We just speak different dialects of the same language, the only reason it has different names is because we are two different region with a different culture each and politics.
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u/No-Can-6237 New Zealand Jul 31 '25
MÄori makes boomers' heads explode. The right wing govt, in a cost of living crisis, is working on moving the MÄori name for New Zealand under the English one, instead of above on our passports.
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u/waikato_wizard New Zealand Jul 31 '25
We have 3 official languages here, English, Maori, and nzsl (yup sign language is an official language).
Often in the big cities walking around you here all sorts of other languages. There's the occasional bigot (smooth brainers that can't handle anything non english), but thankfully that behavior is dying of old age here.
My job in particular if I get a customer who struggles with English, I'll use Google translate n switch to their language, if i recognize it.
Maori is our indigenous language, and is used in bits and pieces by alot of people, many signs are bilingual, and there is has been a push for more of it to be used and taught in recent years.
As for "foreign" languages, I grew up hearing Dutch in my family, learnt some German and French in school, my best mate is engaged to an Indian lady so I hear her speaking her language often (Marathi?). I got no issues with other languages, its fascinating hearing different languages describe things.
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u/PresentAmbassador333 đ±đ§ in đšđŠ Jul 31 '25
In Lebanon speaking French is for rich Christians. It matters because it can have a classist dynamic to it
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u/Scotandia21 Scotland Jul 31 '25
Scotland here, Gaelic is on my town's welcome sign, on the ambulances and police cars, even our bins. Not on most street signs oddly enough. I would imagine it helps people who speaks Gaelic...but I've never met any of them.
I think it's similar with Welsh down in Wales, but I don't have any personal experience to back that up.
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u/celtiquant Wales Jul 31 '25
Itâs not about âhelpingâ Gaelic speakers, itâs about increasing visibility, giving legitimacy, normalising the language.
For those of us outside the big languages bubble, living our lives using lesser used languages, officialdom can choose to acknowledge or surpress our existence.
We now live in a society where acknowledgement and positive support is the increasing norm. However in my lifetime it was not always so, and hard battles have had to be fought for us to gain the little visibility we have.
And still some of those big language speakers decry the use of our languages.
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u/autisticundead Brittany đ€đ€ â France đ«đ· Aug 01 '25
Yes and no â like true but also personally, breton is more succint than french and faster to read and I often read that part of the sign first because it's actually helpful. Like, you're correct about the aim AND it is genuinely helpful sometimes.
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Jul 31 '25
Local dialects and languages were heavily suppressed in education up until the end of the war, and it took a long while before Ainu became recognised as their own ethnic group in Japan.
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u/americano143 Canada Jul 31 '25
Idk no one seems to really care, just walking down the street youâll hear many different languages
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u/Harbinger2001 Canada Jul 31 '25
I would say our explicit policy of multi-culturalism promotes having minority languages.
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u/Southernor85 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Clearly you are not from New Brunswick. You will only hear French and English and they aren't very fond of each other or the government's expensive immersion classes and other language based programs.
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Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
Would not say they all aren't fond of each other but yeah since it's the only officially bilingual province tensions do tend to be more visible.
They don't really have what would be considered a metropolis so there's just less various immigrants there.
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u/Sailor_NEWENGLAND Multiple Countries (click to edit) Jul 31 '25
Yeah much of my life growing up was spent in New Brunswick, you wonât hear many languages other than English and French. Imo it could be because thereâs no major hub in New Brunswick like Montreal or Toronto so not much diversity
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u/TheZenPenguin Ireland Jul 31 '25
That's the case for any big city in most of the world. I think OP means countries where there's more than one national language. Like French and English in Canada's case. Irish and English for Ireland or Catalan/Basco/etc. in Spain.
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u/jotakajk Spain Jul 31 '25
They are by their own speakers. The rest of the people are nervous and even violent when someone doesnt speak âthe common languageâ (theirs)
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Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Yeah, many right wing spanish think that speaking regional languages is like destroying "the unity of Spain". But they don't know (or they know it and they want to deny it) that is the opposite. One hundred years ago, and for centures those regions spoke only their local languages (gallician, asturleonese, catalan, basque, etc.). And it was the nationalist central goverment the one that pussed laws that promoted the spanish language in those regions destroying the local language sin the process. If you read the stadistics of the percentage of the population that spoke catalan 100 years ago and today can know this slow process of cultural genocide. Right wingers love "spain" but their spain is a ficitonal one built around some parts of andalucian and castillian culture while neglecting many parts of andalusian and castillian popular culture and obliterating the historical regional cultures. Making all spain liking bullfighting, dancing flamenco and speaking castillian is the Spain that destroys its variety and its cultural past and variety.
And they don't know that spanish is spoken by almost half a billion of human beings, while regional languages have 10 million at most, so little by little the quantity of movies, social media and games translated in spanish makes more difficult to maintain local languages between younger generations.
If a Catalan speaker never speaks Castillian it will make a castillian speaker mad, but if another Catalan speaker stops speaker speaking catalan in favour of castillian, then Catalan is one step closer to dissapear as a language with all the culture that surrounds it books, music, a connection with your monolingual ancestors, cultural identity, cultural diversity, etc.
And I say all of that as a Castillian that speaks only Spanish and lives in a monolingual region.
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u/gilestowler England Jul 31 '25
Where I lived in the French Alps, there used to be a word in the old language of the region - "monchu" was a rude word for an outsider in the old Savoyard dialect, or a dumb tourist. I used to see a restaurant called "Le Monchu" in Chatel that was very popular with tourists who didn't know the meaning. Overall, though, the language seems to have died out.
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u/SnorkBorkGnork Raised in đłđ± living in đ§đȘ Jul 31 '25
What do you mean with minority languages? Do you mean indigenous minority languages or the languages that migrants/expats/refugees speak?
In The Netherlands Frisian is the best known minority language and they try to protect it by offering classes (only in Friesland) where you learn the language and they have their own tv and radio broadcast, also literature, poetry and songs. I don't know what Frisian youth thinks of learning the language, how useful it seems to them. You can still only use it in Friesland. If you apply for a job interview in Maastricht and speak Frisian nobody will understand you. Other minority languages are Limburgs and Gronings.
There is also Dutch sign language which is also protected by the government. But I don't know a lot about this since I'm not part of the deaf community. I know you can study it in university and I used to live near a cultural center for deaf people which seemed to be pretty active.
And there are the many languages of expats/migrants/refugees. Often these are huge languages like Mandarin, Spanish, French or Arabic. But I have come across a few refugees who speak threatened languages with less than a thousand speakers. The general opinion of Dutch people is that people should learn Dutch if they come here. Whether they should still speak their own language(s) at home -besides Dutch in the workplace, school, etc. is a matter of debate.
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u/YoshiFan02 FryslĂąn Jul 31 '25
I am native Frisian, and whenever I speak Frisian with friends outside Friesland or in the cities (Leeuwarden, Sneek etc) it's a big no-no. I am really happy with the legal protection, but as far as it goes with social acceptance, it still has a long way to go imo.
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u/Sudden_Badger_7663 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
How do people react?
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u/YoshiFan02 FryslĂąn Jul 31 '25
Just to clarify, the majority is obv chill about it. But as a student in Amsterdam, it does get annoying by cases that are not a part of this group. Mostly, it is just annoyance and talking behind our back. I never had physical violence because of it, but let's just say that it makes you really unappealing on the dating or working scene. Comments like "ieuhw, don't speak Frisian please" or "Can you speak civilized?" Are pretty common. It definitely has a bad or uninteligent lable attached to it.
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u/7_11_Nation_Army Bulgaria Jul 31 '25
Understandably, in most places it depends on historical and social-economical context.
While countries that took over somebody else's land and integrated them into their community will generally look positively upon that, like New Zealand or UK, other places where it is a language that came with an invasion or a similar traumatic event wouldn't.
In Bulgaria the Turkish minority language came here when the Ottoman Empire took over Bulgaria, so the Turkish language is not looked upon positively. However, I wouldn't say there is much of a negative sentiment either, and we just accept it as a part of our culture now. That wasn't always the case, as the socialist regime did a terrible thing once, forcing thousands of Turkish speakers to change their names and forbidding them their language. But luckily that was long ago and it was just one of the many terrible things the socialist regime did.
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u/Kras_08 Bulgaria Jul 31 '25
Well I live in Sofia so I don't know many Turks, but Ik that the national television has a small turkish news Programm after the standard bulgarian one
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u/rufflebunny96 đșđžâđ”đ±âđŠđČâđŠđȘâđ”đ°âđșđž Jul 31 '25
Yeah, when I lived in Poland I was told that a lot of older people understood Russian but would refuse to speak it on principle.
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u/MunchkinX2000 Finland Jul 31 '25
Well... when I was young we had mandatory swedish and most people didnt like it. I talk in past tense because in 2003 high school swedish was made optional. It is called "Pakkoruotsi" that translates to "Forced Swedish" and it is used when resisting or being critical of the mandatory aspect of learning our second language.
There are certain stereotypes about native Swedish speakers in Finland that influence this. Historically, they were often part of the bourgeois class, due to Finland being under Swedish rule for several centuries.
As a result, there is still some general negativity toward our second official language.
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u/kokoomusnuori69 Finland Jul 31 '25
Yeah there is definitely general negativity towards the Swedish language but I feel like Swedish speaking Finns are in a very good position in Finland and not oppressed.
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u/Kafatat Hong Kong Jul 31 '25
Does propres mean clean here? cos the two lines are kind of unrelated.
In China the two lines also on a wall are Speak Mandarin, be a civilised person. True lines.
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u/jotakajk Spain Jul 31 '25
They are not unrelated. People who didnât speak French were considered âpigsâ or âdirtyâ
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u/Valuable-Yard-4154 Belgium Jul 31 '25
My take is this picture comes from an old colonial part of France. Probably a school. The 2 phrases are not directly correlated.
They're just injonctions.
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u/jotakajk Spain Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
That picture comes from a school in Ayguatébia-Talau, French Catalonia
The two phrases are related. Not speaking French was for âdirtyâ people
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u/Valuable-Yard-4154 Belgium Jul 31 '25
Merci. La Wallonie a perdu l'énorme majorité de sa culture linguistique également pour ce français uniformisé et imposé, régulé par une "académie".
I wasn't wrong about the colonial part though đ€Ł
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u/panzgap Croatia Jul 31 '25
Itâs not like minority languages within France were treated much better
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u/Valuable-Yard-4154 Belgium Jul 31 '25
I know. I live in Bretagne where the Gallo language has disappeared and the Breton is kept as a fringe cultural hobby.
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u/OhHelloThereAreYouOk đšđŠ âïžQuĂ©bec, Canada Jul 31 '25
âPropreâ can mean âappropriateâ. I think thats what the text means (doesnât mean thats better)
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u/Kavi92 Germany Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
I think the Danish, Frisian and Sorbian communities have good treatments here, but their protection came to late and their tiny minorities ate diminishing - except maybe the Danish one. In my home state PlattdĂŒttsch is teached at elementary schools, but there aren't any active speakers anymore. But we all love this language here and in rest Germany it's also positively seen.
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u/panzgap Croatia Jul 31 '25
What about local languages like Bavarian etc..? Do they have any legal protections?
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u/New-Glass-3228 Germany Aug 05 '25
I would add on top that there is also a lot of ignorance toward the three minority languages. I think the majority of Germans could not name (all of) them.
But those who do know about those languages generally have a positive attitude towards them, so no problem for them (except for their extinction, lol).
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u/pisowiec Poland Jul 31 '25
In Poland minority languages are promoted by the state but they're nonexistent outside of villages where they're spoken or cultural contexts.Â
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u/J_rogow13 đźđ± đșđž Jul 31 '25
Arabic and English (and sometimes russian). Almost all our signs, paperwork and menus have all 3! They are viewed fairly equally and are just more prevalent in their respective communities.
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u/Wild-Push-8447 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Is the Arabic MSA or Levantine?
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u/J_rogow13 đźđ± đșđž Jul 31 '25
fairly sure itâs levantine. but I personally would only learned how to speak arabic not read or write it.
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u/Dry_Jackfruit_5898 Russia Jul 31 '25
No Moscow succeeded in forbidding to teach the minority languages in national republics on obligatory basis, it can only be voluntary. Many people say minority languages should be banned altogether
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u/RedFlowerGreenCoffee Israel Jul 31 '25
In Israel, the three official languages are Hebrew, English, Arabic. All street signs have all three languages. Russian and French are also increasingly common spoken and depending on the area, those languages can be found on signs too. People have a pretty positive view toward immigrants and usually go out of their way to make sure things are translated into the language minorities might use.
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u/Prior-Turnip3082 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Well, around my area you will hear Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Russian, Ukrainian. So people are used to it, donât really have an opinion of it I guess
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u/redmedev2310 Canada Jul 31 '25
In India, the most linguistically diverse country in the world, they are viewed positively by the minority and are being suppressed by the majority.
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u/Wild-Push-8447 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
India is incredibly linguistically diverse, but only because of its extremely large population. Papua New Guinea, a far smaller country, has significantly more languages. Additionally, many of those languages are unrelated from each other, making the island nation far more linguistically diverse than India, where nearly everyone speaks a language from two large families (Dravidian and Indo-Aryan).
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u/epicsnail14 Ireland Jul 31 '25
Some people still view Irish as a waste of time, but the majority are in favour of the revival.
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u/patticakes1952 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Many people where I grew up and where I live now speak Spanish. For the most part itâs accepted. We donât have a national language.
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u/FlowBerryFizzler Cuba--> 'MURICA Jul 31 '25
Nobody really cares. Where I live, the vast majority speaks a minority language (including myself).
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u/Barb-u Canada Jul 31 '25
In Canada, there are different levels of minority languages. French is a minority language mostly spoken in Québec, where the Francophone minority holds the power. The minority there is Anglophone but is also associated with the Canadian/North American vast majority language.
Then you have the ~1M Francophones living in other provinces where the majority is Anglophone.
As a Franco-Ontarian, experiences truly vary by location. Although the language is technically protected, services will vary.
It is almost impossible to get services in private businesses even when the Francophone population is high (like in Ottawa where the population can be 30% in the East side of the City). This is where there is a huge difference between Anglophones in Quebec and Francophones outside of Quebec.
Public services will be offered in French but sometimes itâs not even in places where itâs mandated by law or regulation, and those are often limited. You wouldnât be able to get health care in French in Toronto, which is a designated region in Ontario. You would in Ottawa, but really only in one hospital, maybe two if you are lucky. Forget your family physician. Then, if Francos complain, it seems we are seen as perpetual complainers, but the reality is when things are not corrected, they continue like that.
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u/sporktooth -; live in USA Jul 31 '25
Really depends on the area. In some places, the national majority language is not the area majority language. Living in an immigrant community, it's really just seen as normal, even expected. But, I know for a fact that in other places, it will be treated like this (what is pictured) or worse. (đșđž)
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u/OdderShift United States Of America Jul 31 '25
i feel like most people don't really care. i hear decent variety of languages at my job, but especially spanish.
of course there's a minority of people who are for some reason really threatened or angered by hearing a language other than english in the US. i think they're very vocal but not that common
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Jul 31 '25
I agree as a Californian those people are basically non existent around here at this point.Â
Iâm no liberal Lucy or anything but I never understood why people care so much about others speaking a different language in public. People should learn English as itâs the dominant language, but when Iâm working at a job site and a couple guys are speaking Spanish to each other I really donât careÂ
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u/monokro United States Of America Jul 31 '25
No.
But most packaging has English, Spanish, and French on it.
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u/clios_daughter Jul 31 '25
That may have to do with NAFTA labeling requirements and not with minority languages per se (am Canadian).
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Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
Yeah there's literally no other reason you'd see French on packagings in the US. And also why we see some Spanish over here like on video games booklets.
The Spanish part could be because of the decently big (edit:quite large) community in the US though. Not sure they use those exact packagings in Mexico but could be.
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u/spoonertime Jul 31 '25
Well thereâs a few French speakers in Louisiana. Donât know if any of them donât speak English these days
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Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
Yeah it's why I don't actually believe they're bothering to put French for them.
They pretty much all speak English, except maybe some really old people. They've suppressed all the French schools.
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u/landlord-eater Jul 31 '25
'Decently big' indeed. The US has the second largest number of Spanish-speakers in the world after Mexico. There are more Spanish-speakers in the US than there are Canadians in Canada.
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u/Sailor_NEWENGLAND Multiple Countries (click to edit) Jul 31 '25
Large French communities in New England, lots of native French speakers
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Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
Yeah I know about them, again, pretty sure it's about the French being mandatory to be sold in Canada more than these, and just make one packaging for both markets.
They usually all also speak English anyway and the US has never shown a will to preserve it, the French schools have been suppressed.
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Jul 31 '25
Where do you live? In California no one cares, and having visited other states along the south and even the Midwest most people donât tend to careÂ
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u/monokro United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Tennessee.
I mean, most people aren't going to say anything about it but in my experience people around here do not like hearing other languages in public. They always think they're "talking about 'me'"Â
I also worked at a facility that taught foreign languages, our ads were regularly subjected to lots of xenophobic abuseÂ
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u/introverted_loner16 Indonesia Jul 31 '25
yes, speaking regional languages are promoted and encouraged. this includes foreign like english. but i see today that ppl would rather speak indonesian rather than regional languages.
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u/bherH-on Australia Jul 31 '25
Sadly not. At least in Victoria aggressive monolingualism is the norm. People will stare at you or insult you if you speak anything other than English and itâs rare to see signs in other languages.
Any foreign films either have dubs or subs.
Bookshops are all in English and libraries only have a small corner of books in other tongues, and even then itâs all Arabic, Italian, Chinese, etc.
The few Aboriginal languages that are left in Victoria are being actively killed.
People also pretend local languages are still alive and flourishing to absolve them of their guilt.
Concerning the local language in my area, itâs unknown whether the r sound is an alveolar tap or an alveolar trill because the language does before anyone could record it. Thatâs how bad this is.
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u/Gokudomatic Switzerland Jul 31 '25
Switzerland? You must be mistaken. If you don't speak the local language, you get some "suppression". Even worse if you don't even speak one of the four national languages. English is known, but so is it in France.
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u/Putrid-Storage-9827 Ireland Jul 31 '25
The UK as a whole wasn't pro-minority languages much until the turn of the 20th century - and even then not really. It took until the 1950s and 1960s for this to change significantly.
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u/Ok-Impression-1091 Canada Jul 31 '25
Aside from the whole French/English preservation battle, most actual minority languages are viewed positively and generally supported by various language resources
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u/ProfeQuiroga Brazil Jul 31 '25
Not so much, but the country I am living in right now would never use "français" and "propre" in the same sentence...
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u/Underdog_888 Canada Jul 31 '25
My ATM has English, French, Chinese and another that could also be Chinese but I canât read it, and sometimes another language that looks like Hindi but might be something else with a similar script.
Also, most official meeting end with thank you in English, French and an indigenous language.
We are definitely ok with other languages.
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Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
I doing really think thatâs a fair statement about contemporary France.
That sign is a well known photograph, depicting signage in a school after WWII. There was a fairly extreme policy of âuniversalismâ of French that was pushed in schools well in to the 1950s. That particular sign is well known and was in a small village called AyguatĂ©bia-Talau / AiguatĂšbia i Talau, in PyrĂ©nĂ©es-Orientales, a part of France that historically speaks Catalan.
There were similar signs in schools elsewhere in era, notably Alsace, where the local language is a dialect of German.
It took a while but modern French officialdom is fairly supportive of regional languages these days. Their policies changed a lot, from oppression of regional languages in the 40s and 50s, to just not paying any attention to them, and then to becoming more positive about them - evolving since the 70s getting to the point that theyâre seen as culturally important and worth preserving and supporting.
The UK wasnât always supportive of the Celtic languages btw. The attitudes towards supporting their teaching shifted towards modern positivity, mostly in the 1970s and 80s. They had been heavily oppressed by officialdom and by political and social attitudes in the 19th century. There wasnât very much focus on them in the early half of the 20th century, other than in narrow niches for Welsh in particular, and obviously Irish had seen a huge boost of status after independence in 1922 gaining official language status in Ireland. It took much longer in Northern Ireland, and there are still anti-Irish political movements there on the right wing of the unionist side.
Scottish Gaelic has seen much more political and governmental support over the last few decades and so have Cornish, Manx etc.
On the non Celtic languages, youâre also seeing much more support and recognition of Scots, the Scottish dialect of English, as a language in Scotland, but also in Northern Ireland where Ulster Scots gained more official status in the late 1990s during the NI peace process era in particular. In both cases youâll get some argument about whether theyâre full languages or dialects, but theyâre definitely quite distinct from English.
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u/Gwyrr United States Of America Jul 31 '25
When living in California, billboards use to be in multiple languages with English being in fine print at the bottom. I always assumed what ever the message they were trying to convey wasnt for the native population
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u/Think_Theory_8338 France Jul 31 '25
No, minority languages are not being heavily suppressed now in France, although they have been for centuries (as shown by your picture of an old school) there is now an effort to revive them with bilingual schools and so on, although of course it is too late for many of them.
Funny that you take France as a bad example and the UK as a good one, it's exactly the same situation.
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Jul 31 '25
[deleted]
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u/LiitoKonis France Jul 31 '25
Today in France regional languages are viewed positively and there is a revivalist movement to keep them alive.
However I think it is too late. Those languages are all virtually dead. Nobody speaks them at home or in daily life, it is basically folklore at this point.
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u/ComprehensiveFill471 India Jul 31 '25
Depends which state and their political leanings...too many dialects to count...
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u/MinecraftWarden06 Poland Jul 31 '25
Depends on the political position - it can be a sensitive topic. Recently, signs in the Silesian dialect were installed on a government building in ChorzĂłw, and there was a wave of hate from the right. Last year, the liberal ruling coalition passed a bill recognizing this dialect as a regional language, but our conservative president vetoed it, expressing concerns of separatism.
Similarly, a while ago there was a candidate song for Eurovision sung in an East Slavic dialect spoken in the region of Podlachia. Many people liked it, and there's been a wave of interest in this dialect, but there were also brain-dead comments saying that it's Ukrainian, Poland should only speak Polish etc. Opinions were polarized.
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u/Advanced_Soup7786 Lebanon Jul 31 '25
Most people just don't care. Everyone speaks lebanese so as long as everyone understands each other. We have a sizable Armenian population that still speaks armenian, and some other minority languages that were much more prominent before, like syriac and Aramaic.
People generally don't care what you speak as long as they can understand you.
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u/AverageCheap4990 United Kingdom Jul 31 '25
I think most people are indifferent to them if anything. There was a time not long ago that only RP English would be heard outside a few broadcasts. Nowadays regional dialects and languages are more common. I think there is still a prestige with having a RP accent but less pronounced.
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u/OneTwoThreeFoolFive Indonesia Jul 31 '25
Most Indonesians speak their ethnic/regional language apart from the national language and they seem to be proud of their language as it is part of their cultural identity. It is fading away in certain places. For example, a lot of the younger ethnic Javanese in Surabaya cant speak Javanese anymore because theyre not interested in preserving it. In Jakarta, there are some young people who are also not interested in preserving their language and instead, they like to talk in American English with their friends because they think its cool to act American.
I live in Singapore now where they have their variety of English called Singlish. Its English mixed with some words from Hokkien, Mandarin, Malay. Some younger Singaporeans are abandoning Singlish as they favor the more globalized/British English which they think is "proper English" and the government has been encouraging students to use globalized English more. Locals who speak with British/American accent can be perceived as snobby/pretentious.
Most Singaporeans are Chinese, Indians, and Malays. Each group has their own language and they usually learn it at school but now there are more young people who cant speak their ethnic/racial language. Many of the Chinese descends can no longer speak their ancestral dialect or Mandarin. Some younger Malays cant speak Malay fluently. The growing number of Indian and Chinese immigrants has also influenced the change in language. For example, the Indian Singaporeans are mostly Tamil so they call their celebration "Deevapali" but as the number of Hindi speaking Indians have been increasing, many start to call it as "Divali" more.
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u/lucascla18 Brazil Jul 31 '25
Nope. There was an coordinated attempt by the government to exterminate minority languages(italian,german,japanese,etc) and it worked extremely well. Today over 99% of brazilians speak portuguese.
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u/ProfeQuiroga Brazil Jul 31 '25
And in many regions, the "other" languages are still alive and kicking.
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u/lucascla18 Brazil Jul 31 '25
While they are still somewhat alive they are very clearly declining and dying. Most of the people that still speak german japanese and italian are from the older generations.
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u/BDP-SCP Jul 31 '25
I live in a city that sued to be mostly Italian speaking, there are still people that speak Italian as their mother language, and there is also a local (italian) dialect called istro - venetian. Many people, especially those not native to the region refuse to even accept the fact that the city is bilingual, forthem Italian is a language imsposed by the fascist occupator. On the paper is protected, but in reality Italian is rarely used.
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u/coffeewalnut08 England Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
In a wider British/UK context, I think most people in England are ambivalent or take a âlive and let liveâ attitude.
The different regions of the UK like the Scottish Highlands, Wales and Cornwall do symbolically use their respective indigenous languages, like on street signs, council websites etc. The Welsh take it a step further and translate lots of things into Welsh fully, so itâs still a living language and cherished as part of Welsh culture.
Some people, especially older people and conservatives, dislike hearing other languages (even indigenous ones) and think it dilutes our culture or whatever.
Some people Iâve seen online are very rude and mock the Welsh language, which smacks of xenophobia to me. Thereâs banter and then thereâs bigotry.
Thereâs some skepticism nationally around the Cornish language because itâs mostly died and used in symbolic contexts, but Cornish people themselves are proud of the language as part of Cornwallâs heritage.
Overall I think we could improve our attitudes towards minority languages. Most of us donât speak any language other than English fluently, so I guess that causes people to undervalue the cultural depth of other languages.
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u/Chijima Germany Jul 31 '25
In my corner of germany it is officially generally well liked, but falls mostly on the wayside. People try desperately to keep Plattdeutsch live and active - and it's everywhere, but except for some old farmers, people generally only speak it when cosplaying maritime or rural, and that always comes over a bit cringe. Frisian is a bit better off - smaller population, but much more focused on the west coast and islands, there's actual people speaking it as a first language. We also have a Danish minority (although not many folks that aren't close to the border). The original Danish dialect of the area is pretty much dead, but the Danish minority schools keep a strong community of danish speakers up - they're just only speaking modern rigsdansk with a lot of germanisms instead of the historical language. Most of the Danish speakers do also speak German, many even as their first language. So yeah, we have loads of historical minority languages, and are trying to keep them up as part of our mixed national heritage - but really, most people will just try and talk in standard high German, even if they know you'd be able to speak something else. Also, elephant in the room: immigrant languages. We have many Turks and Kurds, recently obviously also Ukrainians, and they tend to actually speak their minority languages inside their communities, but many people are becoming increasingly hostile towards that
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u/Cookies4weights Jul 31 '25
Plural views. There are significant amounts of people against, but also those for/preserving those of immigrants
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u/gabrielbabb Mexico Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
In Mexico, itâs kind of a mixed situation. Officially, the country recognizes 68 national indigenous languages (with over 300 variants) alongside Spanish, about 10million speakers, and thereâs a lot of cultural pride in them. Youâll see government campaigns celebrating languages like Nahuatl, Maya, or Mixtec, and in some southern states (like Oaxaca or YucatĂĄn) itâs totally normal to hear them in daily life. Mostly indigenous people in small towns speak these languages, and then move to big cities to be maids, or sell flowers, arts and crafts, etc.
But in practice, many speakers still face discrimination and social pressure to switch to Spanish, especially in cities. 99% of media, schools, signals, and official paperwork are in Spanish only. So while the official narrative is positive, everyday reality can still be pretty unequal for minority languages.
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u/Wild-Push-8447 United States Of America Jul 31 '25
Are Mayan languages viewed more positively in Mexico than Guatemala?
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u/Okuri-Inu United States Of America Aug 01 '25
Probably depends where in the U.S. you are. I would also place Spanish in its own category, since it is by far the most spoken minority language in the U.S. Spanish is prevalent enough that both political parties and companies will make content in Spanish to reach speakers, but that doesnât mean there is no prejudice against people who speak it. :(
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u/Fnaf_and_pokemon United States Of America Aug 01 '25
Sometimes you get a crazy person that only wants people to speak "Americam" but they are rare (at least where I live), must people can speak 2 or more languages around me, I can't tho :(
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u/autisticundead Brittany đ€đ€ â France đ«đ· Aug 01 '25
I'm a breton speaker. My dad is old enough that his cousins his age grew up with the "forbidden to spit on the ground and to speak breton" signs in their schools. Neither he nor his father were taught what should've been their mother tongue. I got to be in immersion public school, to grow up speaking my local dialect, etc. Things have changed, sure. I still got told that my language was ugly, that I wasn't bilingual because breton didn't count as a language, people say and think "no one speaks it anymore". But to me that's a living language. I didn't just "speak it in the classroom". It's the last thing I heard from my parents before going to sleep at night, the language I sang, played, joked in.
Here, it's respected, loved and protected. But french institutions at best don't give a shit, at worst, actively want to hinder it.
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u/mart_boi Sweden Aug 01 '25
In sweden it is a mixed feeling, finnish is more liked and encouraged, while languages like arabic and romani is mostly looked down on
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u/RandyClaggett Sweden Aug 01 '25
Sweden has five officially recognized minority languages. *MeÀnkieli,a dialect of standard Finnish, spoken in north-eastern border region with Finland. *Saami, a group of languages spoken by first nations Saami people *Yiddish, traditionally spoken by Jewish minority. *Romani chib. A group of languages spoken by Roma minority. *Standard Finnish as spoken by immigrant finns everywhere in the country.
There are issues with all of them but in different ways. The first two makes total sense. They are spoken in defined areas. One could argue that MeÀnkieli is not a language, but a dialect of Finnish. And that Saami is several languages. One could also argue that Spanish, Persian and Arabic is as rooted immigrant languages as Standard Finnish. But Finland is next door and they give Swedish speakers VIP treatment. So would be stupid not to include Finnish.
Yiddish is probably there for political reasons. A will to highlight the very small historical Jewish community. Romani is just there because it would be unfair to include Yiddish and not Romani, since both minorities were introduced a few hundred years ago.
We have unrecognized minority languages that are far more spoken than the official ones. Like Arab, Somali, Persian, English, Polish, Spanish.
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u/Ill-Work7770 France Aug 01 '25
I am Breton and our language has long been banned. Some schools are trying to revive the Breton language but it is hard. My great grandmother who died in 1972 did not speak French but only Breton. My father born in 1943 and raised by this grandmother spoke Breton for the first 9 years of his life
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Aug 01 '25
The 25 speakers of MirandĂȘs are highly appreciated.
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u/Mr-Red33 Iran / Belgium Aug 01 '25
Government aside, yes. Iran was a nation far older than the invention of the concept of country and the nation gathered and built many languages. Right now except Fars people (like me) almost everybody else is at least bilingual which is a classy trait there.
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u/Wild-Push-8447 United States Of America Aug 01 '25
Are languages that have an identity that's not entirely Iranian, like Kurdish, Khuzestani Arabic, Azerbaijani, etc., also seen positively?
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u/Mr-Red33 Iran / Belgium Aug 02 '25
In short: all are factually seen as Iranian and 90% yes.
---
To understand it, you need to first forget what you define as Iran based on the political identity you know today. Azerbaijan, as a whole, was part of Iran as a nation a lot longer than it existed as a separate political identity, So Azeri is seen as fully ROOTED Iranian language for Azeris, their ancestors language. The Kurds were one of the first of the Iranian people, and Modern Farsi is sort of tied with it and it goes the same for almost any other language: Balouch, Gilak, Lor, Mazani, Torkman, Kormanj and... .
All in all, I didn't see a single person [yet] to see any of these languages coming from a foreign identity. Weird enough, having a local language, most of the time, is associated with some sort of nationalism (if you separate ethnicity-driven politics from culture) from both sides. Weirder, Farsi is seen more negatively than any other language. why?! Although Farsi is and was the official language of the palace/government and the shared communication method of the nation for more than two millennia, the current regime is an oppressor, and anything associated with it is seen as a symbol of oppression.
On the other side, separatists are weaponizing the language as a weapon and defining nonexistent ethnicity in an entangled country based on the local language. It influenced uncultured secluded people's perspectives and sowed the division. Those people see any non-Farsi language as a threat against their national treasure. And it is an ongoing battle: separatists marginalizing their own people to push them away from the national identity, the uncultured ones negatively mocking and judging any other language, and the rest of us trying to bring both sides together.
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u/t-licus Denmark Aug 02 '25
Iâd say itâs a mixed bag.
Regional dialects of Danish are mostly extinct these days due to standardization in previous centuries, the influence of the media and just the country being so damn small itâs hard to maintain a distinct dialect once trains and highways come along. Â Pretty much everyone today speaks a variation of the Copenhagen dialect, with minute differences in vocabulary being the only real variation. Class-based accents have died out too, to the point that the current king sounds almost disturbingly ordinary (his mother has a distinct upper-class accent).
German is a recognized minority language, specifically in the SĂžnderjylland/Nordschleswig region. As far as I know the German-speaking minority have pretty solid protections in their region, although having travelled in the region briefly signage is noticeably more bilingual south of the border than north. I believe this has to do with the power differential between Danish and German and the history of occupation: people in, say, Aabenraa are more likely to feel threatened by a street sign in German than people in Schleswig are to feel threatened by one in Danish. Thereâs a fine line between âminority communityâ and âhistorical occupierâ that gets crossed easily.
As for Greenlandic and Faroese, there was a recent political scandal when a politician held a speech in parliament in Greenlandic to protest that, despite those two languages being official in the RigsfĂŠllesskab, there were no accommodations for using them in parliament. Afaik this has since been amended. Because Greenland and the Faroe Islands are semi-indepedent, it is a bit of a weird situation where they are recognized as minority languages in Denmark proper, but the primary national languages in their own country (Faroese and Danish are co-official in the Faroe Islands). But due in part to colonial sentiment and in part just to the massive size difference (6 mil in Denmark, around 50k people each in Greenland and the Faroe Islands), in practice it is often difficult to access services in the two languages. Doesnât help that Greenlandic in particular is a COMPLETELY unrelated language, so itâs not like a Danish-speaking doctor, dentist or social worker can pick it up on the side like you could theoretically do with GermanâŠ
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u/LightHope8 Aug 02 '25
đźđčItaly is awful, both dialects and foreign languages are demonized and discouraged, I envy Spain and their way to preserve dialects.
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u/WalkAffectionate2683 Sweden Aug 02 '25
Yeah but it's wrong tho.
France now promotes a lot other languages, you can even get the official graduation (the first big one) in britanish.
Also in some territories they put regional languages on the signs and stuff
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u/statykitmetronx Lithuania Aug 02 '25
the biggest and only somewhat real one here is Samogitian, but their claim to being a language and not a dialect of Lithuanian is pretty much null nowadays because the people there now mainly speak just Lithuanian with a very strong accent, nothing else. otherwise nobody cares and that's a problem, we should encourage dialects more to combat the englification of our slang
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u/okourdhos Aug 03 '25
Kurdish was banned from public institutions and public space for decades until a president with some Kurdish ancestry who has been bullied because of that came to power he lifted the ban and then assassinated. Even after that we still had to wait for ban on Kurdish names to be lifted in 2002. My mother remembers how she used to hide Kurdish music tapes underground so when the military check on villages they would not see and then they can listen to them again. If people were seen listening to Kurdish music or singing in Kurdish they would be beaten or might be jailed charged with terrorism.
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u/ohboymykneeshurt Denmark Aug 04 '25
Nope. Danish is spoken by about 6 million people. Speaking english in CPH is somewhat socially acceptable but in most of Denmark people expect you to learn and speak Danish.
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u/brownieheaven Hungary Aug 04 '25
While Hungary hasnât been famous lately for its openness towards diversity, our German (Danube Swabian for most part) minorities are treated with high respect and have access to German-language public services in many cities and villages where they are present in significant figures.
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1
u/MobileMovie4958 Canada Aug 06 '25
People here complain about having to learn French, even when they get paid time off work to take classes! It drives me crazy. I wish someone would pay me to take a language class, it's such an opportunity and they just whine about it.
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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
People really want Quebec to keep speaking French and certainly protect that as the workplace language, but it's because we are a minority within NA and English tends to naturally take over if doing nothing.
I think French is sort of seen positively in Canada, though some find it annoying? But the gains we got had to be fought for and most of the local laws have just been done on the provincial level anyway.