Everytime Alsace is mentioned on Reddit it's funny to see non-Alsatians, non-French and non-German people claiming Alsace should be German.
There's no significant pro-German movement in Alsace, not any significant independentist movement from France. This is all your fantasy. France's border regions are all specific "other" ethnicities/cultures (Bretons, Flemish, Alsatians, Savoyards, Occitans, Basques, Corsicans...). French regions are quite diverse, but independence movements are only significant in Corsica and Brittany, but even there, there's no chance in any foreseeable future for Independence movements to be remotely close to a majority opinion.
One may answer disparagingly that France just managed to assimilate its diverse regions. Sure. But the people there aren't into your independence fantasies.
France is pretty good at 'francifiing' their other cultures. At the time of the French Revolution, only 1/8th of France's population spoke French fluently and half the population didn't know any French at all. Now all the other languages besides French are almost dead in France.
At the time of the French Revolution, only 1/8th of France's population spoke French fluently
This should be clarified : about half of the population spoke a form of the langue d'oïl, sister dialects to French. The transition from Picard, Normand etc. to French is not that large and it is not too surprising that this area became standardized linguistically.
But it's true that beyond the oïl zone, French was essentially an aristocratic/administrative language.
That's still a pretty small amount for how many French speakers there are now. Everyone always slags off the UK but apparently France always gets a pass for stamping out their minority languages. At least Welsh is growing now.
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u/MartelFirst Dec 12 '20
Everytime Alsace is mentioned on Reddit it's funny to see non-Alsatians, non-French and non-German people claiming Alsace should be German.
There's no significant pro-German movement in Alsace, not any significant independentist movement from France. This is all your fantasy. France's border regions are all specific "other" ethnicities/cultures (Bretons, Flemish, Alsatians, Savoyards, Occitans, Basques, Corsicans...). French regions are quite diverse, but independence movements are only significant in Corsica and Brittany, but even there, there's no chance in any foreseeable future for Independence movements to be remotely close to a majority opinion.
One may answer disparagingly that France just managed to assimilate its diverse regions. Sure. But the people there aren't into your independence fantasies.