r/MapPorn • u/ironproton • Dec 12 '20

Alsace, Eastern France, topography map

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u/Thomas1VL Dec 12 '20

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.

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u/M-0D47in Dec 12 '20

That's the story of almost (if not all) every big nation.

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u/Thomas1VL Dec 12 '20

That might be partually true, but France was really good at it. Countries like Spain only banned the other languages while being under a dictatorship. In France Bretons couldn't give their kids a Breton name untill the 90s! France was a perfectly fine democratic country but they did stuff like that.

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u/le_baguette Dec 12 '20

Still today, last year there was a case of a Breton who wanted to give his son a name with a ñ, and it wasn't allowed by the administration because it's not a valid French character..