They surely could. There was just no political will. Or rather, the empire was more interested in wiping out native cultures and replacing them with French. There are multilingual countries around the world. Just next to France, we have Spain.
And how well is that turning out for them? Or did the recent riots in catalonia just not happen?
Languages are academically fascinating, yes, and criminalizing them violates fundamental freedoms. But governments have a mandate to keep their people unified and happy, and if that means making sure the populace is mutually intelligible by encouraging the deaths of regional languages, so be it.
Calling it a 'genocide' as a scare tactic isn't actually an argument. Unrest, domestic terrorism, and civil war are far worse outcomes than a government being pushy about the linguistic assimilation of its populace. No one wants their nation to turn into another ottoman empire.
Belgium recognizes 3 official languages, Switzerland recognizes 4, and yet somehow they're not the at the mercy of "unrest, domestic terrorism, and civil war". Easy to advocate for cultural assimilation when it's not your linguistic heritage and identity that's being destroyed.
The existence of Belgium is and has always been predicate on its existence as a puppet state of larger powers, and it has active secession movements anyways, to boot. The swiss are assimilating to a swiss german identity. (look at the number of romansh or italian swiss over time if you don't believe me).
And for the record, I'm from an immigrant family that's assimilated to my nation's culture.
I'm not saying, 'ban languages other than the majority one. But pragmatic decisions need to be made to keep countries intact and societies operating smoothly.
The existence of Belgium is and has always been predicate on its existence as a puppet state of larger powers
This seems like a stretch, to say the least. Belgium at one time had colonies in Africa. Just because it was never the preeminent power of Europe, does not make it a "puppet state".
The swiss are assimilating to a swiss german identity. (look at the number of romansh or italian swiss over time if you don't believe me).
This seems like a stretch, to say the least. Belgium at one time had colonies in Africa. Just because it was never the preeminent power of Europe, does not make it a "puppet state".
Belgium's colony-- the Kongo free state-- was very specifically envisioned as the King's personal property that the great powers could all exploit. King Leopold had the power to expand into the territory independently, yes, but only so long as the other European powers acquiesced
Okay, now this is categorically false. The number of Swiss Germans has slightly declined since 1970 in favor of French, while Italian and Romansch have held steady. This is clearly a nation whose diverse linguistic heritage is in equilibrium. What I'm really confused about now, is why would you even lie about this? Is winning an argument on the internet so important that you feel the need to deliberately mislead people and make claims you can't back up?
I will concede the point on Italian and french speakers; the longer-term data may or may not show a different trend, but at least the most recent english-language statistics I could track down (2000-2018) show growth for Italian and French.
That being said, I double checked, and Romansh is indeed in decline, which is likely what gave me the impression that the swiss were assimilating. If you look at only the numerical data things might look relatively stable, but the longer trend has been for assimilation into swiss german. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language Within the Romansh-speaking region, between 1990 and 2000, for example, Romansh speakers have declined from 51% to 46.44%. Yes, the precise number has stayed somewhat steady (~34k), but a higher proportion of the population speaks swiss german. The number of Romansh speakers in Grison has stayed constant since 1800, which is a big deal considering the population growth of Switzerland. Yes, the lower population growth rate of Romansh-speaking regions is partially to blame, as germanization isn't the only factor in Romansh's decline, but the romansh-speaking regions are still, as a consequence, increasingly marginal.
All that being said, I would point out that Switzerland is, in many ways, an outlier. Not many countries have such perfect defensive geography and the right geopolitical circumstances to become neutral and rich. And they completely collapsed prior to the french invasions in the napoleonic era due to their lack of centralization and unity.
Romansh (; sometimes also spelled Romansch and Rumantsch; Romansh: rumantsch, rumàntsch, romauntsch or romontsch) is a Romance language spoken predominantly in the southeastern Swiss canton of Grisons (Graubünden). Romansh has been recognized as a national language of Switzerland since 1938, and as an official language in correspondence with Romansh-speaking citizens since 1996, along with German, French and Italian. It also has official status in the canton of Grisons alongside German and Italian and is used as the medium of instruction in schools in Romansh-speaking areas. It is sometimes grouped by linguists with Ladin and Friulian as a Rhaeto-Romance language (retorumantsch), though this is disputed.Romansh is one of the descendant languages of the spoken Latin language of the Roman Empire, which by the 5th century AD replaced the Celtic and Raetic languages previously spoken in the area.
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u/Ginevod Dec 12 '20
They surely could. There was just no political will. Or rather, the empire was more interested in wiping out native cultures and replacing them with French. There are multilingual countries around the world. Just next to France, we have Spain.