[rayiner]

I think it does. Language discrimination can be an extremely vitriolic form of oppression, and don't underestimate how much it sucks to be a second class citizen in your own country. Just look at the AAVE thread on HN a couple of weeks ago.

[JPKab]

AAVE is one dialect among dozens in the US that will get you discriminated against. I grew up in Appalachia (West Virginia/southwestern Virginia line) and when I'm at home or with friends/relatives, my natural dialect is potent.

However, over many years, starting in late high school, I trained myself to speak in a more standard form of English to protect myself from the discrimination of the "hillbilly" stigma. This is my formal dialect, and I use it in business and in formal/sem-formal scholastic settings. My father was the one who encouraged me to do this. As a child, I noticed that he spoke differently when making business calls. He told me that, when "you are trying to make money, trying to learn to make money, or dealing with somebody who wants your money, you speak their language." This knowledge of using a non-native, standard dialect in business/government/education communications is extremely common, and is especially common amongst the mainstream African American community. The issue with AAVE is only when children are raised in broken families by parents who are too ignorant/disengaged/etc to teach children the standard, formalized dialect that every other ethnic group in America is expected to adhere to. I can't speak in a courtroom in my native dialect and be taken seriously, even if I'm in Charleston, West Virginia. (The exceptions to this are in identity politics. Lots of deep southern politicians use their native accent, and then there is the Charleston dialect, which uses proper grammar but drops the "r's", so is therefore acceptable in formal settings.)

[rayiner]

But that's my point. Dialects are entirely arbitrary, yet there is overt discrimination against particular ones, combined with classist and or racist overtones. Given that sort of discrimination, one can at least put together a picture of why the French in Quebec are as protective of their language as their historical marginalization.

My family is from Bangladesh, which separated from Pakistan (in an independence war), over language differences. Historically, those language differences were a proxy for the cultural marginalization of Bengalis within the Pakistani state.

So when we hear about the Quebecois requiring the use of French, and we think "oh those silly French Canadians" we have to remember that there is a lot more to language than just how people speak.

[JPKab]

I agree with your description of the problem. In fact, its easy for people like me to forget that, rather than attack the classist, ethnocentric actuality of the fact that we are expected to speak a certain dialect of English due to old class systems, we have simply chosen to be pragmatic and use our own dialect at home, and the 'other' dialect in formal environments.

However, the Quebecois don't need to do what they are doing. They live in a modern nation with civil rights protections. Forcing people to use French is its own form of oppression.