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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25087 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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I’m not an expert on Louisiana, but other than their legal system, New Orleans and Louisiana in general does not seem French / Cajun to me anymore. Quebec is the largest province and most or second most populous, so LA and Quebec do not have similar situations. Nevertheless, LA’s current state seems like a possibility for Quebec had Quebec not enacted these policies (and taken the economic penalty for the cultural win. Montreal seems to have the lowest rents of the bigger Canadian cities)

Maybe, maybe not, but it seems worth noting that Louisiana is only about 20-30% Cajun, although granted outmigration drove that down some(it seems like Cajuns migrate to Texas at very high rates compared to other Louisianans). Now granted some percentage of the black population is also descended from Francophones, but still- Louisiana simply does not have the numbers, and probably never did have the numbers since the civil war, to maintain itself as a francophone region. Tdlr Louisiana is a diverse state whose francophone population hasn’t been a majority since the 19th century.

In addition there’s a minor culture war in Louisiana over whether Cajun French should be treated as a separate language. As a partial speaker is seems very close indeed to quebecois french, but referring to it as french, unmodified, seems bound up in standardization attempts that actual Cajuns- particularly the ones most likely to be interested in language revitalization- sometimes object to. Just in general- I am not particularly close to revitalization efforts but have relatives who are quite closely involved- it seems like revitalization is mostly aimed at college kids and teachers, rather than even attempting to appeal to the median Cajun(who is a poorer-than-average red triber, likely does not take advantage of all the educational opportunities available to him, and lives in a rural area by preference).

Can't speak to much of this, but my French Canadian grandpa (though to be fair he was born in Massachusetts, my great grandparents immigrated from Quebec and raised him speaking French and English though) said any of the times he went to visit France he was treated better when he spoke English than when he spoke French with a Quebecois accent. So that's a datapoint in favor of your argument that there's real friction between a French that's true to how Quebecois (and Cajuns) speak it as opposed to Europhile French.

My grandpa never seemed to have any strong opinions one way or the other about Quebec separatism though.

Anglophones when they meet other anglophones with a different accent: "Cool accent bro!"

Francophones when they meet other francophones with a different accent: "Your mockery of our beautiful language is a disgrace to all that is holy."

French Canadians always say that, when they go to France, the French often cannot understand them. But there's a continuum. There are French Canadians with accents so thick other French Canadians can't understand them. The vocabulary is quite different, and the pronunciation can be quite different too. Acadian French (from which Cajun French comes) is even more different and also quite varied. It even retains some archaic grammar in addition to a number of unique words and expressions.

said any of the times he went to visit France he was treated better when he spoke English than when he spoke French with a Quebecois accent.

The reverse is at least sometimes true as well. I've had a French-as-in-from-France friend-of-friends complain that when she visited Quebec, people kept telling her, obviously meaning it as an insult, that she didn't speak French.

It's been described to me as similar but not the same to speaking English with a heavy hillbilly accent in NYC or something -- of course if you went to actual England they probably wouldn't mind as they are mostly into classifying people based on their (English) regional accent. The French are fussy in a different way though. My (Western Canada) high school french class had no francophones of any kind involved, resulting in an altogether terrible accent -- going to France they seemed happy enough with any ability to communicate, but I guess to whatever extent we were taught pronounciation it would have been French-style vs Quebecois. (plus communication is always easier in dive bars)

There are definitely English people who will discriminate against anyone with a recognisably American accent (and we can't tell Anglo-Canadian accents from American ones). This is part of the normal anti-Americanism that exists close to the surface among substantial minorities of the population basically everywhere. But we can't recognise different American regional accents and, even if we could, we wouldn't be able to map them to social class, which is what Brits are really trying to read from people's accents.

My (French-born and native French-speaking) secondary school French speaker said that PMC French people look down on Quebec French as an uncultured dialect for uncultured people in the same way posh British people used to look down on American English. I have no idea if this is a good analogy or not.

Most Canadians sound similar to most Americans, but there are Newfoundlanders who sound like they're from Ireland.

Can you really not recognize a strong New York accent or southern US accent? These are very distinct.

My impression is that there is a larger average difference between the French spoken in Canada and the French spoken France than there is between the English spoken in North America and the English spoken in England.

Mapping accents to class in North America is easy. The higher class you are, the closer your accent is to a general North American accent that you hear in movies and on TV. The lower class you are, the closer it is to the strongest version of your regional accent.

Can you really not recognize a strong New York accent or southern US accent? These are very distinct.

I can recognise a New York accent because I have been to New York on business a lot. Most Brits couldn't. I could recognise that a sufficiently strong southern accent is a regional accent, but I wouldn't know which one unless the context gave it away.

I think most Brits could recognize an extremely strong stereotypical ‘New York’ accent (“cawfee”) or a Southern drawl. Maybe they know the stereotype of the Canadian “aboot” too. Not much beyond that, though.

That one doesn't help because we don't actually say that -- it's more like ab-ow-t.

'Aboot' is something Americans think we say because they have no ear for accents.

I think you’re downplaying how familiar people are becoming with American accents from consuming American media.

(plus communication is always easier in dive bars)

That's why shinjuku ni-chome was my favorite neighborhood in Tokyo. Well, one reason.

any of the times he went to visit France he was treated better when he spoke English than when he spoke French with a Quebecois accent.

Many places are like that. In Germanic Switzerland you’re better off speaking English than German with a German accent, because they dislike Germans over there.

We love them though. Silly mountain Germans, denying our obvious brotherhood.

Swiss German (or Alemannic in general) should probably be classified as its own language, it's as different from Standard German as Ukrainian is from Russian, if not more.

And if you speak Swiss German in Berlin you might as well be speaking Choctaw, for all the ability the locals will have to understand you.

Swiss language politics is weird and incomprehensible to outsiders. When I worked at Credit Suisse, the investment bank was basically American Anglophone (in London they had taken the First Boston signs down by then, but this apparently provoked resistance in New York), but when we had to interact with "head office" it was noticeable that there were French-speaking and German-speaking teams (all of which would talk to us in fluent English). I remember visiting Geneva and noticing that the second language on signs (after French, of course) was always English, and that German and Italian were supported to the bare minimum required by Swiss federal law.

As someone living there … I think the Swiss -> German attitude is not that bad. But maybe the Swiss are just too polite to show their contempt :P

Austria though … they are certainly more open about their attitude towards Germans (though again it’s mostly just harmless ribbing, nothing that would actually get in the way of living there).

Austrians, at least cultured Viennese, have an actual air of intellectual superiority versus most Germans (especially north of Bavaria, which they somewhat identify with, and Baden, which was iirc Austrian territory for a while anyway). The Swiss don’t think they’re intellectually superior to the Germans, they have the kind of attitude that like a wealthy Texan who ‘identifies’ as a salt of the earth good ol boy has to a Yankee intellectual, even if the latter is poorer. That’s my experience.

Urban Swiss tend to be less prejudiced toward Germans since a lot of valuable jobs like doctors are done by Germans and the Swiss are usually find with them. The Swiss who dislike Germans tend to be the more rural ones in the mountains because 80% of tourists and many retirees are German, push up prices and consider themselves ‘equal’ to Swiss-Germans because they speak the same language. That equal thing is important, I was in Flims over the summer and it was funny because I got the impression (again) that Swiss Germans don’t necessarily mind ubiquitous Italians in the service (and every other besides) industry in Germanic Switzerland because the Italians have an attitude of conscious or subconscious deference to them. Even Brits and Americans usually have a certain ‘respect’ for the ‘superior’ Swiss way of life, praise the cleanliness, order etc even as they struggle with it.

Germans, on the other hand, don’t consider themselves inferior to Swiss despite coming from (in Swiss eyes) a much poorer and worse country. They consider themselves equals and will walk into a Migros and make small talk with the cashier or try to joke around with the local hiking club while waiting for the cable car to reopen after lunch as if they’re “one of them”. To the German, the Swiss is just a rich hick who can be conversed with as usual and is expected to understand them, and is still fundamentally a German. Why show deference?

Why does being different mean you should show deferrence?

Germans (especially north of Bavaria, which they somewhat identify with, and Baden, which was iirc Austrian territory for a while anyway). The Swiss don’t think they’re intellectually superior to the Germans, they have the kind of attitude that like a wealthy Texan who ‘identifies’ as a salt of the earth good ol boy has to a Yankee intellectual, even if the latter is poorer. That’s my experience.

In my experience, the swiss are a materialistic bunch. Austrians, on the other hand, are a depressive bunch. I still remember when I went to Viena and everyone seemed so miserable. It was real downer tbh.

Damn, I really need to visit Vienna.

they have the kind of attitude that like a wealthy Texan who ‘identifies’ as a salt of the earth good ol boy has to a Yankee intellectual

This certainly can be quite hostile.

a wealthy Texan who ‘identifies’ as a salt of the earth good ol boy

Lol. If the Bushes were still active in national politics, would we be calling them transTexan?

They're the Mother Fucking Swiss, what did you expect?

I love them so much. I’d live there if I could, at least half the year after I have kids. Undoubtedly the world’s most civilized society.

It is difficult to understand normal-speed spoken swiss as a german and quebecois when you’re french. But the reverse is not true. So the clean, formal, hegemonic version of the language forces itself into the conversation, and people resent that, especially if they’re at home.

As a partial speaker is seems very close indeed to quebecois french, but referring to it as french, unmodified, seems bound up in standardization attempts that actual Cajuns- particularly the ones most likely to be interested in language revitalization- sometimes object to.

Unlike English, which is functionally linguistic anarchy because descriptivists control the Anglosphere (not passing judgement, only observing in this context), French has the Académie Française, which claims to be the arbiter of "proper" French. In tech circles I've run into this because they dislike adopting loanwords (especially from those dastardly Anglophones) like email, instead demanding courriel and similar.

I can imagine why someone descended from an isolated group of French speakers long ago might identify with the local dialect rather than what some snooty academics in Paris have to say.

L’academie francais is a thing, obviously, and that Cajun revival efforts are led by europhiles who insist on saying ‘l’ordinateur’ instead of ‘le computer’(as actual first language speakers would) is only part of the problem. A bigger part is that the academics in charge of these efforts simply have no desire to reach out to icky red triber texaphiles who would be willing to learn- and use- the language if these people came their way a bit instead of insisting on special preschools for the children of teachers and summer abroad programs for europhile college kids.

I think part of the issue is that America never gave Francophone status any recognition and because our schools are more or less run out of large mega cities (basically because of school district sizes, almost all American textbooks must meet CA, TX, and NY standards to be viable) makes preserving language a lot harder. There’s no status for Cajuns allowing them to require things printed in French or Cajun alongside English. They can’t just declare that instruction happen in French. We’re much more integrated than that.

If you live in Louisiana, the odds are that you can get French language instruction in schools if you’d like. You have to opt in, though, the CODOFIL doesn’t go to a lot of effort to make it appealing to people who actually have a recent family history of speaking French at home(there are probably a few Cajun children being raised bilingual by their grandparents, but realistically anyone under 30 who speaks Cajun does so as a second language. A much larger number have some relative- a grandparent perhaps- who is a partial speaker or Cajun French from growing up around it but never being formally taught. This group- or rather their parents- are mostly ignored by French language schools because they’re pretty deep red tribe).

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