There are many cultures around the world that are suppressed by majoritarianism. They have to face challenges like forced assimilation, language discrimination and refusal to acknowledgement of their unique identity. In fact, many cultures have been identified by UNESCO, that will soon cease to exist - either that they’re vulnerable, or completely extinct. How do you, as a minority, feel, knowing that your entire identity will cease to exist in a few decades? Do you have a sense of camaraderie towards other minorities from other parts of the world, say, the Ainu people, or the Brahui pastoralist?
I’m french Canadian from my dad and native from my mom. I truly feel like most of the country would be more then happy if we disappear. They openly hate on french canadians and publicly pretend ro care about first nations but they really dont. I expect both cultures to be completly gone in a century or two, sooner maybe.
I wonder if this will get me downvoted. I don’t care one way or the other about French/Quebecois culture. It’s kinda neat, they can do their thing in Quebec. What I really don’t like is the forced French language on the rest of the country. You want a federal job? Better learn French. You want a provincial (not in Quebec) job? Better learn French. Want to enter politics? You need French. Want to move to the head of the line for any job in any sector? You’ll get that if you speak French. I think I’m treated like a second class Canadian because I don’t speak French. The Premier of British Columbia simply pointed out that there are more Mandarin speakers than French speakers in BC, and he was crucified. I’m sorry but this French language thing on the rest of the country is absolutely bonkers and needs to go.
Francophones are not prioritized for employment or political opportunities. Do you know which linguistic group is prioritized for such roles?
Bilinguals.
Do you think a unilingual French speaker would have more opportunities in Canada than a unilingual English speaker?
Of course, people whose first language is French have much higher rates of bilingualism than people whose first language is English, for a myriad of reasons. But I find it illuminating that for all the whining I see from (some) Anglophones about “lack of opportunities because they don’t speak French”, their proposed solutions always focus on stripping Francophones of their rights instead of encouraging French language education for Anglophones. Many countries around the world have huge percentages of their population being able to speak two (or more!) languages, why shouldn’t we strive for that? I see no downsides to increased bilingualism.
I live in New Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province in the Canada, where our unilingual Anglophone premier repeats the same talking points you do about how difficult it is for unilingual Anglophones to advance themselves in our province. All while holding the highest elected title in the province without speaking a lick of French.
… Yes bilinguals *in French and English. I thought that was so obvious that I didn’t say it specifically. And that requires, wait for it, French.
[*Actually no, not bilinguals. If you are bilingual in English and Mandarin, you don’t meet the French criteria. Repeat all languages. It’s French that they want and require above all others. But you’re trying to misframe the issue by saying not Francophones unilingual, and saying bilingual (with what I see as you defaulting to include French).]
So you speak French and work in Quebec. Fine. Why do I need French to get a good job in the prairies? Do you see how this goes? The demand for English is market demand because it’s the dominate language in Canada, the US, UK, and dare I say the international language of business and science. The vast majority of demand for French in Canada (outside of Quebec) is an artificial construct forced on the rest of the country. It’s completely artificial. There’s no natural demand or desire. But it’s forced on everyone and on to job requirements. You’re trying to confuse it with all these other things trying to make it sound like ‘both sides’.
I know. It must be really hard being from the majority and constantly being reminded that a minority exists.
It’s not that it exists, as you say. It’s that the French language is forced on to the rest of Canada. You can see my other comment in this thread.
I’ve thought of a good analogy. In Alberta there used to be so many Ukrainians they thought about making it a provincial language. So in this hypothetical let’s say that AB was bigger and had the political sway that Quebec has. Suddenly Ukrainian is a national official language. If you want a federal job, you better learn Ukrainian. Want to enter politics? Better speak Ukrainian. We’re going to open Ukrainian immersion schools across the country so lots of Canadians speak Ukrainian and so Ukrainian speakers from AB can get service when they travel across the country. I wonder if you’d be a proponent of that. And if you say that makes no sense, I’ll say “It must be really hard being from the majority and constantly being reminded that a minority exists”. So again, it’s not that it exists. It’s that it’s forced on the rest of the country.
Lol, in what language are we having this conversation again? I personally don’t give a shit about you speaking french. It’s not us that “forces” french on you., we don’t care about your lack of interest about us, we don’t care much abour your culture either. French canadians are well aware that many of you guys would rather learn latin before a single word in french.
Now, for the jobs that requires you to be bilingual, well guess who needs to learn english to get them? Yet you don’t see french canadians crying all the time "it’s not fair, I don’t want to learn english to work for the governement of my billingual country. " You wanna do politic only in english, be my guest , but dont complain that can’t get votes in Quebec. Same would apply to a politician that only speaks french but that does’nt exist in Ottawa. Do you think english is no force on us lol? I speak 4 language, it’s really not that hard to learn when you try. So yeah, cry me a river.
Dude, french language is being forced. You seem to want to wipe your hands clean of it, but it is being forced.
I see you didn’t look at my other comment so:
This part mostly fits:
… Yes bilinguals *in French and English. I thought that was so obvious that I didn’t say it specifically. And that requires, wait for it, French. [*Actually no, not bilinguals. If you are bilingual in English and Mandarin, you don’t meet the French criteria. Repeat all languages. It’s French that they want and require above all others. But you’re trying to misframe the issue by saying not Francophones unilingual, and saying bilingual (with what I see as you defaulting to include French).]
This part really fits:
So you speak French and work in Quebec. Fine. Why do I need French in the prairies? Do you see how this goes? The demand for English is market demand because it’s the dominate language in Canada, the US, UK, and the international language of business and science. The vast majority of demand for French in Canada (outside of Quebec) is an artificial construct forced on the rest of the country. It’s completely artificial. There’s no natural demand or desire. But it’s forced on everyone and on to job requirements. You’re trying to confuse it with all these other things trying to make it sound like ‘both sides’.
And the new part:
Congrats on speaking 4 languages. But yes it is hard for many people, and more importantly it’s completely unnecessary. It’d be like requiring high level math for fields completely unrelated to math. And I’d just say math is easy, knowing full well some/many/most can’t do it for reasons. Then when you/someone says I can’t do this math I’d say “cry me a river” because I can do it and benefit from it. (I notice you didn’t comment on learning Ukrainian, likely because it’s so ludicrous that you don’t even entertain it. Well that’s what learning French is to us.)
You learn French, they learn English, you meet in the middle. I think that’s probably how that was meant to work. Sounds fair to me.
You seem to lack the ability to change perspective here: You learn a language and so do they. You just seem to be missing the fact that the other side is doing the exact same thing?
I never knew there was this much drama about the French language in Canada. Really interesting fact on its own.
Already covered
The demand for English is market demand because it’s the dominate language in Canada, the US, UK, and the international language of business and science. The vast majority of demand for French in Canada (outside of Quebec) is an artificial construct forced on the rest of the country. It’s completely artificial. There’s no natural demand or desire. But it’s forced on everyone and on to job requirements. You’re trying to confuse it with all these other things trying to make it sound like ‘both sides’.
I did entertain perspective. If I spoke Ukrainian (plus English), I would not demand the rest of the country learn it. It’s actually the other way around, he can’t entertain perspective. It’s bizarre that you think otherwise.
And they don’t need to learn English. This gets back to the main issue: they can do what they want in Quebec. But French language should not be forced on the rest of the country.
Pauvre.Petit.Coco Si le francais t’était imposé, tu pourrais articuler une phrase dans cette langue. Peux-tu ou est-ce que tu ne sais que te plaindre? T’es pas une personne, t’es une victime.
Sérieusement, c’est pas si diffiicile d’apprendre une autre langue! Genre 80% de la planète est billingue ou plus, c’est seulement les uniligues anglos qui pleurnichent .
So you’ve taken to insults in other languages. I think that says it all. Though I think you forgot google translate exists.
Don’t forget, just learn Ukrainian. It’s not that hard. And so many people are bilingual, so it’s good for you. (See how you refuse to engage on that scenario and I just use all your arguments against you. To which you have no reply, only insults lol. And of course no reply to my other points either.)
Cheers.
This one surprises me. I had always thought Quebec had a strong cultural identity. How do you see it happening?
Honestly a lot of Quebecois have a persecution complex from centuries of actual mistreatment. But the current situation is fine and their culture is definitely not dying. I live near the Ontario Quebec border and it very clearly feels like a meeting point of two distinct cultures. And neither of them is being dominated by the other. They exist alongside eachother
French is huge idk where they are coming from.
We do have a strong cultural identity. But even I, who is aware of the problem and think we should defend our culture, have stopped consuming it since the arrival of Netflix and streaming services.
Internet has a part in that as well. When I was a kid, you would start learning English in grade 4, meaning 10 years old, in school. My son could count to 10 in English at 2 years old. Because youtube. Because of all the diversity of content we have access to now, that we didn’t have access to back in the days.
It’s probably the same thing in most non English countries.
Is slow, it’s pernicious, and probably inevitable over time. We can probably slow it down… I’m not sure.
I think you maybe don’t see that there is push and pull between cultures. For example, I’m an Anglo, but I went to French immersion in school, studied french at work for the feds and got certified, and now I enjoy consuming Quebecois media from time to time. Like just recently I started watching 19-2 on Netflix and it’s a really fucking good show.
Keep in mind, when a culture puts up walls between itself and its neighbors, that will stop the flow of ideas in both directions. Better to just accept that both cultures will intermix, and it isn’t going to destroy either one.
Man, 19-2 is an amazing show. Personally I never felt hated like the original commenter said. And I’m glad some of our content attracts people who don’t live here. But, I’m merely stating how easy and accessible it is to learn English, which is a good thing, by the way.
However, like I said, about 90% is the culture I consume is American now. Like in most countries. I’m definitely not encouraging the local culture, and I’m aware of that, but I’m simply not interested in it now. I got rid of cable TV because the ads were making my IQ drop every time. It’s probably my fault this is happening in the first place. But now and more families are going steaming only.
All in all, the change in the way people consume culture is playing a lot against local culture.
If you think that a child counting to 10 in a second language is a cultural threat, you have a persecution complex.
I think you have a reading complex. They were comparing how they didn’t learn any English until they were in 4th grade, but their baby could count to 10 in English by age 2.
Which they then went on to flesh out the entire rest of their comment, that they don’t even consume French media anymore.
Whose fault is that? Their own. I could count to 10 in Spanish before I went to primary school and I don’t live in the US.
Persecution complex for sure.
I’m sorry you have a persecution complex, but I’m not sure Lemmy is the place to work on it.
“No u”
What a rejoinder lol
I’m a Tuluva, a minority group in the south of India. I am also a Tulu separatist for reasons mention here - I’m in agreement with most of them, but there are a few more reason I have this stance, including cultural appropriation and discrimination.
You can read about the recent efforts at digitization of my language in this article - although I’ve never met anyone who knows how to write. Maybe a few scholars are good at this? I tried to learn the abugida (the Indian equivalent of “alphabet”), but they’re pretty hard for someone like me who’s never learnt a Dravidian language before.
FWIW I love French Canadians and love the diversity and culture they add to Canadian life. I think Letterkenny gave a great example of what a singular culture it is and I really enjoyed them including them.
Almost all cultures disappear within a century or two. Do you think Canada is anything like it was 200 years ago? Shit, it’s probably not even what it was like 50 years ago.
45 years ago the US overwhelmingly voted Reagan into office. That asscunt would get so fucking rejected in primaries now for being a “RINO” based on his gun control policies alone. Things change. Everything changes. When I was a kid it was totally fine to run around with a Southern Loser Flag on your shirt. Should that culture return? Some people think so.
You can either be a troglodytic conservative dingus or you can contribute to the new culture and a better tomorrow.
Tell me you’re Canadian without telling me you’re Canadian.
Literally nothing in their comment makes me think they are Canadian WTF.
American. Texas, specifically.
Keep the good shit going, dispose of the cruft.
Three hours and
no answersonly one answer, which is understandable. Many of these people don’t have access to certain technology because of their economic situation, and even when they do, their voices are so small that they get overshadowed by the majority. I’m not of a dying culture, but I am aware of the many tribes in Papua and how they’re vulnerable from Indonesia’s interference. While many of the Papuan tribes aren’t dying per se, it’s very difficult to get online opinions from (indigenous) Papuans in regards to whether their land is colonized by Indonesians, let alone from tribes that are dying.I don’t agree with this network access take. A lot of endangered cultures are simply being assimilated.
I was in a casual quiz in Hong Kong recently and one of the questions required us to know a language with less than 100 speakers. The default answer the quizzers had expected was Macanese Patuá. That sort of regional dialect existed in such a restricted set of conditions and between two different pressures to remove it (between Cantonese and Portuguese), that globalization simply drowned it out.
True, I suppose it depends on the country. In my country, many Papuans live in remote areas where it’s hard to access basic necessities like medicine, let alone the internet.
Assimilation is death, especially when you’re being forcibly assimilated into a null value.
I’m Jewish and I feel meh. There was always a lot of pressure to continue practicing Judaism throughout my life because our numbers are so small and we’re the butt end of conspiracy theories and discrimination from all walks of life and have been for thousands of years.
I’m not religious and don’t believe in any sort of god so I guess I’m responsible for killing my religion and culture I guess. I can relate to the sense of camaraderie in finding another person with the same shared lived experiences in the wild, but I don’t know how much I can relate to the tribes you mentioned.
I’m not concerned as much about my culture dying out because life and everything in it is ultimate meaningless :)
Do you feel a connection to secular Jewish culture? I feel like Jewish culture goes beyond Judaism as a religion.
There are lots of shared cultural experiences in Judaism (with the exception of ultra orthodox) so ya.
many cultures have been identified by UNESCO, that will soon cease to exist
Any good links to read more about this?
Here’s a list of all the vulnerable and extinct languages. I happen to be one of those minorities, so I was interested in hearing other’s view on the same.
Well, I’m just from a west euporean village, but I still feel like I could answer your question a little.
Our parents decided not to teach us the local dialect. So now I don’t understand a lot of people in my village, including my grandparents. Also I feel things like shanties are a dying breed.
I’ve been thinking of buying a book that was written in my local dialect in order to get closer to my roots.
I feel like our parents decided to look forward and made us a part of that.
People from the cities still comment on my accent. And to me they sound like they have a stuffed nose.
Personally I think that this is how culture works, and we are currently living in an exciting one, and that’s ok. I also believe a higher power still has access to all those forgotten people, so it doesn’t bother me. After all isn’t time just an illusion?
It enrages me. I actively deny the settler culture; but damned if my denial changes anything. When their process is done, what I consider my culture will be a lowercase-n nothing compared to the capital-N Nothing™ that settler culture is. And it feels like not enough of my skinfolk have enough steel in their spines to fight anymore. Black Capitalism and liberal misleaders in the Black Congressional Caucus have ruined us, and our own reactionaries have made a mockery of Black radicalism.
It’s a sorry fuckin state of affairs; and honestly what informs my interactions with other minority cultures-- because 9 of 10, the same will happen to them if they don’t resist the same way, and I’ll be called everything from a fool to a traitor for aligning with them instead of the settlers who have their boot on my neck.
I know the white republicans in the USA sure feel like they’re gonna disappear.
One can hope.
One of the white supremacist tropes they like to push is how white people are endangered by globalism and diversity. These people could use a little diversity that hopefully improves their intelligence. Mai Gad they are stupid.
intellectual pursuits combined with recent-ish DNA test revealed to me that i’m from a very recently dead culture (american yaqui & tarahumara) whose very few aware decedents have been fighting tooth-and-nail to re-cultivate it by patterning themselves after their nearest cousins (mexican yaqui & tarahumara) along with a recent recognition from the american government for the pascua reservation in arizona.
they were literally wiped out by the pogroms carried out by colonial settlers in the american southwestern united states during the 19th and early 20th centuries and it was merely the imaginary line on the map called the mexican border that allowed anything from the culture to survive at all.
if it weren’t for people who rejected colonialist narrative of indigenous people happily becoming mestizos (or americans with Cherokee princess great grandma’s); there would be nothing but a fringe belief and, if it weren’t for DNA tests that heavily bolsters it, that fringe belief would continue to wane into nothingness.
you’d think that 2/3rds of your DNA being tied to a group of people and their genocide occurring less than 2 generations ago would ensure that something of that cultural inheritance would survive, but I’m living & breathing proof that the colonial narrative is MUCH more powerful than any heritage as the older generations of my family continue to strenuously reject both the science and the lore of their true roots.
I’m smart and I’m mostly fine with my minority dying out. It’s definitely sad that in 50 years people will look at things my people created and will not understand any of it but then again, it’s a natural process. I’m sure our art will somehow influence their art and in a way it will live on.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me. If you live in a “dominate or be dominated” world, it comes as a surprise to not see non-dominating cultures as more worthy of the spotlight that others ruin their chances for. Although my link to said culture isn’t direct, when I see the big players fighting, I shake my head. The innocence of humanity is truly being tested.
I’m not sure if this even counts but I’m from Cornwall, which at one point was a separate and distinct culture from England, but hasn’t been for hundreds of years. But once it had it’s own language, and has been recognised as being culturally distinct by the UK government and the EU.
It doesn’t really impact me in any big way, especially since I don’t even live in the UK anymore. I know a handful of words and phrases in Cornish and there’s been a bit of a movement in the last few years to revive it somewhat (it’s on some road signs and things like that), but generally the rest of the UK doesn’t care, and if you talk about it to anyone outside of Cornwall they’ll usually just make fun of you.
It’s nowhere close to English, that is something I would say.
I think it’s from the same root as Welsh, so that’s probably the nearest counterpart as far as I know.
It sucks. I’m autistic, and I spilled sweat and blood to learn my culture. Now my culture is being systematically uprooted and destroyed, and the period during which my brain could learn culture has passed.
So now I’m the human detritus cast along the way on the path to progress. And it sucks. And the fact that my sacrifice and that of millions of other people is necessary to make room for this new culture, makes me hate this new culture.
Since you’ve not mentioned them in the comments, is it okay for me to ask about your cultural identity?
Sorry, you aren’t being clear here. Do you mean that autistic culture is disappearing, of that your culture is disappearing and you also happen to be autistic?
Because, as an autistic person, I really fuckin’ hope that a root cause for autism is found an eliminated, because it’s goddamn miserable.
My region’s culture. All the people who grew up where and when I am, the culture we had. We’re now mixed into a larger region’s culture and unless we congregate, our culture is going away. It’s actually being criminalized, and framed as immoral by the new dominant culture.
So I’m shunned if I practice my culture, treated as dangerous by those around me.
Not talking about autistic culture itself. I’m talking about the regional culture. The place where I’m from. That’s being dismantled by contact with a more dominant culture, and it sucks. I feel sort like a traveler who can’t go home.
And, being autistic, I also have the problem of being very bad at adapting to culture at all. Adopting all the mannerisms and sayings and tendencies that gain a person fluid acceptance into a culture, is really hard for an autistic person. NTs just sort of absorb it unconsciously, but we have to exert large amounts of conscious work to make it happen, and my ability to do that work has decreased as I’ve gotten older.
As another autistic person, and at the risk of providing bad or unwanted advice, my ability to relate to other humans was entirely rebuilt from the ground up by MDMA.
Every brain is different, and everyone has a different subjective response to mind altering substances, but I feel like society could be entirely better if we studied and treated mental health without the protestant cultural baggage.
I’m more of the “99% assimilated” kind, interested in learning what didn’t go down to me in more natural way.
Well, my paternal line ancestors are from a group of <ethnicity and religion> villages, naturally wiped out in <year>, the amount of people with roots from the same place on the whole planet is maybe just a bit more than the amount of <“titular” nation> living there.
The dialect is dead (there are some traits of it and examples documented).
Every time I abstractly or not talk about that with most people, I encounter “international law” bullshit, something about “recognized borders” and “rule of law” or simply approval of how it is and general attitude as if I were the problem and not <“titular” nation’s state>.
Yes, of course that place doesn’t belong to that state and any kind of violence is justified against it and its supporters, anytime, anyplace. A lot of people having nothing to do with that state feel indignation hearing\reading about that, towards me.
Or my <another ethnicity> side, which is supposedly doing not so bad at preserving its culture, which has its own state, only that state sucks and most of the organizations about that ethnicity suck, because they serve that state.
So I almost feel as if that state and its works replacing the perception of that culture I like were a continuation of genocide sometimes.
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