Tomorrow, I might experience the hatred of French supremacists towards anyone who refuses to adopt their narrowly defined national identity and give up his or her own.
I’m now working as a researcher at the university of Compiègne (near Paris) and I’ll be asking the IT service to help me connect my laptop to their network.
My laptop is in GERMAN, which is (besides French) one of my languages. It was spoken by three of my grand-parents who’ve always lived in Lorraine near Germany, Alsace and Luxembourg.
Basically, the guy might just tell me that he will need to use my computer himself and that I have to switch it into French for that reason. That would be perfectly acceptable to me.
But he might also mock me and tell me that it’s ridiculous and backward for a French citizen to have his computer in German. Quite a few people look at me as if I were a madman or severely mentally ill because I have plenty of books in German and very often listen to German songs.
I have experienced this time and time again.
Interestingly, the very same type of reaction was observed in Algeria or Morocco while they were France’s colony.
This shows that colonialism isn’t dead in France of 2016.
While Great Britain is currently going down a dangerous way, at least they perfectly respect the right of Welsh people to use their language in schools and while dealing with the administration.
That said, I don’t know what’s gonna happen and I might be pleasantly surprised 🙂
At any rate, I largely prefer to live with Muslim women wearing burkinis who respect my culture than with French supremacists who despise it.
I hope I’ll be able to engage in a friendly and constructive dialogue with open-minded Muslims who are also the victims of the intolerance of French society if they hold fast to their identity and traditions.
To be continued…
I do take your point about the preservation of minority languages, but it is unfortunate that you illustrate your point about Welsh with a sign which shows the ignorance of some people – because the Welsh on that sign is not a translation of the English above it.
Someone has e-mailed the Welsh Language Society, or something similar, and asked them to translate the English, and they have got an automatic reply saying “No-one is in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated”!