Someone posted recently on the subreddit of France, talking about their experience as a south Asian living in France after living in the U.S.A. They talked about the difference they had in the two countries and how French people judged them more on their capability to talk correct french than their skin colour.
I think that knowing the language with the least accent noticeable can be important if you want to assimilate in France.
For example, a politician with a southern accent will have some stigma around it because they need to talk “proper french” and so will be looked down upon. So I wonder how it is in other countries especially those with a lot of dialects
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Oh yes!
As is usually the case for things in the UK a lot of it is tied to class.
I wouldn’t call it discrimination per se but there is a stereotype in films that characters with Andalucian accents are “dumb”. I feel like this is dying down but since it’s a stereotype and has been for a long time I would bet some Andalucians have experienced being made fun of or something like that.
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Andalucians please correct me here.
Discrimination, only relatively speaking. Some native dialectal accents come with the stereotype of being hick-ish or backwards (saxon, bavarian), some are perceived as rude (berlin). It is more about teasing with those. Full blown dialects usually do get subtitles in media which can be seen as condescending, but it isnt like in the 70s anymore when they tried to reeducate people in school to speak standard german.
Foreign accents are discriminated by some, but that depends on the severity. In general, rational people are more than happy if someone goes through the effort of learning german at all. And i have the same observation, regular people do put more emphasis on language and cultural assimilation than skin color. Racists will always find a way of course.
I don’t think it’s full on discrimination, but it *is* rare to hear regional dialects and heavy accents on national tv. It’s a pity, though. The lack of exposure means few people understand it, which means that channels will limit it to ensure everyone understands what’s going on, and so the snowball rolls
There’s discrimination based on accents alright. Southern accents used to be (and to an extent, still are) seen as entirely unprofessional and needing extensive diction lessons when it didn’t mark you as a lower-class potential criminal, the Roman dialect that wasn’t the one of either the Black or White Nobles was seen as a sign of unreliability, and Venetians up until the Eighties (get this) usually tried to hide the accent because they were seen as first and foremost as either manservants or ignorant farmers.
Nowadays, though, it’s not as bad as it used to be… within Italian accents. If you have a marked Romanian or Albanian accent, you might be avoided in some areas, in fear that you’ll fly off the handle easily, and, well, if you have a strong Balkan accent that’s not Slovenian or Croatian, be prepared to be mistaken for a Roma *a lot*…
I’ve never heard of any acts of discrimination based on accents in Poland. Some people might laugh at people who have the “villager” accent (commonly associated with “peasants”), but it’s not really a big deal anymore because it’s slowly fading.
Glottophobia (linguistic discrimination) is a very widespread phenomenon, not just limited to France. It happens in every country.
The French linguist who came up with the specific term, several years ago now, Philippe Blanchet, used it to describe both linguistic discrimination against different languages AND different variants of the same language.
In his books and talks he details discrimination against Arabic speakers in France and discrimination against autochthonous French languages. Philippe Blanchet is himself a Provençal (Occitan) speaker, and he talks about how his grandmother was forced to clean the toilet when her teacher caught her speaking Provençal with her classmates, and after repeated ‘offenses’ of speaking her native language at school, his grandmother was forced to clean the toilet – with her tongue.
As I said, glottophobia is also linguistic discrimination against variants of the same language. An indicative case is a comment I read just today from a French person, which sums it all up really:
>Quand je pense qu’en 1990, en prépa, juste devant moi un professeur de Français interrompit mon camarade en pleine colle et lui adressa un cinglant : “Monsieur, on arrête-là, je vous mets 6/20. Inutile d’aller plus loin ce n’est plus un accent mais un handicap, n’espérez pas vous présenter à un concours de grande école sans une sévère correction de votre accent…”. Mon camarade venait de Toulouse avait un léger accent…
*When I think back to 1990, when I was in prepatory class (before going to university), right in front of me, a French teacher stopped a classmate of mine right in the middle of the exam and gave this scathing remark: “Sir, stop there, I’m going to give you a 6/20. It’s useless to go on further, what you have is no longer an accent, it’s a handicap, don’t bother to apply to the higher education exam (for the prestigious universities), without a top-to-bottom correction of your accent.”*
*My friend came from Toulouse and he had a slight accent.*
In Ireland there is a thing against being posh. It is associated with the English (and our history as a part of the UK). So countryside accents are not looked down upon. People will have a worse reaction to a posh English accent or a south Dublin accent.
People might find it weird for someone to say something like “Ever so much”, or pronounce it “Toh may toh”, but they wouldn’t look down on it.
If you look at our parliament, the language used is actually quite casual, and quite Irish in character. People do not change their accent much.
As well, the main language of Ireland in day to day life is English, not Irish. So people don’t have any sort of emotional connection or pride in the language of every day life.
Now people will definitely make fun of other native English speaker’s accent. Especially people from other counties. I especially like making fun of the Ulster accents, but it’s not in bad taste. Never would we expect someone to change their accent.
TDLR: it’s not really a thing here in Ireland.