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The absence of a regulatory body for English is honestly probably one of my favourite features of the language. I’m a native French speaker, and while I can speak standard French, my dialect diverges substantially from what’s prescribed by l’Académie française (France) or the OQLF (Québec). There’s this sort of hierarchy in French where France (especially Parisian) French is seen as superior, and all other varieties, from Canadian to African to Caribbean, are seen as various degrees of inferior.
I don’t feel that as much with English, and I think it’s in part because there isn’t an institution trying to define “proper” English. Despite it being my second language, I often feel more confident speaking to native English speakers from other regions than I do to other native French speakers.
The Academie Française is an extreme case, with a long backstory of hostility towards linguistic diversity. It’s as if the entity thinks “if you accept anything but The Standard (and We define The Standard) you’re threatening The Language, THE LANGUAGE WILL DIE!, so we must pre-emptively kill everything else”. And that hostility applies to both local varieties of French, like yours, and other regional languages co-existing in areas where French is spoken (like other Gallo-Romance languages, Basque, French-based creoles…).
But it doesn’t need to be like this. For example, I don’t notice the same tribalism coming from the IEC (Catalan language organ). Or even from the ABL (Portuguese language organ in Brazil) - sure, I might mock it as “cookie munchers”, and say it’s the wrong entity for this job, but I don’t see it targetting local varieties in the same way the AF does.
Also note this shitty situation of linguistic prejudice towards non-standard varieties does happen, even in the absence of an authoritative organ. For example, in English you see discrimination against Scots, African-American English, Appalachian English, both Indian Englishes, and English-based creoles.
The absence of a regulatory body for English is honestly probably one of my favourite features of the language. I’m a native French speaker, and while I can speak standard French, my dialect diverges substantially from what’s prescribed by l’Académie française (France) or the OQLF (Québec). There’s this sort of hierarchy in French where France (especially Parisian) French is seen as superior, and all other varieties, from Canadian to African to Caribbean, are seen as various degrees of inferior.
I don’t feel that as much with English, and I think it’s in part because there isn’t an institution trying to define “proper” English. Despite it being my second language, I often feel more confident speaking to native English speakers from other regions than I do to other native French speakers.
The Academie Française is an extreme case, with a long backstory of hostility towards linguistic diversity. It’s as if the entity thinks “if you accept anything but The Standard (and We define The Standard) you’re threatening The Language, THE LANGUAGE WILL DIE!, so we must pre-emptively kill everything else”. And that hostility applies to both local varieties of French, like yours, and other regional languages co-existing in areas where French is spoken (like other Gallo-Romance languages, Basque, French-based creoles…).
But it doesn’t need to be like this. For example, I don’t notice the same tribalism coming from the IEC (Catalan language organ). Or even from the ABL (Portuguese language organ in Brazil) - sure, I might mock it as “cookie munchers”, and say it’s the wrong entity for this job, but I don’t see it targetting local varieties in the same way the AF does.
Also note this shitty situation of linguistic prejudice towards non-standard varieties does happen, even in the absence of an authoritative organ. For example, in English you see discrimination against Scots, African-American English, Appalachian English, both Indian Englishes, and English-based creoles.