this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
28 points (93.8% liked)
Linguistics
1508 readers
1 users here now
Welcome to the community about the science of human Language!
Everyone is welcome here: from laypeople to professionals, Historical linguists to discourse analysts, structuralists to generativists.
Rules:
- Instance rules apply.
- Be reasonable, constructive, and conductive to discussion.
- Stay on-topic, specially for more divisive subjects. And avoid unnecessary mentioning topics and individuals prone to derail the discussion.
- Post sources when reasonable to do so. And when sharing links to paywalled content, provide either a short summary of the content or a freely accessible archive link.
- Avoid crack theories and pseudoscientific claims.
- Have fun!
Related communities:
- !linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works
- !languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
- !conlangs@mander.xyz
- !esperanto@sopuli.xyz
- !japaneselanguage@sopuli.xyz
- !latin@piefed.social
Resources:
Grammar Watch - contains descriptions of the grammars of multiple languages, from the whole world.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.