In Hong Kong there are many of us who want to preserve Hong Kong/Cantonese culture from erosion by CCP/mainland culture. For example, sometimes you can see a lot of mandarin around school kids rather than cantonese. The government is also pushing for schools to teach in mandarin rather than cantonese. Mandarin is the language for mainland china, Cantonese is a minority language.
I imagine it is like this in other parts of the world where someone from a ‘minority’ culture wishes to preserve their culture & language against the dominant culture/language. Is there a word for someone like this in English?
the closest i could think of is “nationalist” but that’s definitely not correct, it’s not like one saying one culture is superior, but just that you want to protect it and conserve it and keep it in place.
French being in decline is apparently not as straightforward as that.
Source 1 Source 2
Likewise, neither is the ability to access services. Even if service in your language is technically available according to the constitution, the quality and equality of these services arguably suffers for anyone who is not a french quebecer (see the healthcare, court and justice sections). Anecdotally, I had trouble accessing many government services in English even before bill 96. Ive been hung up on several times when asking for service in English, even when it was offered to me in a menu or whatever. Luckily I’m okay at French so I got by. Someone from a country that speaks a language which doesnt resemble French whatsoever may struggle. Or someone with a disability like Autism as cited in the gazette article above. Especially with only 6 months to learn a new language, which is just not a long enough time in many cases. Overall I agree that its reasonable to expect most people to learn french if they intend to stay in quebec long term.
The bill 21 debate is tough, because im not religious or French. I’m against the bill on a personal level, but dont feel I can really argue from that view alone. However, the bill does seem to impact non-christian faiths more negatively.
The political logo argument probably doesnt get many answers because its a pretty poor comparison in my opinion. I dont have to be religious to know that someone’s faith is more integral to who they are as a person, their identity, than any political affiliation in most cases. So long as that sort of expression isn’t hurting anyone in Quebec directly (religious violence, etc. specifically) I dont see what right Quebec politicians have to interfere with that.
As an outsider with no horse in the race, I thought this a good discussion.
In the end, I think maybe Quebec gets what it wants: I have no interest in visiting a place that tries to police its “culture” that much.