language and accent question about Napoleon

[Meneldil]

Cool thread. I had gotten a shade of the French situation from Europa Universalis 3, but I didn't realize that the French nation coalesced so (comparatively) recently nor did I know about the languages stuff.

I'm sorry to hear that our habit of identifying each other by distant ancestors bothers you, Meneldil. :P I was asked recently "what are you?" and responded "I'm from [my home town]" - which got a laugh and a second question - "no, but where are you parents or whatever from?" It's interesting that we think this way.

Well, I was mostly venting 12 months of frustration. I've actually learnt to live with this behaviour (I just ignore it :-P), though some people indeed push it too far. And tbh, it boastes our european (huge) egos.
Here, you only mention your foreign origins to show that you're family assimilated completely. As opposed to the newest immigrants from our former colonies, who can't seem to assimilate french culture and who keep refering to their so-called motherland. It's often a cheap argument brought up in conversations about immigration : "see, my family came from Poland, didn't speak french, was deeply catholic, yet we assimilated. Why can't they do the same?"

I, on the other hand, admit that most Europeans I've met in North-America (and me aswell) often have neo-colonialist mindsets. Such as "Oh well, these people aren't that bad. Sure, they don't have any history or old building, but they're not complete savages yet", which must be quite annoying to you (though I think this is in a way what americans expect from euros, and apparently makes girls horny :D).

[The Wizard]

Oh, you silly Frenchman. In Europe, we have our own governments and states to channel our tribal conceits into!

“The way Occitan is "patois" yet has a longer intellectual, written history than French...” Yes and no. Occitan is part of French. It is not 2 different languages, but Occitant participated in the building of Modern French.
It is like if you claim that the Gauls or the Franks had a longer History than the French.

Like populations, languages have history and are the product of mixtures, melting pots, influences, fashion, and books.

Occitan is not a part of French any more than Catalan is (or Spanish, or any other Romance language). It just happens to be spoken in an area ruled by the French state.

My point is really that it's kind of funny when Frenchmen (or Parisians, whomever you prefer) speak of their language as the light of the universal civilization while deriding a language such as Occitan as a patois. No more than that.

[Megas Methuselah]

This is all the French ever existed for, their true destiny. Everything else is meaningless.