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[10ebbor10]

My god, if Catalonia doesn't secede from Spain in the next year or two when they hold their referendum I'll eat my own shoes.

OK, someone should take note of this.

[Owlbread]

I'm trying to think of something slightly more edible so I can at least manage it.

[Zangi]

I'm trying to think of something slightly more edible so I can at least manage it.

Try looking for leather shoes/floppies with the least amount of other material possible?

[Owlbread]

Well, once upon a time when I went into pet shops for dog food/treats I remember I used to see rawhide chew toys in the shape of slippers.

[ChairmanPoo]

Cant ellaborate on my cell but the Catalonian situation is more complex thab that. And that of Sp  as a whole.  Tldr: all parties are rife with corruptiion. CiU is no better than the PP in that regard

[Kaferian]

Spoiler: Obligatory (click to show/hide)

Well, as long as Melilla and Cueta are Spanish, French Guiana is French, Puerto Rico is American, etc.

[10ebbor10]

Gibraltar wants to be British though. They held a referendum some time ago, and it was 99% in favour.

[da_nang]

Language politics time!

So there's this True Finn here named Petri Palin who recently sent in a complaint to the Regional State Administrative Agency about the lack of Finnish-speaking doctors in the bilingual but chiefly Swedish-speaking (~66%) town of Raseborg. When interviewed, he said there are even cases where a translator is needed and blames the administrative culture for causing it.

WELCOME TO MY FUCKING LIFE.

I mean sure, I commend for bringing it up and even pointing out that all people should receive equal service regardless of mother tongue but coming from a True Finn? The party whose members have been openly promoting stereotypical right-wing policies and abolishing the status of official language of the Swedish language and removal of the obligatory parts of Swedish in the curriculum thereby aiding the reduction of Swedish-speaking services. A party with right-wing extremists known for insulting and threatening minorities.

The irony. Oh the irony.

Every day I go by official services where when I ask for Swedish-speaking service I get only a resounding "Ei" and promptly either leave or start exchanging in English. Because fuck official language status, right? Let's screw over the minorities. Hell just recently I was dealing with social services and even legal papers (Where they confuse me with my father leading to me assigned as the defendant!) where Swedish-speaking service was either left at a minimum or nonexistent. Signing legal papers in full Finnish or social service forms in Finnish, they don't matter, right? They're not crucial enough to require official translating. NOPE.

Finnish bureaucracy is a hellish nightmare.

Article in Swedish. Intentionally.

[Sheb]

How is it supposed to work exactly?

For example, here in Belgium, we've got 3 official languages (Dutch, French and German). But you can't go in Antwerp and ask for papers in French. Each languages is spoken in its region (With Brussels being officially bilingual, despite being majority-french speaking).

However, we have what are called "municipalities with facilities", municipalities within of the linguistic region in which another language can be used for some things. Recently, we have problems with the Flemish government wanting to end those facilities, going as far as blocking 3 mayor's nomination for the "crime" of sending electoral paper in French to French speaker.

[da_nang]

I don't know the official method but if it's anything like the language used on signs, if a municipality is bilingual then the municipality must provide by law municipal services in both languages. Bilingual is defined here as having at least 8% or 3000 people of either language and will remain so until it drops below 6% or 3000 people. If below, the municipality is still allowed to voluntarily become and remain bilingual.

Official (state) services are always bilingual by law. Not that it always happens in practice, though.

More here.
And here (Swedish).

[Digital Hellhound]

As a Finnish Finn, I fucking hate having to study a language for years just because a small minority speaks it (and be required to know it for government jobs), as do most people I know. I've never really gotten a good answer why - there are many countries with bigger minorities that haven't even considered it. Especially with how we're taught we only were able to gain autonomy and cultural expression only under the Russians.

It breeds bitterness, is what I'm saying. I'm against anything the True Finns say on principle, mind you, and have no real wish to abolish it from the curriculum.

[scriver]

In Sweden, the governments are required to provide documents in the languages of all our five "minority languages" (Sweden only have one "official" language, but several "half-official"): Finnish, Mienkieli Finnish, Romani, Sami, and Yiddish. In the big cities it is also reasonable to expect documents in the "lingua francas" of our main immigrant areas, Arabic, Persian, Spanish, and so on.

edit:

As a Finnish Finn, I fucking hate having to study a language for years just because a small minority speaks it (and be required to know it for government jobs), as do most people I know. I've never really gotten a good answer why - there are many countries with bigger minorities that haven't even considered it. Especially with how we're taught we only were able to gain autonomy and cultural expression only under the Russians.

It breeds bitterness, is what I'm saying. I'm against anything the True Finns say on principle, mind you, and have no real wish to abolish it from the curriculum.

Well, one could also ask why Finno-Swedes should have to learn Finnish to be able to communicate with the government.

[10ebbor10]

How is it supposed to work exactly?

For example, here in Belgium, we've got 3 official languages (Dutch, French and German). But you can't go in Antwerp and ask for papers in French*. Each languages is spoken in its region (With Brussels being officially bilingual, despite being majority-french speaking).

However, we have what are called "municipalities with facilities", municipalities within of the linguistic region in which another language can be used for some things. Recently, we have problems with the Flemish government wanting to end those facilities, going as far as blocking 3 mayor's nomination for the "crime" of sending electoral paper in French to French speaker.

It's a tad more complicated than that, actually. The primary problem is that the language policy is not decided by law, but by constitutional amendment (IIRC). The entire language border was drawn out in the 1960, and is permanent. Sadly, demographics have changed, which is why you get such weird things as mentioned above. Though that's a tad more complicated, as it has to do with BHV, and all that.

But yeah, you have quite a bit of orphaned municipalities, where only a minority still speaks the official language. In Brussels, there are more people that speak neither French nor Flemish, than there are people that actually speak Flemish. The Flemish government doesn't seek to end the facilities though, they intend to preserve them, instead of doing the somewhat logical thing of throwing them in with Brussels or the French speaking part of the country.

There've been meaner, and weirder things going on though. Facilities often have both a French and Flemish cultural centrum, and often the Flemish one is the best equipped (due to receiving subsidation from the Flemish governement), while the French one (Which can't get subsidation, because it's Flemish soil) is the one that's used most. Other interesting things is a nice variant on the filibuster. All municipal meetings and decisions have to take place in Dutch. If you want to deny a vote, just start speaking French.

The language topic is kinda important up here, mainly because of the Century long repression before the 1960.

*Technically you can. They're not required to answer though, and if they do, they can only answer in dutch.

[Sheb]

I know it's more complicated, but I've got to keep things relatively simple, or I'll end up writing a wall of text.

But yeah, like much of Belgium's institutions, it's an illogical mess.

[Owlbread]

I could talk about separatism here (there's a few inroads I can see), but I'd like to just keep it to a debate over language politics. I do wonder about these sorts of things myself; in Scotland we need to take note for when we're revitalising Gaelic.

Already people across the country are getting a bit ratty over proposals to start teaching it in every school, even though Gaelic is traditionally a language of just one particular region of Scotland (historically it was spoken all over the country from the Northern tip to the English borders, but that was nearly a thousand years ago). I'm a rabid supporter of the Gaelic language and I disagree with the approach; we need only look at how badly the Irish are killing the Irish language through ineffective language policies that alienate people from it. If you force a language on anyone in school, chances are they'll reject it unless you're beating their native tongue out of them at the same time. I propose sticking to traditionally Gaelic-speaking areas and revitalising the former areas in the Lowlands as time goes on, though for the majority of the Lowlands, Scots should be taught.

Judging by what people here are saying though - if we adopt these policies and succeed in revitalising Gaelic in one region, that can lead to a lot of issues. Maybe we ought to crack language teaching practises and find a way to teach languages to kids (and adults, I suggest) without making them feel as though they're forced to learn something useless. You know, like a kind of... positive encouragement thing.