WI: France doesnt try to suppress non-French languages?

How would French (and European) history go?

Not an huge change. Spain tried to do same to their side of the Catalan-Occitan medium, and Germany didn't care much beyond using this as casus belli for the Lorraine-Alsacian dialects. And nobody arised for Breton, and for any italian-french side languages like Monégasce...

On the reverse side, Germany would find other things to aim at, and Spain wouldn't care unless 'terrorists' hide in the south.
 
I think the cultural implicatzions would be considerable. France was to a large extent the laboratory of modern nationalism. The idea that one nation speaks one language and shares one culture is old, of course, but its direct application in daily practice is something that France pioneered. Without that example, I doubt that so many other European nations would have seen the need to create monolingual entities. And while a few million people speaking Breton or Occitan with French as a second language (for career purposes) is small, not having, say, Russification would cause huge effects downn the road.

The other question is what the standing of these populations will be in this France. Do they regard them as equal citizens speaking a different language? Or as marginal populations under the same authority? Conquered peoples, something like a first-class colony? Clearly, the central authority willl contine to speak French. It will be the prestige language. What will the others do vis-a-vis that? Do you get higher education in them? All these things will make a big difference in their function as examples for other countries to follow.
 
Interesting; though I know little of France language wise in Denmark we had Low German as administrative and command language in the Army until late 18. century. Only the elite Guards regiment - largely recruited in Norway - were commanded in Danish and not subject to physical abuse.
It took a top down revolution to change the circumstances and make Danish the official language of Army and Admin.
Apart from Low German being necessary if you would make a career in Admin or Army I don't know of other limitations language wise.
Of course the Danish situation was different being a conglomerate state.
 
Nothing changes really : the non-french languages were still around in relative wealth around 1900. What made them disappear was less the french-only policy (that put them in a diglossia situation, a lower one) than the more and more global economy.

Furthermore, not supressing the other languages was quite the regular republican goal : they wanted to get rid of it in the public discussion, but they didn't saw any problem by having lower classes still using it (as it reinforced the class differenciation).
The only ones to have claimed a supression of non-french languages were the majority of Jacobins but 1)They never had the power to enforce this program 2)Their propaganda, political program etc was made in non-french language in the regions concerned.

Apart having a complete reverse (France HELPING the non-french languages), you won't have anything, maybe less regionalist bitching about the responsability of the state and more trying to see their own failures.

The linguistic policy wasn't a racial one (except in very special cases) and didn't lead to a real discrimination against the individuals, except culturally.

So, I would say no big changes. Maybe more speakers, and more insitutionalised non-french languages. But it could be even worse than the actual situation : having institutionnalized occitan would lead to an occitan more influenced by french, or a breton language using french referents.
 
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