French is VERY elitist. Both historically and in politics nowadays. There is something, the "Academy of the french language", which like isn't a thing with any other language as far as I'm aware of. They are a bunch of old, rich white men who decide what should and what shouldn't be part of the french language. They recently, for example, banned all english gaming related words from you know "official french" or whatever (I'm pretty sure it was the gaming related words I'm too lazy to check).
Because of them there's reforms every now and then, they just like... Change the rules of the language. Like a whole bunch of them. I was begining high school last time it happened, teachers had to go listen to seminars about it and then students were never taught what the new rules were you just had to like, learn it by yourself ig. And a lot of them are really dumb and arbitrary. Also french has massive germanic influences and it's very stupid to not acknowledge that and stop any new english influence that is happening organically. Anyways.
So yeah, that's for the now. One very important fact is that international and official written french is Paris french. If you hear it on tv or if you learn it in school, it will be the Paris french. Because of those elitists white guys who think they are superior to everyone.
Fact is, for centuries, french has been spoken in many, many countries, mainly because of colonisation. It's spoken in Haiti, Algeria, the Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Senegal, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada... And as for all languages, there are dialects. You can't escape the dialect, whoever you are, whatever you speak, unless you live in like a city and the only people speaking your language in the world are the population of this city. Everyone is speaking a dialect that's how language works, it evolves and develop differently in different areas.
So you know, so is the case with metropolitean France. The thing is, their dialect is the one we find in dictionaries and the one taught in school and shown in movies and blablabla. Which give some french people (I love french people btw but Parisians have to be the most universally hated demographic on the planet and there's reasons for that) a HUGE sense of superiority. I feel very free to speak about that because I experience it pretty much everyday, I live in Montreal and french people will come live here and make the rent go up like crazy because it's still way cheaper than in their hometown and tit talk and make fun of our culture and the way we talk like nonstop. I've heard multiple times that my accent is gross, ugly, not classy, the list goes on...
A japanese lady at my job high fived me bc I asked her "how are you" in japanese. People from France will correct me about the way I speak my native language.
Anyways.
Something that doesn't help, Ig, is that the country is called "France" and the language "french". But there are a variety of dialects spoken within France too. Funnily enough, at some point in history, old white men decided that Francient (ancestor of french as you probably guessed) was just going to be spoken like... Everywhere in France. It actually took centuries to catch on. Brittons were speaking brittonic (and also suffering greatly from oppression from the frenchies, the word "plouc" is like a slur invented for them lmao), southern France was speaking mainly occitan and provençal I believe, and yeah it was all progressively erased. That's why they have those massive accents in different regions of France. Like for real, there's a part of Quebec, they literally removed a letter from their speech at some point to deny the King, they have a really big accent, there's like a thousand kms between Montreal and there and the difference is still less shocking then between southern France and Paris, and France is almost three times smaller than Quebec.
It's because the "everyone in France speaks french" is fairly recent. And "correct" french is spoken by a very small minority of french speakers who like to think they are the only french speakers in the whole world.
Not Ruby-related but it made me lol. Got to love wholesome chickens.
.
