介绍： Books & arts

文艺板块

Johnson

约翰逊专栏

Eiffel power

埃菲尔力量

The rights and wrongs of a French bid to ban accent discrimination

法国禁止口音歧视的是非曲直

In the early 1790s French revolutionaries commissioned a priest, Henri Gregoire, to take a census of the languages spoken in France. His findin...

介绍： Books & arts

文艺板块

Johnson

约翰逊专栏

Eiffel power

埃菲尔力量

The rights and wrongs of a French bid to ban accent discrimination

法国禁止口音歧视的是非曲直

In the early 1790s French revolutionaries commissioned a priest, Henri Gregoire, to take a census of the languages spoken in France. His findings were eventually titled a “Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalise the use of the French language”. Gregoire was a pioneering believer in racial equality, a fact that may seem to fit oddly with his passion for eradicating linguistic diversity. But to him, it made sense: French was the language of liberation, and those without it could be kept in ignorance.

18世纪90年代初，法国革命者委托一位名叫亨利·格雷戈尔的牧师对法国说的语言进行普查。格雷戈尔的研究结果最终被命名为《关于消灭土话必要性及其措施以及普及使用法语的报告》。格雷戈尔是种族平等的先锋信徒，这一事实似乎与他对根除语言多样性的热情有着诡异的契合。但他做出这样的事情合乎常理，法语是解放的语言，不讲法语的人可能愚昧无知。

How very French, their British cousins might chuckle.
他们兄弟的英国人民可能会暗自发笑，这很法国人