>And very often those countries have seen themselves linguistically: France is the home of those who speak French, and so on.
This is indeed an idea which contributed to the creation of some European countries (Italy, Germany, Romania…), but in the case of France it’s rather the other way round: monolingual France isn’t the result of people speaking a common language going together to make a country, but of French having been pushed as the common language of all people living on the territory of France, which as a country is much older than the idea of ethnolinguistical states.
Ironically, people were speaking “French” in western Switzerland at times half the population of France itself didn’t speak that language.
Hmm, India has how many languages? [122 major and 1599 other languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India), and they are of very different language families. Switzerland is not such a unique beast. But yes, for someone who is monolingual, it must look like a miracle. And personally, I do think it’s a fun part of “Swissness”.
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>And very often those countries have seen themselves linguistically: France is the home of those who speak French, and so on.
This is indeed an idea which contributed to the creation of some European countries (Italy, Germany, Romania…), but in the case of France it’s rather the other way round: monolingual France isn’t the result of people speaking a common language going together to make a country, but of French having been pushed as the common language of all people living on the territory of France, which as a country is much older than the idea of ethnolinguistical states.
Ironically, people were speaking “French” in western Switzerland at times half the population of France itself didn’t speak that language.
Hmm, India has how many languages? [122 major and 1599 other languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India), and they are of very different language families. Switzerland is not such a unique beast. But yes, for someone who is monolingual, it must look like a miracle. And personally, I do think it’s a fun part of “Swissness”.
Does anybody have a link without paywall?