Talk:Frédéric Mistral

French writers

This is very dubious categorizing, considering the fact he didn't not write in French. There are actually 3 categories that overlap : French-born writers writing in French, French-born writers writing in Latin, Provencal, Basque, etc.. rather than French, and non-French-born writers using French as a writing language. It's never really clear what French means, whether born in France or writing in French, even worse when it comes to people from medieval times when the French nationality didn't exist--Anne97432 (talk) 10:50, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I realize this is old, but I went ahead and switched it. There's a modern view of nationality that doesn't translate well to the near past, particularly for people from the Americas as many countries don't have that same melting pot aspect of nationality. My grandfather was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he was neither Austrian nor Hungarian and would never characterize himself as such. It does introduce an interesting question as to how the spectrum of peoples past get portrayed in modern times, especially when older times lacked this idea of the nation state. In what year does someone born in Galicia cease to be Galician and begins being Spanish instead? Alcibiades979 (talk) 14:58, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

To speak of a person's nationality as "Occitan" is anachronistic. That reflects a modern attitude toward speakers of the Occitan language(s) that did not historically exist. What is more, speakers of the Provençal dialect often dislike having it grouped with Occitan (which historically referred to the dialects spoken in and around Languedoc). Mistral's nationality was French, and his regional identity was Provençal. Funnyhat (talk) 03:41, 18 August 2020 (UTC)