Language policy in France
Encyclopedia
France
has one official language
, the French language
. The French government does not regulate the choice of language in publications by individuals but the use of French is required by law in commercial and workplace communications. In addition to mandating the use of French in the territory of the Republic, the French government tries to promote French in the European Union
and globally through institutions such as La Francophonie
. The perceived threat from anglicisation
has prompted efforts to safeguard the position of the French language in France.
Besides French, there exist many other vernacular minority languages of France, both in the metropolitan territory of continental Europe
and in the French overseas territories. These languages have no official status. The 1999 report written for the French government by Bernard Cerquiglini
identified 75 languages (just eight in continental France proper) that would qualify for recognition under the government's proposed ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
. Currently, that charter is only signed but not ratified.
A revision of the French constitution creating official recognition of regional languages was implemented by the Parliament in Congress at Versailles in July 2008.
of 1539 made French the administrative language of the kingdom of France for legal documents and laws. Previously, official documents were written in medieval Latin
, which was the language used by the Roman Catholic Church
.
was established in 1635 to act as the official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language, and to publish an official dictionary of the French language
. Its recommendations however carry no legal power and are sometimes disregarded even by governmental authorities. In recent years the Académie has tried to prevent the Anglicisation
of the French language.
of 1789, French kings did not take a strong position on the language spoken by their subjects. However, in sweeping away the old provinces, parlement
s and laws, the Revolution established a unified system of administration across the state. At first, the revolutionaries declared liberty of language for all citizens of the Republic; this policy was subsequently abandoned in favour of the imposition of a common language which was to do away with the other languages of France. Other languages were seen as keeping the peasant masses in obscurantism
.
The new ideology was expounded in the Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois
and to universalise the use of the French language. Its author, Henri Grégoire
, deplored that France, the most advanced country in the world with regard to politics, had not progressed beyond the Tower of Babel
as far as languages were concerned, and that only three million of the 25 million inhabitants of France spoke Parisian French as their native tongue.
The report resulted the same year in two laws which stated that the only language tolerated in France in public life and in schools would be French. Within two years, the French language had become the symbol of the national unity of the French State. However, the Revolutionaries lacked both time and money to implement a language policy.
sought to modernize France, and in particular to increase literacy
and general knowledge in the population, especially the rural population, and established free compulsory primary education
. The choice of French for education seemed natural, given that it was the only language widely spoken in France in which a sizeable number of newspapers and historical, scientific etc. books were available.
The only language allowed in primary school was French. All other languages were forbidden, even in the schoolyard, and transgressions were severely punished. After 1918, the use of German in Alsace-Lorraine
was outlawed. In 1925, Anatole de Monzie
, Minister of public education, stated that "for the linguistic unity of France, the Breton language
must disappear." As a result, the speakers of minority languages began to be shamed when using their own language – especially in the educational system – and over time, many families stopped teaching their language to their children and tried to speak only French with them.
s in secondary schools, and the policy of repression in the primary schools came to an end. The Breton language began to appear in the media during this time.
declared that "there is no place for the regional languages and cultures in a France that intends to mark Europe deeply."
In 1992 the constitution was amended to state explicitly that French is the language of the republic.
In 2006 a French subsidiary of a US company was fined €500,000 plus an ongoing fine of €20,000 per day for providing software and related technical documentation to its employees in the English language only. See the Toubon Law
.
signed the Council of Europe
’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, but it was not ratified. The Constitutional Council of France
declared that the implementation of the Charter would be unconstitutional since the Constitution states that the language of the Republic is French.
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European convention
(ETS 148) adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional
and minority
languages in Europe
, ratified and implemented by 17 States, but not by France .
The charter contains 98 articles of which signatories must adopt a minimum of 35 (France signed 39).
The signing, and the failure to have it ratified, provoked a public debate in French society over the charter.
One argument against was the fear of the break-up of France "one and indivisible" leading to the threat of "babelism", "balkanization
" and then ethnic separatism
if the charter were to be implemented, and that therefore there should be only one language recognised in the French state: the French language. This was also linked to a wider debate about how power should be apportioned between the national and local governments.
Another was that in an era where a widely spoken language like French was threatened with becoming irrelevant in the global arena, especially in economic, technical and scientific contexts, officially supporting regional languages was a mere waste of government resources.
As an example of what proponents of ratification considered racist and scornful, here is a sample quote from an article in Charlie Hebdo
, a well-known satirical journal:
Likewise, President Jacques Chirac, putting an end to the debate, argued that it would threaten "the indivisibility of the Republic," "equality in front of the Law" and "the unity of the French people," since it may end by conferring "special rights to organised linguistic communities."
France, Andorra
and Turkey
are the only European countries that have not yet signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
. This framework entered into force in 1998 and is now nearly compulsory to implement in order to be accepted in the European Union
, which implies France would not qualify for EU entry were it to apply for membership now.
and other overseas territories, and the languages of recent immigrants, the following languages are spoken by sizeable minorities in France :
The non-French Oïl languages and Franco-Provençal are highly endangered; because of their similarity to standard French, their speakers conformed much more readily. The other languages are still spoken but are all considered endangered.
In the 1950s, more than one million people spoke Breton as their main language. The countryside in western Brittany
was still overwhelmingly Breton-speaking. Today, about 250,000 people are able to speak Breton (one-sixth of the population in the region), most of whom are elderly. Other regional languages have generally followed the same pattern; Alsatian and Corsican have resisted better, while Occitan has followed a still-worse trend.
Accurate information on the state of language use is complicated by the non-recognition of regional languages and the inability of the state to ask language use questions in the census
.
Since the rejection of ratification of the European Charter, French governments have offered token support to regional languages within the limits of the law. The Délégation générale à la langue française (General delegation of the French tongue) has acquired the additional function of observing and studying the languages of France and has had "et aux langues de France" (...and other languages of France) added to its title.
The French government hosted the first Assises nationales des langues de France in 2003, but this national round table on the languages of France served to highlight the contrast between cultural organisations and language activists on the one hand and the state on the other.
The decentralisation
programme initiated by the Jean-Pierre Raffarin
government has not extended to giving power in language policy to the regions.
against the predominance of English
in international affairs. According to French republican ideology (see also Laïcité
), all citizens are equal and therefore no groups may exercise extra rights; this is an idea stemming from the French Revolution
, contrasting with the previous situation in which many groups had special rights and privileges.
This policy of cultural homogeneity has been challenged from both the right wing and the left wing. In the 1970s, nationalist or regionalist movements emerged in regions such as Brittany, Corsica and Occitania. Even though they remain a minority, networks of schools teaching France's regional languages have arisen, such as Diwan in Brittany, Ikastola in the Basque country, Calandreta in Occitania, Bressola in Northern Catalonia
.
Despite popular demand for official recognition, regional language teaching is not supported by the state. However, in certain areas, such as Brittany, regional councils maintain bilingual public schools as far as it is within the law. Other Breton education is provided by Catholic schools and private schools, Dihun and Diwan
, respectively. Thus, today, only small numbers of young Bretons (about 14,000 as of 2011) have access to Breton language courses during their time in school, and that number is diminishing. In Corsica, the 1991 "Joxe Statute", in setting up the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, also provided for the Corsican Assembly
, and charged it with developing a plan for the optional teaching of Corsu. At the primary school level Corsu is taught up to a fixed number of hours per week (three in the year 2000) and is a voluntary subject at the secondary school level, but is required at the University of Corsica
.
A long campaign of defacing road signs led to the first bilingual road signs in the 1980s. These are now increasingly common in Brittany, because of the help given by the Ofis ar Brezhoneg
in bilingualizing many road, town hall and other official signs.
As far as the media are concerned, there is still little Breton to be found on the airwaves, although since 1982 a few Breton-speaking radio stations have been created on an associative basis. The launching of the Breton TV Breizh
in 2000 was intended to offer wider coverage of Breton. However, Breton-language programme schedules gradually decreased in favour of French-language broadcasting, until in 2010 they totally disappeared.
There is some opposition to the Loi Toubon mandating the use of French (or at least a translation into French) in commercial advertising and packaging, as well as in some other contexts.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
has one official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
, the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. The French government does not regulate the choice of language in publications by individuals but the use of French is required by law in commercial and workplace communications. In addition to mandating the use of French in the territory of the Republic, the French government tries to promote French in the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
and globally through institutions such as La Francophonie
La Francophonie
Francophonie is an international organization of politics and governments with French as the mother or customary language, where a significant proportion of people are francophones , or where there is a notable affiliation with the French language or culture.Formally known as the Organisation...
. The perceived threat from anglicisation
Anglicisation
Anglicisation, or anglicization , is the process of converting verbal or written elements of any other language into a form that is more comprehensible to an English speaker, or, more generally, of altering something such that it becomes English in form or character.The term most often refers to...
has prompted efforts to safeguard the position of the French language in France.
Besides French, there exist many other vernacular minority languages of France, both in the metropolitan territory of continental Europe
Continental Europe
Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....
and in the French overseas territories. These languages have no official status. The 1999 report written for the French government by Bernard Cerquiglini
Bernard Cerquiglini
Bernard Cerquiglini , is a French linguist.A Graduate of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, having received an agrégé and a doctorate in letters, he was a teacher of linguistics in University of Paris VII, former director of the National Institute for the French language, former...
identified 75 languages (just eight in continental France proper) that would qualify for recognition under the government's proposed ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European treaty adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe...
. Currently, that charter is only signed but not ratified.
A revision of the French constitution creating official recognition of regional languages was implemented by the Parliament in Congress at Versailles in July 2008.
History
The Ordinance of Villers-CotterêtsOrdinance of Villers-Cotterêts
The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts is an extensive piece of reform legislation signed into law by Francis I of France on August 10, 1539 in the city of Villers-Cotterêts....
of 1539 made French the administrative language of the kingdom of France for legal documents and laws. Previously, official documents were written in medieval Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, which was the language used by the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
.
Académie française
The Académie françaiseAcadémie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
was established in 1635 to act as the official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language, and to publish an official dictionary of the French language
Dictionnaire de l'Académie française
The Dictionnaire de l'Académie française is the official dictionary of the French language.The Académie française is France's official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language, although its recommendations carry no legal power...
. Its recommendations however carry no legal power and are sometimes disregarded even by governmental authorities. In recent years the Académie has tried to prevent the Anglicisation
Anglicisation
Anglicisation, or anglicization , is the process of converting verbal or written elements of any other language into a form that is more comprehensible to an English speaker, or, more generally, of altering something such that it becomes English in form or character.The term most often refers to...
of the French language.
French Revolution
Prior to the French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
of 1789, French kings did not take a strong position on the language spoken by their subjects. However, in sweeping away the old provinces, parlement
Parlement
Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...
s and laws, the Revolution established a unified system of administration across the state. At first, the revolutionaries declared liberty of language for all citizens of the Republic; this policy was subsequently abandoned in favour of the imposition of a common language which was to do away with the other languages of France. Other languages were seen as keeping the peasant masses in obscurantism
Obscurantism
Obscurantism is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or the full details of some matter from becoming known. There are two, common, historical and intellectual, denotations: 1) restricting knowledge—opposition to the spread of knowledge, a policy of withholding knowledge from the...
.
The new ideology was expounded in the Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois
Patois
Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant...
and to universalise the use of the French language. Its author, Henri Grégoire
Henri Grégoire
Henri Grégoire , often referred to as Abbé Grégoire, was a French Roman Catholic priest, constitutional bishop of Blois and a revolutionary leader...
, deplored that France, the most advanced country in the world with regard to politics, had not progressed beyond the Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...
as far as languages were concerned, and that only three million of the 25 million inhabitants of France spoke Parisian French as their native tongue.
The report resulted the same year in two laws which stated that the only language tolerated in France in public life and in schools would be French. Within two years, the French language had become the symbol of the national unity of the French State. However, the Revolutionaries lacked both time and money to implement a language policy.
Third Republic
In the 1880s, the Third RepublicFrench Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
sought to modernize France, and in particular to increase literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
and general knowledge in the population, especially the rural population, and established free compulsory primary education
Primary education
A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...
. The choice of French for education seemed natural, given that it was the only language widely spoken in France in which a sizeable number of newspapers and historical, scientific etc. books were available.
The only language allowed in primary school was French. All other languages were forbidden, even in the schoolyard, and transgressions were severely punished. After 1918, the use of German in Alsace-Lorraine
Alsace-Lorraine
The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...
was outlawed. In 1925, Anatole de Monzie
Anatole de Monzie
Anatole de Monzie was a French administrator, encyclopaedist , political figure and scholar. His father was a tax collector in Bazas, Gironde where Anatole - a name he disliked from an early age - was born in 1876...
, Minister of public education, stated that "for the linguistic unity of France, the Breton language
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
must disappear." As a result, the speakers of minority languages began to be shamed when using their own language – especially in the educational system – and over time, many families stopped teaching their language to their children and tried to speak only French with them.
Fourth Republic
The 1950s were also the first time the French state recognised the right of the regional languages to exist. A law allowed for the teaching of regional languageRegional language
A regional language is a language spoken in an area of a nation state, whether it be a small area, a federal state or province, or some wider area....
s in secondary schools, and the policy of repression in the primary schools came to an end. The Breton language began to appear in the media during this time.
Fifth Republic
After the first few minutes on the radio in the 1940s, the French government allowed in 1964 for the first time one and a half minutes of Breton on regional television. But even in 1972, president Georges PompidouGeorges Pompidou
Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou was a French politician. He was Prime Minister of France from 1962 to 1968, holding the longest tenure in this position, and later President of the French Republic from 1969 until his death in 1974.-Biography:...
declared that "there is no place for the regional languages and cultures in a France that intends to mark Europe deeply."
In 1992 the constitution was amended to state explicitly that French is the language of the republic.
In 2006 a French subsidiary of a US company was fined €500,000 plus an ongoing fine of €20,000 per day for providing software and related technical documentation to its employees in the English language only. See the Toubon Law
Toubon Law
The Toubon Law , is a law of the French government mandating the use of the French language in official government publications, in all advertisements, in all workplaces, in commercial contracts, in some other commercial communication contexts, in all government-financed schools, and some other...
.
The debate about the Council of Europe’s Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
In 1999 the Socialist government of Lionel JospinLionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995...
signed the Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, but it was not ratified. The Constitutional Council of France
Constitutional Council of France
The Constitutional Council is the highest constitutional authority in France. It was established by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958, and its duty is to ensure that the principles and rules of the constitution are upheld.Its main activity is to rule on whether proposed...
declared that the implementation of the Charter would be unconstitutional since the Constitution states that the language of the Republic is French.
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European convention
Treaty
A treaty is an express agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely sovereign states and international organizations. A treaty may also be known as an agreement, protocol, covenant, convention or exchange of letters, among other terms...
(ETS 148) adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional
Regional language
A regional language is a language spoken in an area of a nation state, whether it be a small area, a federal state or province, or some wider area....
and minority
Minority language
A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities.-International politics:...
languages in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, ratified and implemented by 17 States, but not by France .
The charter contains 98 articles of which signatories must adopt a minimum of 35 (France signed 39).
The signing, and the failure to have it ratified, provoked a public debate in French society over the charter.
One argument against was the fear of the break-up of France "one and indivisible" leading to the threat of "babelism", "balkanization
Balkanization
Balkanization, or Balkanisation, is a geopolitical term, originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other, and it is considered pejorative.The term refers to the...
" and then ethnic separatism
Separatism
Separatism is the advocacy of a state of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. While it often refers to full political secession, separatist groups may seek nothing more than greater autonomy...
if the charter were to be implemented, and that therefore there should be only one language recognised in the French state: the French language. This was also linked to a wider debate about how power should be apportioned between the national and local governments.
Another was that in an era where a widely spoken language like French was threatened with becoming irrelevant in the global arena, especially in economic, technical and scientific contexts, officially supporting regional languages was a mere waste of government resources.
As an example of what proponents of ratification considered racist and scornful, here is a sample quote from an article in Charlie Hebdo
Charlie Hebdo
Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly newspaper, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics and jokes. It appeared from 1969 to 1981, when it folded, and was resurrected in 1992. The current editor is cartoonist Charb. His predecessors are François Cavanna and Philippe Val...
, a well-known satirical journal:
- The aborigines are going to be able to speak their patois, oh sorry, their language, without being laughed at. And even keep their accent, that is their beret and their clogs.
Likewise, President Jacques Chirac, putting an end to the debate, argued that it would threaten "the indivisibility of the Republic," "equality in front of the Law" and "the unity of the French people," since it may end by conferring "special rights to organised linguistic communities."
France, Andorra
Andorra
Andorra , officially the Principality of Andorra , also called the Principality of the Valleys of Andorra, , is a small landlocked country in southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France. It is the sixth smallest nation in Europe having an area of...
and Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
are the only European countries that have not yet signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities was signed on February 1995 by 22 member States of the Council of Europe ....
. This framework entered into force in 1998 and is now nearly compulsory to implement in order to be accepted in the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
, which implies France would not qualify for EU entry were it to apply for membership now.
Endangered languages
Excluding the languages spoken in the overseas regionsRégion d'outre-mer
Overseas region is a recent designation given to the Overseas departments which have similar powers to those of the regions of metropolitan France. They have had these powers since 1982, when France's decentralisation policy dictated that they be given elected regional councils along with other...
and other overseas territories, and the languages of recent immigrants, the following languages are spoken by sizeable minorities in France :
- Romance languagesRomance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
: CalóCaló languageCaló is a language spoken by the Spanish and Portuguese Romani. It is a mixed language based on Romance grammar, with an adstratum of Romani lexical items through language shift by the Romani community. It is often used as an argot, a secret language for discreet communication amongst Iberian...
, CatalanCatalan languageCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, CorsicanCorsican languageCorsican is a Italo-Dalmatian Romance language spoken and written on the islands of Corsica and northern Sardinia . Corsican is the traditional native language of the Corsican people, and was long the vernacular language alongside the Italian, official language in Corsica until 1859, which was...
, Franco-ProvençalFranco-Provençal languageFranco-Provençal , Arpitan, or Romand is a Romance language with several distinct dialects that form a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue d'Oïl and Langue d'Oc. The name Franco-Provençal was given to the language by G.I...
, ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Ligurian, Oïl languages (other than French), Occitan, PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, and SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
(Castillian Spanish). - Germanic languagesGermanic languagesThe Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
: DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, Vlaams, Luxembourgeois, and Swiss GermanSwiss GermanSwiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg...
. - Celtic languagesCeltic languagesThe Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
: BretonBreton languageBreton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
. - Isolate languagesLanguage isolateA language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
: BasqueBasque languageBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
. - Romani languages.
The non-French Oïl languages and Franco-Provençal are highly endangered; because of their similarity to standard French, their speakers conformed much more readily. The other languages are still spoken but are all considered endangered.
In the 1950s, more than one million people spoke Breton as their main language. The countryside in western Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
was still overwhelmingly Breton-speaking. Today, about 250,000 people are able to speak Breton (one-sixth of the population in the region), most of whom are elderly. Other regional languages have generally followed the same pattern; Alsatian and Corsican have resisted better, while Occitan has followed a still-worse trend.
Accurate information on the state of language use is complicated by the non-recognition of regional languages and the inability of the state to ask language use questions in the census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
.
Since the rejection of ratification of the European Charter, French governments have offered token support to regional languages within the limits of the law. The Délégation générale à la langue française (General delegation of the French tongue) has acquired the additional function of observing and studying the languages of France and has had "et aux langues de France" (...and other languages of France) added to its title.
The French government hosted the first Assises nationales des langues de France in 2003, but this national round table on the languages of France served to highlight the contrast between cultural organisations and language activists on the one hand and the state on the other.
The decentralisation
Décentralisation
Décentralisation is a french word for both a policy concept in French politics from 1968-1990, and a term employed to describe the results of observations of the evolution of spatial economic and institutional organization of France....
programme initiated by the Jean-Pierre Raffarin
Jean-Pierre Raffarin
Jean-Pierre Raffarin is a French conservative politician and senator for Vienne.Jean-Pierre Raffarin served as the Prime Minister of France from 6 May 2002 to 31 May 2005, resigning after France's rejection of the referendum on the European Union draft constitution. However, after Raffarin...
government has not extended to giving power in language policy to the regions.
Opposition to the language policy
France presents itself as a big country struggling for cultural diversityCultural diversity
Cultural diversity is having different cultures respect each other's differences. It could also mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole...
against the predominance of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
in international affairs. According to French republican ideology (see also Laïcité
Laïcité
French secularism, in French, laïcité is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs. French secularism has a long history but the current regime is based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of...
), all citizens are equal and therefore no groups may exercise extra rights; this is an idea stemming from the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, contrasting with the previous situation in which many groups had special rights and privileges.
This policy of cultural homogeneity has been challenged from both the right wing and the left wing. In the 1970s, nationalist or regionalist movements emerged in regions such as Brittany, Corsica and Occitania. Even though they remain a minority, networks of schools teaching France's regional languages have arisen, such as Diwan in Brittany, Ikastola in the Basque country, Calandreta in Occitania, Bressola in Northern Catalonia
Northern Catalonia
Northern Catalonia is a term that is sometimes used, particularly in Catalan writings, to refer to the territory ceded to France by Spain through the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659...
.
Despite popular demand for official recognition, regional language teaching is not supported by the state. However, in certain areas, such as Brittany, regional councils maintain bilingual public schools as far as it is within the law. Other Breton education is provided by Catholic schools and private schools, Dihun and Diwan
Diwan (school)
Diwan is a federation of Breton language-medium schools in Brittany .-Concept:The Diwan concept, which allows children to learn French and Breton through immersion was inspired by the Gaelscoileanna movement in Ireland, Ikastolak movement in the Basque Country and the Mudiad Ysgolion Meithrin...
, respectively. Thus, today, only small numbers of young Bretons (about 14,000 as of 2011) have access to Breton language courses during their time in school, and that number is diminishing. In Corsica, the 1991 "Joxe Statute", in setting up the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, also provided for the Corsican Assembly
Corsican Assembly
The Corsican Assembly is the unicameral legislative body of the territorial collectivity of Corsica. It has its seat at the Grand Hôtel d'Ajaccio et Continental, in the Corsican capital of Ajaccio.-History:...
, and charged it with developing a plan for the optional teaching of Corsu. At the primary school level Corsu is taught up to a fixed number of hours per week (three in the year 2000) and is a voluntary subject at the secondary school level, but is required at the University of Corsica
University of Corsica Pascal Paoli
The University of Corsica Pascal Paoli is a French university, based in Corte, Haute-Corse. It is under the Academy of Corsica.-See also:* List of public universities in France by academy* Pasquale Paoli...
.
A long campaign of defacing road signs led to the first bilingual road signs in the 1980s. These are now increasingly common in Brittany, because of the help given by the Ofis ar Brezhoneg
Ofis ar Brezhoneg
The Public Office for the Breton Language was established on 15 October 2010, in place on the Ofis ar Brezhoneg/Office de la langue bretonne created on 1 May 1999 by the Region of Brittany in France for the promotion and development of the Breton language....
in bilingualizing many road, town hall and other official signs.
As far as the media are concerned, there is still little Breton to be found on the airwaves, although since 1982 a few Breton-speaking radio stations have been created on an associative basis. The launching of the Breton TV Breizh
TV Breizh
TV Breizh is a private French regional station for the Brittany region.-History:The channel was launched on September 1, 2000 by TF1 and Patrick Le Lay for the purposes of broadcasting regional programming and reruns of TF1 programmes.TV Breizh tried to obtain an analogue broadcast licence for its...
in 2000 was intended to offer wider coverage of Breton. However, Breton-language programme schedules gradually decreased in favour of French-language broadcasting, until in 2010 they totally disappeared.
There is some opposition to the Loi Toubon mandating the use of French (or at least a translation into French) in commercial advertising and packaging, as well as in some other contexts.
See also
- Standard FrenchStandard FrenchStandard French is an unofficial term for a standard variety of the French language...
- Language policyLanguage policyMany countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
- Language politicsLanguage politicsLanguage politics is a term used to describe political consequences of linguistic differences between people, or on occasion the political consequences of the way a language is spoken and what words are used. It means language can express some authority. Examples include:*Recognition of a...
- Language planningLanguage planningLanguage planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots...
- Language deathLanguage deathIn linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety...
- Cultural imperialismCultural imperialismCultural imperialism is the domination of one culture over another. Cultural imperialism can take the form of a general attitude or an active, formal and deliberate policy, including military action. Economic or technological factors may also play a role...
- VergonhaVergonhaLa vergonha is what Occitans call the effects of various policies of the government of France on its citizens whose mother tongue was a so-called patois, specifically langue d'oc...
- Académie de la Carpette anglaiseAcadémie de la Carpette anglaiseThe Académie de la Carpette anglaise, which may be translated as the "English Doormat Academy" , is a French organisation that awards an annual prize to "members of the French élite who distinguish themselves by relentlessly promoting the domination of the English language over the French language...
Further reading
- GEMIE, S. (2002), The politics of language : debates and identities in contemporary Brittany, French Cultural Studies n°13, p. 145-164.
- HAQUE, Shahzaman (2010b), "Enjeux des politiques linguistiques: pratiques et comportements langagiers mutilingues dans un pays monolingue". In: M.Iliescu, H. Siller-Runggaldier, P. Danler (éds.) Actes du XXVe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, Innsbruck 2007, Tome I. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 163-172. Available at http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/9783110231922.1-163
- HAQUE, Shahzaman (2010a)Place des langues natives et d'accueil chez trois familles migrantes indiennes en Europe. In Andrea Rocci, Alexandre Duchêne, Aleksandra Gnach & Daniel Stotz (Eds.) Bulletin Suisse de Linguistique Appliquée, printemps 2010: Sociétés en mutations: les défis méthodologiques de la linguistique appliquée. Numéro Spécial, 2010/1, 225-236.
- HAQUE, Shahzaman (2008), "Différences de politiques linguisitiques entre nation et famille: Etude de cas de trois familles indiennes migrantes dans trois pays d'Europe". In: Suvremena Lingvistika Vol. 34 (65), 57-72. Available at http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=61116&lang=en
- KYMLICKA (Will), Les droits des minorités et le multiculturalisme: l’évolution du débat anglo-américain , in KYMLICKA (Will) et MESURE (Sylvie) dir., Comprendre les identités culturelles, Paris, PUF, Revue de Philosophie et de sciences sociales n°1, 2000, p. 141-171.
- SZULMAJSTER-CELNIKER (Anne), La politique de la langue en France, La Linguistique, vol 32, n°2, 1996, p. 35-63.
- WRIGHT (Sue), 2000, Jacobins, Regionalists and the Council of Europe’s Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, Journal of Multilingual and Multicural Development, vol. 21, n°5, p. 414-424.