Vergonha

Articleissues
POV = January 2008
refimprove = May 2008
citecheck = June 2008
external links = June 2008"La vergonha" (Occitan for shame, pronounced|beɾˈɣuɲɔ) is what some Occitans call the nefarious effects of various policies of the Government of France on its citizens whose mother tongue was one of so-called "patois" and in particular "langue d'oc". "Vergonha" is being made to reject and feel ashamed of one's (or one's parents') non-French language through official exclusion, humiliation at school and rejection from the media as organized and sanctioned by French political leaders, from Henri Grégoire to Nicolas Sarkozy. "Vergonha", which is still a taboo topic in France where some still refuse to admit such discrimination ever existed, can be seen as the result of an attempted linguicide, as hereafter developed.

16th to 18th century

Already in 1539 with Art. 111 of the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts [ [http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/histoire/villers-cotterets.asp Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêt] ] , non-French languages in France were dealt a severe blow when it became compulsory "to deliver and execute all [legal] acts in the French language" ("de prononcer et expedier tous actes en langaige françoys"). Originally meant as a way to get rid of Latin in official documents — few 16th-century French subjects were educated and familiar with Latin, — it also stated that French and only French was to be made legal ("en langage maternel françoys et non aultrement") in the kingdom.

Late 18th to late 19th century

Abbé Grégoire's "Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois"

The deliberate process of eradicating non-French vernaculars in modern France and disparaging them as being but mere local and often strictly oral dialects really startedFact|date=June 2008 with Abbé Grégoire's "Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalise the use of the French language" [ [http://www.languefrancaise.net/dossiers/dossiers.php?id_dossier=66 Abbé Grégoire's "Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language"] ] , which he presented on June 4, 1794 to the National Convention and was followed by the official banning of all languages other than French in the administration and school for the sake of linguistically uniting post-Bastille Day France in a time when only one tenth of the population were fluent in French [ [http://www.gwalarn.org/brezhoneg/istor/gregoire.html L'Abbé Grégoire en guerre contre les "Patois", Hervé Luxardo, gwalarn.org] ] , that is to say around three million out of a total twenty-eight. As for the choice of the derogatory word "patois", which doesn't mean just "a dialect", Jean Jaurès famously claimed that "one names "patois" the language of a defeated nation" [ [http://rleb07.free.fr/opinions/vecteur.html A new "Common Vector", Robert L.E. Billon, April 2000, rleb07.free.fr] ] . According to the "Chambers Dictionary", the origin of the term is disputed but could be a "corruption of "patrois", from LL "patriensis", a local inhabitant".

Four months earlier (January 27), Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac, despite being an Occitan from Tarbes himself, had claimed [ [http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/Europe/france-2politik_francais.htm L'aménagement linguistique dans le monde - La politique linguistique du français, www.tlfq.ulaval.ca] ] before this same Convention that

The monarchy had reasons to resemble the Tower of Babel; in democracy, leaving the citizens to ignore the national language [that of Paris] , unable to control the power, is betraying the motherland... For a free people, the tongue must be one and the same for everyone. [...] How much money have we not spent already for the translation of the laws of the first two national assemblies in the various dialects of France! As if it were our duty to maintain those barbaric jargons and those coarse lingos that can only serve fanatics and counter-revolutionaries now!

The end of traditional Occitan provinces

This ultra-republican policy is particularly obvious in the way France's inner borders were redesigned, thus creating 83 "départements". The law was passed on December 22, 1789 and took effect the following year, on March 4, 1790.

In the 20th century, the "départements" were grouped into "régions", to create a level of government between the departmental and national. While the "régions" were intended to replace the old provinces, they were not necessarily formed along the same boundaries. As the map shows, there were eleven Occitan-speaking enclaves in the pre-1789 state, such as the powerful lands of Languedoc and Gascony, but they were divided into seven "régions" with no regard whatsoever for cultural and linguistic identities. This is how Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur was created out of portions of five Occitan provinces and three capitals were scrapped in favour of Marseille; and Auvergne came to comprise both native and Oïl-language entities. Meanwhile, the city of Nantes was administratively removed from Brittany, of which it had been one of two traditional capitals (along with Rennes), and the city of Toulouse was not included in the "région" of Languedoc-Rousillon, though it had historically been located in that province.

Many of the "régions" contain hyphenated names, reflecting the merging of multiple historically distinct areas. This is true for four of the seven "régions" of Occitania: Languedoc-Roussillon, Midi-Pyrénées, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and Rhône-Alpes. As a result, the centuries-old singularities of the various Occitan-speaking parts were overlooked and shaken in a deliberate effort by the newly-formed government to weaken and parcel out long-established feudal domains so that republican France would subdue traditional allegiances, as Antonin Perbòsc reveals in the Foreword to his "Anthologie": [Quoted in Georges Labouysse's "Histoire de France: L'Imposture. Mensonges et manipulations de l'Histoire officielle" p. 234. IEO Edicions]

When the "Constituante" (National Constituent Assembly) created the "départements", their goal was clearly to erase the old geographical and historical distinction of the provinces; however this goal was not as perfectly met as some would have liked: in general, the "départements" were made up of pieces of existing provinces, quite seldom of the reunion of parts from different provinces. If one could criticize this territorial division for being too arbitrary and too geometric, what can be said of Tarn-et-Garonne, born of a "sénatus-consule" (a law by the Senate of France) on November 2 1808? Of course, one may think that the "Centralisateur" (Napoleon Bonaparte) felt real pleasure showing he could do even better than the "centralisateurs" of the National Constituent Assembly. With fragments of Quercy, Rouergue, Agenais, Lomagne, Gascony and Languedoc, creating a new unit so little vast and yet so diverse of soil, language and race, what a great idea! And maybe the audacious half-god had only one regret: coming a little too late to redesign according to this pattern all the provinces of old France...

* Toulouse lost 76% of its territory of Languedoc
* Bordeaux lost a little more than half its territory of Gascony and Guyenne
* Limoges increased its administrative area by 43%
* Guéret, Pau, Foix, Riom, Aix-en-Provence, Grenoble, Carpentras (1791) and Nice (1860) lost their status as capitals
* Clermont-Ferrand, Montpellier and Marseille became capitals of Auvergne, Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, respectively
* Languedoc was divided into five unequal parts, the largest of which forming Languedoc-Roussillon with the Catalan-speaking province of Roussillon
* The County of Marche, Béarn, the County of Foix and subsequently Comtat Venaissin and the County of Nice lost their autonomy
* Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur is made up of Provence and the County of Nice and bits and pieces of three other provinces
* The north of Languedoc and Comtat Venaissin and the western half of Dauphiné became linguistic minorities in the new Rhône-Alpes region
* The Occitan provinces spread over a little less than 200,000km²
* Gascony and Guyenne, Languedoc, Provence and Auvergne accounted for 78.4% of Occitania in terms of land area, with Gascony and Guyenne making up for over a third of the total surface and Languedoc almost a quarter

Late 19th century - Policies and legacy of Jules Ferry

chool humiliations

In the 1880s, Jules Ferry implemented a series of strict measures to further weaken "regional" languages in France, as shown in Bernard Poignant's 1998 report to Lionel Jospin [ [http://www.chez.com/buan1/poignant.htm LANGUES ET CULTURES REGIONALES - Rapport de Monsieur Bernard Poignant - Maire de Quimper A Monsieur Lionel Jospin - Premier Ministre Le 1er juillet 1998, chez.com] ] . These included children being given punishments by their teachers for speaking Occitan in a Toulouse school or Breton in Brittany. As Pêr-Jakez Helias (1914-1995), the author of the 1975 best-selling novel "Le Cheval d'orgueil" (The Horse of Pride), recalls in this interview [http://217.147.194.129/cata.php?catalogueID=6250Dead link|date=May 2008] ,

Now I know, I learned that there was a government policy which goal was obviously to make France one and indivisible, and as a result regional languages had to disappear. But I didn't know it then and maybe the teachers of the Third Republic did, though I asked some of them and they all denied it. Their own job was to teach us French. And consequently, while attending school, we were required to speak French. Whenever we used Breton instead, we weren't doing our share and so we deserved to be expelled. Period.

Among other well-known humiliations was "clogging" young rebels, namely hanging a clog ("sabot") around their necks as this young lady remembers her grandparents say [cite web|url=http://members.tripod.com/~SuuHialat/hialat3c.html Ecoles Diwan|title=Ecoles Diwan, la bosse du breton|last=de la Casinière|first=Nicolas|date=October 1, 1998|language=fr|accessdate=2008-06-28] :

My grandparents speak Breton too, though not with me. As children, they used to have their fingers smacked if they happened to say a word in Breton. Back then, the French of the Republic, one and indivisible, was to be heard in all schools and those who dared challenge this policy were humiliated with having to wear a clog around their necks or kneel down on a ruler under a sign that read: "It is forbidden to spit on the ground and speak Breton". [ [http://bretagne.lalibreblogs.be/media/01/00/3d75e7dbef78f875f7cc337be5138241.jpgAn example sign at bretagne.lalibreblogs.be] . The sign reads (in French): "To all school pupils: It is forbidden 1. to speak Breton and spit on the ground; 2. to wet your fingers with your mouth to turn the pages of books and notebooks; 3. to insert the tip of a pen or penholder into your ear; 4. to clean your slates with your spit or directly with your tongue; 5. to hold pens, penholders, coins etc between your lips. Now do you want to know why these things are forbidden? Ask your teachers: they will give you the necessary explanations. And remember your duty is not just to obey these rules but to make sure everyone else applies them."] That's the reason why some older folks won't transmit the language to their children: it brings trouble upon yourself...

This practice was referred to as le symbole by officials and "la vache" (the cow) by pupils with offenders becoming "vachards". Many objects were used, not just clogs: horseshoes, shingles, slates, wooden plates with a message, coins with a cross on them. The following are official instructions from a Finistère sub-prefect to teachers in 1845: "And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language."Fact|date=June 2008 The prefect of Basses-Pyrénées in the French Basque Country wrote in 1846: "Our schools in the Basque Country are particularly meant to substitute the Basque language with French..." [Georges Labouysse in "Histoire de France: L'Imposture. Mensonges et manipulations de l'Histoire officielle" pp. 90-92. IEO Edicions]

Resorting to the practice of "clogging" is confirmed by the Autonomes de Solidarité Laïques website [ [http://www.autonome-solidarite.fr/?fas-usu=tribune&type=politique&id=1497 La neutralité politique, philosophique et religieuse et l’école, Autonomes de Solidarité Laïques website] ] :

School has had a unifying role inasmuch as speaking the "noble" language [French] reduced the use of regional dialects and "patois". Let us mention the humiliation of children made to wear a clog around their necks for inadvertently speaking a word in the language of the people.

As for signs, they were also found in Poitou schools [ [http://parlange.free.fr/pages/bas_poitevin.html Parlange : témoignages sur les patois du Bas-Poitou, parlange.free.fr] ] :

It seems as though Jules Ferry making school free and compulsory in 1881 materialized the work started four centuries earlier [with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts] ; the method of repression and humiliation that was undertaken bore fruit with, for instance, the famous signs in school reading: "It is forbidden to spit on the ground and speak "patois"."

The Conselh de Representacion Generala de la Joventut d'Òc (CRGJOC, General Representation Council of the Occitan Youth), through the Youth of European Nationalities website [ [http://www.yeni.org/default.php?s=members&p=members/membersitem.php&id=204&m=&l=english Conselh de Representacion Generala de la Joventut d'Òc (CRGJOC) : Organization, at the Youth of European Nationalities Website] ] , reports that

Our language [Occitan] lost its name, becoming some "patois", first at school and then in families through putting pressure on women in education ("Interdit de cracher par terre et de parler patois") with the French IIIrd Republic, Mussolini and Franco.

The Confolentés Occitan (Occitan-speaking Limousin) website [ [http://ujan.free.fr/englOc2.htm Occitan : a short history, Confolentés Occitan website (ujan.free.fr)] ] testifies of the methods used by French authorities over the past century or so:

To help efface traditional regional identities, the Occitan language was not merely discouraged but actively suppressed. School pupils were punished well within living memory for speaking their native language on school premises.

The French administration managed to make the Occitan speakers think of their own language as a patois, i.e. as a corrupted form of French used only by the ignorant and uneducated. This alienating process is known as "la vergonha" ("the shame").

Many older speakers of Occitan still believe that their native language is no more than a shameful patois. This is one reason why you rarely hear it in public — or anywhere outside of the neighbourhood or family circle.

In the school of Camélas in Northern Catalonia, a former pupil reports, ["Quatre femmes en Roussillon", TV show, 1st April 1973]

Everyone but the teacher's children spoke Catalan among themselves. We'd even get punished for that, because at the time, we all had to speak French. "Be Clean, Speak French" could be found written on the school's walls. And if you refused to speak French, they'd give you some sort of wooden sign to wear "until death came", as we said, which meant the last offender, in the evening, had twenty lines to copy. We'd speak French in the schoolyard, and for the first ten metres of the way back home, for as long as we thought the teacher would overhear us, and then we'd switch back to our own mother tongue, Catalan.

In those times, Catalan speakers were rather despised. My generation associated speaking Catalan with a disadvantage, with being less than the others, with running the risk of being left behind on the social ladder, in short with bringing trouble.

As can be seen from these examples, Abbé Grégoire's own terms were kept to designate the languages of France: while Breton referred to the so-called dialect spoken in Brittany, the word "patois" encompassed all Romance "dialects" such as Occitan and Franco-Provençal. In his report, Corsican and Alsatian were dismissed as "highly degenerate" ("très-dégénérés") forms of Italian and German, respectively. As a result, some people still call their non-French language "patois", encouraged by the fact they were never taught how to write it and made to think only French exists in the written form.

Role of the Church

In 1902, in a speech before the "Conseil Général" of Morbihan, Chief Education Officer Dantzer recommended that "the Church give first communion only to French-speaking children" [http://www.kervarker.org/fr/levr_27_period.html Livre blanc et noir de la langue bretonne, kervarker.org] ] .

In the same year, Émile Combes, then the President of the Council of Ministers of France and an Occitan, told the prefects of Morbihan, Côtes-du-Nord and Finistère that:

Breton priests want to keep their flock in ignorance by refusing to promote education and using only the Breton language in religious teachings and catechism. The Bretons will only be part of the Republic the day they start speaking French.

Mid-20th century to the present

As the Catalan linguist Jaume Corbera Pou argues [ [http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Pantheon/8883/ Llengua Nacional, Catalan linguistic review] , spring of 2002. Text available at http://fpl.forumactif.com/Forum-Occitan-f11/Le-patois-des-vieux-el-patues-dels-vells-p11914.htm] ,

When at the mid-19th century, primary school is made compulsory all across the State, it is also made clear that only French will be taught, and the teachers will severely punish any pupil speaking in "patois". The aim of the French educational system will consequently not be to dignify the pupils' natural humanity, developing their culture and teaching them to write their language, but rather to humiliate them and morally degrade them for the simple fact of being what tradition and their nature made them. The self-proclaimed country of the "Human rights" will then ignore one of man's most fundamental rights, the right to be himself and speak the language of his nation. And with that attitude France, the "grande France" that calls itself the champion of liberty, will pass the 20th century, indifferent to the timid protest movements of the various linguistic communities it submitted and the literary prestige they may have given birth to.

[...]

France, that under Franco's reign was seen here [in Catalonia] as the safe haven of freedom, has the miserable honour of being the State of Europe — and probably the world — that succeeded best in the diabolical task of destroying its own ethnic and linguistic patrimony and moreover, of destroying human family bonds: many parents and children, or grandparents and grandchildren, have different languages, and the latter feel ashamed of the first because they speak a despicable "patois", and no element of the grandparents' culture has been transmitted to the younger generation, as if they were born out of a completely new world. This is the French State that has just entered the 21st century, a country where stone monuments and natural landscapes are preserved and respected, but where many centuries of popular creation expressed in different tongues are on the brink of extinction. The "gloire" and the "grandeur" built on a genocide. No liberty, no equality, no fraternity: just cultural extermination, this is the real motto of the French Republic.

Constitutional issues

In 1972, Georges Pompidou, the President of France and an Occitan, declared that "there is no room for regional languages in a France whose fate is to mark Europe with its seal" [ [http://www.eurominority.eu/documents/transferts/Audition%202-3%2007%2007%20discrimination%20linguistique-1.pdf Conséquences sociales, économiques et politiques de la discrimination linguistique. Audition au Parlement européen, groupe ALDE. La République française : non-droit au nom de l'égalité pour les locuteurs des langues régionales ou minoritaires Tangi Louarn, président d'EBLUL-France] ] .

In a pre-election speech [ [http://pactedeslangues.com/spip.php?article1824 Le temps est venu d’un statut des langues et cultures de France, at pactedeslangues.com] ] in Lorient, on March 14, 1981, François Mitterrand asserted that:

The time has come to give the languages and cultures of France an official status. The time has come to open school doors wide for them, to create regional radio and TV stations to let them be broadcast, to ensure they play all the role they deserve in public life.

Nothing was done, howeverFact|date=June 2008.

In 1992, after some questioned the unconstitutional segregation of minority languages in France, Art. II of the 1958 French Constitution was revised so that "the language of the Republic shall be French" ("la langue de la République est le français"). This was achieved only months before the Council of Europe passed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages [ [http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/Treaties/Html/148.htm European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, Strasbourg, 5.XI.1992] ] , which Jacques Chirac ignored [ [http://www.humanite.fr/popup_print.php3?id_article=291867 Langues régionales : Jospin saisit Chirac, www.humanite.fr, June 24, 1999] ] despite Lionel Jospin's plea for the Constitutional Council to amend Art. II and include all vernacular languages spoken on French soil. Yet again, non-French languages in France were denied official recognition and deemed too dangerous for the unity of the country, and Occitans, Basques, Corsicans, Catalans, Bretons, Alsatians etc. have still no legal right to exist as such in their home lands. The text was again refused [ [http://ouiaubreton.com/spip.php?article3466 Langues régionales : on verra plus tard, ouiaubreton.com] ] by right-wing majority deputies on January 18, 2008.

On the UMP website [ [http://www.u-m-p.org/propositions/index.php?id=charte_europeene_des_langues_regionales Charte européenne des langues régionales, L'Abécédaire des propositions de Nicolas Sarkozy, UMP website] ] , Nicolas Sarkozy denies any mistreatment of regional languages. In a pre-electoral speech in Besançon on March 13, 2007 he claimed:

If I'm elected, I won't be in favour of the European Charter for Regional Languages. I don't want that tomorrow a judge with a historical experience of the issue of minorities different from ours, decides that a regional language must be considered as a language of the Republic just like French.

Because, beyond the text itself, there is a dynamic of interpretations and jurisprudence that can go very far. I am convinced that in France, the land of the free, no minority is discriminated against and consequently it is not necessary to grant European judges the right to give their opinion on a matter that is consubstantial with our national identity and has absolutely nothing to do with the construction of Europe.

His Socialist rival, Ségolène Royal, on the contrary, declares herself ready to sign the Charter in a March 2007 speech [ [http://sego29.over-blog.org/article-5914843.html Charte des langues régionales : C'est OUI, sego29.over-blog.org] ] in Iparralde for the sake of cultural variety in France:

Regional identities represent a tremendous asset for the future and I believe that understanding the link between the fundamental values that make the deep-rooted identity between France and the French nation in its diversity, in its authenticity, in its authentic traditions [...] makes the State work well.

Resonance in Occitan music and literature

Author Ives Roqueta writes about the shame of being Occitan in France in this text [ [http://www.aprene.org/spip.php?page=forum&id_article=7 Mandar un messatge, Ives Roqueta] ] on the Aprene website:

The red is whirling in my mind, I'm red with anger, red is my rebellion. I'm red, the wine spilled over me, on the Corbières paths. The red is confining my mind, I'm red with shame: I speak Occitan. I'm red, red from the blood in my face. Wake up! Where is the blood of our fathers?

Yet, the Occitan language is still alive, though official seclusion has had a devastating effect on the number of speakers in Occitania. Singer Patric alludes to this whole situation in a song called "Soi un marrit dròlle" ("I'm a bad guy") [ [http://patric.aura-occitania.com/textes.html Lyrics to "Soi un marrit dròlle" by Patric] ] :

I'm a bad guy for killing your languageBut I'll make a much nicer, much better one for youAnd when we only speak OccitanWe'll make love with a songFarewell shame ("vergonha"), I'm married nowWith this girl I have many childrenAnd we'll make men out of this countryFarewell shame, I am no outlaw! [...] Farewell, o my land; welcome, o my home!

Claudi Martí questions the obscurantism in France's educational system in "Perqué m'an pas dit?" ("Why didn't they tell me?") [ [http://www.paroles.net/chansons/19905.htm Lyrics to "Perque m'an pas dit" at paroles.net] ] :

As every child, I went to school;As every child, they taught me to read,They sang me many songs, taught me so many stories: Lutetia... Paris... Paris...But why, o why didn't they tell me the name of my language at school?

Our teacher would tell us about that great king of FranceKneeling down in front of the poor: a real saint, that saint Louis!He loved each and every one and fought poverty: a real saint, that saint Louis!But why, o why didn't they tell me at school that he killed my country? [Louis IX of France played a major role in the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of Occitania and the Inquisition that followed]

And as we grew up, we had to speak three languages;To make a good technician, you needed three languages,And English and German and what they write in Rome to make a good technician.But why, o why didn't they tell me the name of my language at school?

Maybe so much knowledge is hiding the truth from our eyes;We'll learn by ourselves that freedom doesn't rule on earth;We'll learn about the starvation in India and the mourning of Africans and the death of Che Guevara,And why, yes why they didn't say the name of our country at school...

Joan Pau Verdier dedicates his song "Veiquí l'occitan" ("This is the Occitan") to fighting "la vergonha" and to the pride of being Occitans [ [http://joanpauverdier.free.fr/chansons/T_Exil.htm Lyrics to "Veiquí l'occitan" at joanpauverdier.free.fr] ] :

There was shame in the heart of the land. We had lost the soil, the trees were all dead, slaves in our own country, living a life of bowing down, with no eyes or memory, a rogue nation.You would tell me: "It's all over!" you my father and you my friends, "There's no coming back now". You'd say: "We must stop dreaming!"Here comes hope at the end of the road. The new man is standing up. This is the Occitan. The rumour spreads to the smallest towns. We'll keep our land, we will not die!We were born on a windy day when evil was blowing hard. We're through with being dogs. You see, Father, we aren't dead yet!I greet you, Brother. Good morning, Farmer. A worker is calling you: another Occitan! Nothing's impossible anymore: we believe in love! And we believe our history is made of the future!And, Mother, I see you today. Springtime blossoms in your hair. You've understood our sun. You perfectly know we aren't crazy.Here comes the hope. May the child sing. We'll have a right to live, to be Occitans. I greet you, Brother; good morning, Farmer! The new man is calling you, he's a Basque, a Breton...

Jan dau Melhau, from Limousin, in "Lo Diable es jos la pòrta" (The Devil Lies Under the Door), tells how Occitans learned to feel ashamed of their occitanity in a society that denied them any legitimacy [ [http://membres.lycos.fr/chamboliva/newpage2.html Lo Diable es jos la pòrta at membres.lycos.fr] ] :

There came a time when people felt ashamed:They felt ashamed of what they spoke;Of their language mended with the thread of such a long history, they felt ashamed.

There came a time when people felt ashamed:They felt ashamed of how they spoke;Of saying so much in so little and making their minds smile, they felt ashamed.

[...]

There came a time when people felt ashamed:They felt ashamed of what they were;Of what had made them what they were, they felt ashamed.

Cursed be the time when people felt ashamedAnd cursed be those who let themselves feel ashamed!

Hartèra, a youth movement for the promotion of Occitan, militates against the shaming, as can be seen on their poster [ [http://www.hartera.org/images/vergonha.jpgA poster in support of Occitan by Hartèra] ] . It reads in both Gascon Occitan and French, with a touch of irony and a renewed confidence in the future of Occitania:

To hell with the shame...
Our "patois" is a language: Occitan;
Our South is a country: Occitania;
Our folklore is a culture.
We want respect for our difference.
Share, mix, walk!!

References

ee also

* Language policy in France
* Languages of France
* Minority language
* Regional language
* Separatism
* Welsh Not

External links

* [http://www.languefrancaise.net/dossiers/dossiers.php?id_dossier=66 Abbé Grégoire's "Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalise the use of the French language"]
* [http://www.chez.com/buan1/poignant.htm Bernard Poignant's report]
* [http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/english/8ab.asp#TITLE%20I French Constitution]
* [http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/Treaties/Html/148.htm European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages]
* [http://www.yeni.org/default.php?s=members&p=members/membersitem.php&id=204&m=&l=english Youth of European Nationalities website]
* [http://www.aprene.org/spip.php?page=sommaire Aprene, Establiment d'Ensenhament Superior Occitan]