Trencavèl

Regional and minority languages should be protected, in France, and elsewhere.

Quelle
horreur ! The 40 élite members of the Académie française are jumping
out of their fauteuils, incensed that legislation passed by France’s
National Assembly would put regional languages such as Breton, Occitan,
Corse, Alsatian, Catalan and Basque into the constitution as part of
the national heritage. The members are particularly outraged that the
regional languages would get a mention in the first article of the
constitution — which defines France as an “indivisible, lay, democratic
and social republic” — ahead of the second article, which designates
French as the official language. The academy, created in 1635 to guard
the purity of the French language, voted unanimously this month to
condemn the move as “defying logic”, and being a threat to the nation.

Actually,
“defying logic”, is an apt description of the vote itself.
Globalization is already threatening to extinguish half the world’s
6,000–7,000 languages. That would be a tragic loss to humanity and our
understanding of it, if only because knowledge and culture are
inescapably interwined with the languages within which they evolved.
Languages also enrich each other, and provide a trove of data for
research in linguistics and history. The other main French academy, the
Académie des Sciences, should make itself heard on the matter.

Multilingualism
has other practical benefits. French scientists who speak regional
languages in addition to the national tongue testify that early
bilingualism has helped them go on to master English and other
languages. Some even argue that the thought processes involved have
helped them to be better and more creative scientists.

The
Académie française argues that France’s regional languages are so
obviously part of its heritage that there is no need for constitutional
safeguards. That is disingenuous. It is precisely the lack of
constitutional recognition that has blocked France from ratifying key
international treaties to conserve minority languages: the courts have
ruled that ratification is forbidden by existing constitutional
principles, such as the indivisibility of the Republic and the unity of
the French people.

Indeed, if earlier French governments had had
their way, Breton, which is spoken in Brittany, would have been
eradicated long ago. Only stubborn Breton persistence has prevented
this from happening, notably through the creation of the Diwan
Breton-language schools from the 1970s onwards.