Language Policy in France - Endangered Languages

Endangered Languages

Excluding the languages spoken in the overseas regions and other overseas territories, and the languages of recent immigrants, the following languages are spoken by sizeable minorities in France:

• Romance languages: Caló, Catalan, Corsican, Franco-Provençal, Italian, Ligurian, Oïl languages (other than French), Occitan, Portuguese, and Spanish (Castillian Spanish).
• Germanic languages: Dutch, Vlaams, Luxembourgeois, and Alsatian.
• Celtic languages: Breton.
• Isolate languages: Basque.
• 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 1940s, more than one million people spoke Breton as their main language. The countryside in western Brittany was still overwhelmingly Breton-speaking. Today, about 170,000 people are able to speak Breton (around 8% of the population in the traditionally Breton speaking area), 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 inability (due to constitutional provisions) 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 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 decentralization has not extended to giving power in language policy to the regions.