Vergonha

La vergonha (, meaning "shame") 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. 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 onward. 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 a matter of fact, native Occitan speakers, who in 1860, before schooling was made compulsory in French (1882), represented more than 39% of the whole French population, as opposed to 52% of francophones proper, went down to 26 to 36% in the 1920s, with the figure free-falling to less than 7% in 1993.