<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">There's another new post on <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; "><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">the Web of Language</a></span>:<br><br><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre; ">French Academy sees linguistic diversity endangering national identity</span><br><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; "><p class="blog"><p class="blog"><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; ">Right after the French Academy strongly denounced a constitutional revision recognizing linguistic diversity as part of France’s heritage, <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2008/06/19/le-senat-refuse-d-inscrire-les-langues-regionales-dans-la-constitution_1060100_823448.html" mce_href="http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2008/06/19/le-senat-refuse-d-inscrire-les-langues-regionales-dans-la-constitution_1060100_823448.html">the French Senate voted</a> 2-to-1 to kill the measure.</span></p><div><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; ">Article 1 of the French Constitution defines France as an indivisible, secular, democratic republic.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On May 22, the French National Assembly voted all-but-unanimously – there was one negative vote – to modify that formula by adding the nation’s many local languages to the short list of constitutionally-protected civic virtues: “[France’s] regional languages belong to its patrimony.”</span></div><div><br></div><div><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; "><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/17/france/" mce_href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/17/france/">But on Monday the Académie Française</a> rejected any attempt to constitutionalize local languages as “an attack on French national identity.” <span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.elysee.fr/elysee/elysee.fr/francais_archives/les_institutions/les_textes_fondateurs/la_constitution_de_1958/la_constitution_de_1958.21061.html#article1" mce_href="http://www.elysee.fr/elysee/elysee.fr/francais_archives/les_institutions/les_textes_fondateurs/la_constitution_de_1958/la_constitution_de_1958.21061.html#article1">Article 2 of the French Constitution</a> clearly states, “</span>The language of the Republic is French.”<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the Academy reads it, the national identity can only be expressed through French.</div><div><br></div><div>While France has always been a linguistically-diverse country – the nation is even named after the Franks, a medieval <em mce_style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Germanic</em> tribe – the French government has often denied that heritage, preferring the myth of one nation speaking one language.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div><p class="blog"><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; ">After the French Revolution, the government actively sought to eradicate local <em mce_style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">patois,</em> replacing them with French.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at the start of World War I, French army officials were shocked to discover that many of their new recruits still could not understand the language of command (as Monty Python might have asked, how do you say, “Run away,” in French?).<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By 1930, one quarter of the French were still speaking a regional language, and even today, a good 10 million of France’s 60 million residents don’t speak French at home.</span></p><p class="blog">Not counting the languages of immigrants, there are 29 local languages spoken in the Hexagon, as the French call mainland France.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Another 45 or so native languages are spoken in current French territories and in its former colonies.) <span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to <a href="http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=france" mce_href="http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=france">Ethnologue,</a> the regional languages of France include Alemannisch, or Aslatian (1.5 million speakers); Auvergnat, or Occitan (1.3 million); Breton (500,000); Provençal (250,000); Romani (about 50,000); Corsican (340,000) and Yiddish (numbers not available).</p><p class="blog">Historically, students in French schools were punished for speaking Breton, Alsatian, and Occitan (while speakers of Yiddish were simply deported), and France is one of the few nations refusing to sign the European Union’s charter giving legal rights to minority-language speakers. . . . .</p></div></p><p></p><p class="blog">read the rest of this post on the latest example of French protectionism on <a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">the Web of Language</a></p></span><div><br></div><div><br>DB<br><br>____________________<br>Dennis Baron<br>Professor of English and Linguistics<br>Department of English<br>University of Illinois<br>608 S. Wright St.<br>Urbana, IL 61801<br><br>office: 217-244-0568<br>fax: 217-333-4321<br><br><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron">www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron</a><br><br>read the Web of Language:<br><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage</a><br><br><br></div></body></html>