Greetings from Europe

[janilta]

Hello, Mike,

I do agree that France's governments always had a position rather
negative towards regional cultures, at times even quite hostile (but the
'peak' of repression was much prior to the De Gaulle years as you put
it) and it is still the case roughly speaking.
But it was quite different from the attitude of the authorities in North
America though. The attitude of erasing an 'inferior' culture of
ethnically different people never existed in similar terms. This is
inaccurate.
The situation is actually not so simple. For example, unlike Catalunya,
the standard form of written Occitan is often disregarded by many Oc
speakers, f ex in Provence and Gascogne, which obviously weakens the
diffusion and survival of the language itself.
And I would not discuss another point of your message, but even in the
Catala world, things are not so 'perfect' and the attitude of some
speakers of Valencian may not have helped much the diffusion of Catala
at times (but, as often in linguistics, this is rather a political
matter)...
One more thing, to read that the Vichy government may have helped the
survival of regional languages (more than 'dialects' as you put it,
especially for Euskara and Brezhoneg that you mention) is quite
puzzling, even embarrassing. Even if the wartime in France helped for
some ideological reasons the diffusion of some regional languages
shortly (especially in Bretagne, or for standard German but not
Alsatian, in Alsace, which were both out of Vichy regime's control), the
hazy ideology of Vichy was not really in favour of regional
'particularisms' I'm afraid... (by the way, parts of Occitan speaking
regions were out of Vichy control as well as parts of Vichy controlled
areas were in non-Oc regions as f ex its biggest city, Lyon, which used
to be part of Franco-Provencal, which is not Occitan at all).
Why not burn l'Academie Francaise... but it may unfortunately not help
much Occitan culture though... and even less Chinook Jargon ;-)

Yann.