Greetings from Europe

[janilta]

Demad, Mike,

Thanks for your answer... and sorry for CJ lovers since we're far from
this very subject... ;-)

I think you're quite wrong about the 'Gaullistes' attitude. First of
all, the 'peak' of repression against regional languages in France
occured between the second half of the 19th century and the 30's. When
De Gaulle popped up in French history, the harm was long done. The
Gaullists, as most conservative in France, were/are opposed to the
development of regional linguisitic particularisms. But they never
considered Breton nor Occitan people as inferior, or even different.
This is inaccurate.
Quite the contrary, among the racist theorists in France, there used to
be the far-right wing Bretonists of the 30's considering the Breton
people as direct offspring of the Gaulois, being thus purer (ie
superior) than the other French who were sheer Roman and other invadors'
mongrels...
Don't forget that among the followers of De Gaulle in wartime exile in
London, the Bretons were over-represented !

The repression in Bretagne/Breizh against the language was actually
strong at Republican school but not in church where the liturgical
language remained brezhoneg, which was quite important for its survival
! Brezhoneg was not forbidden as family language, nor as written
language, the numerous brezhoneg papers at that time are here to show
it.
Even if my experience of repression towards native cultures and
languages in North America is rather limited, I am sure this was very
different to what happened throughout French regions.

There are already more or less standard Provencal and Gascon written
forms but the idea was to have only one written norm for the whole
Occitan speaking area in order to help its written diffusion, not to
have many variants weakening it again and again. You mentioned Danish
and Norvegian (Bokmaal), but the fact that the written norms evolved
towards different directions was mainly due to political factors,
whereas Occitania is nearly completely included in France.
There is a language between French and Oc, Franco-Provencal, distinct
from both French and Provencal (Oc) which used to include big cities as
Geneva (and all the 'French speaking' Switzerland) and Lyon, but which
is now in quite desperate a situation. Unfortunately.

Kenavo, Yann.