Mon Jul 12 13:07:26 UTC 1999

		  *** EOOH ***
		  Return-Path:
		  <owner-endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au>
		  X-Authentication-Warning: carmen.murdoch.edu.au: majodomo
		  set sender to
		  owner-endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au using -f
		  Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 15:07:26 +0200
		  Subject: Re: ELL: Re: French government refuses to recognise
		  minority
			 languages
			 From: "Carmine Colacino"
		  <colacino at socrates.berkeley.edu>
		  To: endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au,
		          endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au
			  X-Priority: 3
			  Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
			  X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit
		  by carmen.murdoch.edu.au id VAA11835
		  Sender: owner-endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au
		  Precedence: bulk
		  Reply-To: endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au

		  Use of "dialects" is strongly discouraged in Italy too.
		  That was a bigger problem before the TV era, of course, when
		  many elementary
		  school pupils began their schooling speaking only the local
		  "dialect."
		  Speaking one of theose languages was often punished.
		  Even today. I read last week on a newspaper that in the
		  Veneto a school has
		  set fines for everybody using "dialect" words at school.
		  In any case, the term "dialects" is still used in a
		  derogatory way in the
		  Italian School System (and in the society at large).
		  Reality is in Italy several languages are spoken (beside
		  standard Italian),
		  most of them still very much widespread and understood
		  (e.g. Neapolitan and
		  related languages in southern Italy, from Abruzzi, southern
		  Latium, to
		  central Calabria and Apulia; Sicilian in Sicily, southern
		  Calabria and
		  Salento; Venetians in the Veneto, etc.).
		  Many of these languages have a written literature since the
		  XV Century and
		  earlier, but are considered officially non-existent.
		  This is in addition to the other minority languages
		  (Arb.resh., Griko or
		  Grecanico, Serbo-Croatian, Proven.al, Franco-Proven.al,
		  Gallo-Italic, to
		  consider only the South).
		  Carmine Colacino

> At 15:16 08/07/99 -0400, Joseph McCloskey wrote:
>
>>On Thursday, July 08, 1999 12:43 PM, Jeff Allen wrote:
>  of dialectology told us that
>>he had recently had a student (under 25 years old) who remembered being
>>punished
>>>in primary school for speaking patois.
>>>
>>>Jeff
>>>
>>Patois is an interesting choice of words (if it was the professor's).  The
>>student may have been speaking Breton.
>
> This was a general statement about local patois of French, not necessarily
> reflecting Breton specifically.  The local patois in France (themselves
> grouped into 3 major French-based dialects called O.l, Occitan, and
> Franco-Proven.al), as well as non-French-based dialects (Breton, Basque,
> Wallon, Strasbourgeois, etc) also found in France, all suffered the same
> repression in the French education system over the past century.
>
> Jeff
>

--
Dr. Carmine Colacino
Herbarium Lucanum & Dept. of Biology
University of Basilicata
85100 Potenza, southern Italy
Tel. ++39/097-120-2172; Fax ++39/097-120-2256
e-mail: colacino at unibas.it
url: http://www.unibas.it/utenti/colacino/mediterraneo.html

----
Endangered-Languages-L Forum: endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au
Web pages http://carmen.murdoch.edu.au/lists/endangered-languages-l/
Subscribe/unsubscribe and other commands: majordomo at carmen.murdoch.edu.au
----