French language policy

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This article describes the language policy of the French Republic and its predecessor states at national, European and global level. French is the official language of the country and, according to the constitution, langue de la république . As such, it is promoted and demanded in almost all areas of public life - mostly exclusively - and upheld beyond national borders. In addition to the state language, there are a number of languages , in metropolitan (European) France alone (depending on the method of counting) at least eight traditionally regionally widespread languages ​​not directly related to French, as well as dialects or languages ​​closer to it, the Langues d'oïl  - and other supraregional speakers who have no comparable official status. The traditional languages ​​and dialects, which are only widespread in parts of the national territory, are regarded and referred to as the langues régionales , the regional languages ​​of France, but not as minority languages ​​and thus (ethnic) peculiarities of ethnic minorities.

history

An edict of Louis XIV from 1700 prohibiting the use of the Catalan language in northern Catalonia (county of Roussillon )

In 1539, the edict of Villers-Cotterêts stipulated that French was the official language of the Kingdom of France and should be used in legal texts and other official documents. Up until this point in time, these were still written in church Latin .

The Académie française

The Académie française was finally founded in 1635 and was given the task of overseeing the use, vocabulary and grammar of French. She also published the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française , 1694 , the official dictionary of the French language. In recent times she has tried to stop the increasing Anglicisation of French and gives recommendations on new words. However, your recommendations are not legally binding.

The French revolution

Before the French Revolution of 1789, monarchs cared little about the language their subjects spoke. In the course of the revolution, however, old states were dissolved and a uniform administrative system was introduced. First, the revolutionaries declared " freedom of language " for all citizens of the republic. However, this policy was subsequently abandoned and a single, uniform language was imposed on the entire nation.

This new ideology is set out in Henri Grégoire's “Report on the Necessity and Means of Destroying Dialects and the Common Use of the French Language” . The author regretted that France, as the “most progressive country in the world” in the field of language policy, did not get beyond the Tower of Babel , and that only 3 million of France's 25 million inhabitants spoke French as their mother tongue .

As a result of this report, two laws were passed that same year making French the only language tolerated in public life and in schools. Within two years, the French language became a symbol of the national unity of the state. However, the revolutionary government had neither time nor money to implement a real language policy.

The third republic

The Third Republic sought to modernize France by promoting reading and writing skills and the education of the population in general. In the course of this, free, compulsory elementary schools were set up in the 1880s , in which French was then taught, as this was the only language that had a nationwide distribution and was available in newspapers and (scientific) books. The lessons strictly followed the French grammar of Noël and Chapsal ( Grammaire française, 1823 ) and the spelling of the Académie française .

All other languages ​​were forbidden in school, and even in the school yard, with severe penalties. In 1925, Anatole de Monzie , then Minister of Education , said that “for the linguistic unity of France, the Breton language must disappear”. As a result, minority language speakers began to feel ashamed of them, and by the 1950s many families stopped teaching their children their language and tried to speak only French to them - the 20th century brought the French language “victory”.

The fourth republic

In the 1950s, on the other hand, the French state recognized the right of regional languages to exist for the first time . A law allowed the teaching of regional languages ​​in secondary schools and language suppression in elementary schools came to an end. It was during this time that Breton began to appear in the media.

The fifth republic

After a few minutes of Breton was broadcast on the radio in 1940, the French state allowed one and a half minutes of Breton on a regional television station for the first time in 1964. But as recently as 1972, President Georges Pompidou declared that "in France, which intends to shape Europe clearly, there is no place for regional languages ​​and cultures".

Since 1994, the Toubon Law has mandated the use of French, or at least a French-language translation, in advertising, packaging materials and some other areas.

The debate on the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

In 1999, then Prime Minister Lionel Jospin decided to sign the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and tried unsuccessfully to have it ratified by Parliament. The French Constitutional Council found that the implementation of the Charter violated the country's constitution, among other things, because it prescribed French as the language of the republic.

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ​​is a treaty dating from 1992 that protects and promotes the historical regional and minority languages ​​in Europe. It has been ratified and implemented by 17 states, but (as of 2015) not by France. The charter contains 98 articles, of which signatory states must accept at least 35. (France signed 39 articles).

The signing and the failed ratification sparked a debate between supporters and opponents in the population. One argument of the opponents was that the “united and indivisible” France could break up. "Babylonian", "Balkan-like" conditions as well as an ethnic division could arise. This was also in the context of a broad debate on how government power should be divided between Paris and the regions in the course of decentralization. Another important point was the view that, at a time when a widely spoken language like French is in danger of becoming negligible in the world, and particularly in economic, technical and scientific contexts, support for regional languages ​​is just a waste of Is tax revenue.

An article from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo can be cited as an example of a media echo that proponents see as racist and arrogant :

“ Aboriginal people will be able to - oh, excuse me - speak their dialect without being laughed at. And they even keep their accent, their beret and their clogs. "

When President Jacques Chirac finally wanted to put an end to the debate and tried to justify why France could not ratify the Charter, he argued that it would "make the republic indivisible", "equality before the law" and "the unity of the French people." "" Threaten "because it" could grant special rights to organized language communities ".

Accordingly, France is the only EU state that has not yet signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . This agreement came into force in 1998 and has to be implemented by candidate countries in order to join the European Union. Chirac's successor as president, Nicolas Sarkozy , did not change this situation either. It was only during the presidency of François Hollande that a law was drafted to amend the constitution with the aim of allowing the charter to be ratified. It was introduced to the National Assembly in December 2013 by the socialist group leader Bruno Le Roux and adopted on January 28, 2014.

As of the beginning of 2016, the charter has still not been ratified by France because the Senate, which is dominated by the Republicans , is blocking the project.

Endangered languages ​​in France

The report, which Bernard Cerquiglini wrote for the French government in 1999 , lists a total of 75 languages ​​in all the national territories of France that must be recognized as regional and minority languages ​​under the criteria of the European Charter.

If one disregards the overseas departments and territories as well as immigrant languages, the following minority languages ​​are to be found in France to a notable extent:

The non-French Oïl languages, Occitan and Franco-Provençal are critically endangered. The other languages ​​are still spoken but are also seen as threatened.

In the 1950s, more than a million people spoke Breton as their first language. The rural areas of western Brittany were still mainly Breton- speaking . Today around 250,000 people can speak Breton (one in six in the areas mentioned), but most of them are now over 60 years old. However, the Breton language and culture have become strongly fashionable again among younger people and a written Breton language has been successfully established, which is why mass media such as radio and television are in this language. The other regional languages ​​follow the same trend, but while Alsatian and Corsican have withstood better, Occitan, for example, is far worse off, in most areas it is no longer spoken at all.

Accurate information on regional language use is made difficult by the non-recognition of such languages ​​and the lack of such questions about language use in the regular censuses .

Since the rejection of the European Charter, the French government has offered support within the existing legal framework. The Délégation générale à la langue française has received the observation and study of the languages ​​in France as a further task, and its name has been expanded to include et aux langues de France .

In 2003 the French government hosted the first round table on the subject, the Assises nationales des langues de France, which clearly showed the contrast between the language organizations and activists on the one hand and the government on the other.

The further decentralization of the Raffarin government (2002–2005) did not go so far as to entrust parts of the language policy to the regions.

In December 2007, the Conseil Général des Départements Pyrénées-Orientales adopted the Charter for the Promotion of the Catalan Language ( French Charte en faveur du Catalan , Catalan Carta en favor del català ) for the protection and further development of the Catalan language in Northern Catalonia .

Opposition to language policy

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

According to the constitution of the French Republic, all citizens are equal. In this respect, no special rights should be granted to individual groups. In history, this principle has often been interpreted to mean that linguistic minorities should not be considered and that linguistic diversity should be leveled (see the examples above).

This notion of cultural homogeneity has been questioned by both right and left ends of the political spectrum. In the 1970s, nationalist and regionalist movements emerged which demanded that the people do what the state refuses to do. Schools that were run by associations and taught the minority languages ​​were created. This new school network is called Diwan in Brittany , Ikastola in the Basque Country , Calandreta in Occitania and Bressola in Northern Catalonia .

Since then, the teaching of minority languages ​​has been legitimized by public pressure, and in the 1980s the state opened bilingual schools. However, until today z. For example, only a quarter of all young people in Breton have access to a Breton course during their school days. The Constitutional Council also prevented the Diwan schools from being included in the state educational system, and the Bressola schools can only attend 840 pupils today (2014).

In the 1980s, a long road sign smear campaign led to the first bilingual traffic signs, which are now becoming more and more widespread in Brittany. The Breton language is also very poorly represented in the media. There have been a few Breton-language radio stations since 1982, but the Breton television station TV Breizh was - not least because the station was denied the possibility of terrestrial broadcasting and can therefore only be received via satellite - economically unsuccessful and had to drastically reduce the Breton-language portion of its programs to reduce.

Article 75-1 of the French Constitution has recognized the regional languages ​​as France's cultural heritage since 2008. However, due to the lack of an executive law, this constitutional amendment has so far not resulted in any practical improvement in the situation of the minority languages.

Foreign language policy

French is the only official language of France, but also some other countries in the world.

See the article on Francophonie .

The French culture and language is only represented abroad by the branches of the Alliance française , which also offers language courses.

In addition, French language policy abroad is much more pronounced than German. French is the working language in several international organizations. This stems in part from the fact that French was the language of diplomacy in the past . On the other hand, the French government is doing everything it can to maintain and expand this status of its language internationally. So speak French politicians z. B. Consistently and confidently French myself at conferences abroad. Among other things, they were able to achieve that in the institutions of the European Union, French is much more widespread than German (which actually has significantly more speakers and economic power).

literature

  • Louis-Jean Calvet: Les Politiques Linguistiques . Que sais-je? n ° 3075, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1996.
  • S. Gemie: (2002), The politics of language. Debates and identities in contemporary Brittany . In: French Cultural Studies, n ° 13, 2002, pp. 145–164.
  • Will Kymlicka: Les droits des minorités et le multiculturalisme: l'évolution du débat anglo-américain . In: Will Kymlicka, Sylvie Mesure (eds.): Comprendre les identités culturelles , Paris, PUF, Revue de Philosophie et de sciences sociales, n ° 1, 2000, pp. 141–171.
  • Ursula Reutner : Manuel des francophonies. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-034670-1 .
  • Norbert Rouland: Les politiques juridiques de la France dans le domaine linguistique . In: Revue Francaise de Droit Constitutionnel, Vol. 35, 1998, pp. 517-562.
  • Anne Szulmajster-Celniker: La politique de la langue en France , In: La Linguistique, vol. 32, n ° 2, 1996, pp. 35-63.
  • Sue Wright: Jacobins, Regionalists and the Council of Europe's Charter for Regional and Minority Languages . In: Journal of Multilingual and Multicural Development, Vol. 21, n ° 5, 2000, pp. 414-424.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Proposition de loi constitutionnelle authorisant la ratification de la Charte européenne des langues régionales ou minoritaires. In: vie-publique.fr. Direction de l'information légale et administrative, January 29, 2014, accessed on May 30, 2015 (French).
  2. ^ Proposition de loi sur les regional languages: le Parti socialiste tombe le masque. Régions & peuples Solidaires, accessed February 17, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Divan Breizh. Retrieved June 6, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Historique des ikastola | Seaska. Retrieved June 6, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Historique |. Retrieved June 6, 2017 (fr-fr).
  6. ↑ La Bressola. Retrieved June 6, 2017 .
  7. ^ Constitution du 4 October 1958 . ( gouv.fr [accessed June 6, 2017]).