Profiles: list of languages

Normandy is veyr nice, I was on holiday there, but I don't know Brittany. I suppose that they are similar.

It's a pity that France doesn't recognise the langauges Belgium has recognised them too late also, but before I was born I think.

Not exactly true that France hasn't recognised the languages. The "loi Deixonne" which dates from 1951 allowed for education in Basque, Breton, Catalan and Occitan, and later Corsican, Thaitian, four Oceanic languages, Gallo, Franconian and Alsation have been added to the list. The Constitution also says that the regional languages belong to France's patrimony.

However, it is true that central Government does little to encourage the use of regional languages, and French is still the only official language which has to be used in all official contexts in France and the only language allowed in advertising. The "loi Toubon" does not exactly help the regional languages.

A piece of good news is that France is on its way to ratifying the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, as an amendment to the Constitution was passed by the lower chamber (Assamblée Nationale) earlier this year and is now on its way through the Senate.

But even then, as I understand it, a Breton-medium school has to be maintained successfully for several years before applying for state support. Parents therefore have to pay, and that's hardly giving it an equal chance to French.

You may be right about Breton, I am not too familiar with the situation there. Here in Alsace where I live, the situation is a bit more complex. Alsatian, being a Alemannic dialect, is quite widely spoken, but the language learnt in school is standard German (Hochdeutsch). Unlesss students come from a family where Alsatian is spoken at home, they might eventually learn German, but they will not speak Alsatian, which after all is quite different from standard German. I guess the problem is that Alsatian does not really have a written tradition, Alsatia having been thorn between Germany and France for centuries.

And I'll leave the discussion at this, at it really has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

You mean the foreign langauge they learn in school is Hochdeutsch, not the langauge of the schools generally.

It's a problem for many dialects, that they are not written.