Vergonha

The deliberate process of eradicating non-French vernaculars in modern France and disparaging them as mere local and often strictly oral dialects was formalized with Henri Grégoire's Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalise the use of the French language,[2] which he presented on 4 June 1794 to the National Convention; thereafter, all languages other than French were officially banned in the administration and schools for the sake of linguistically uniting post-Bastille Day France.

Four months earlier (27 January), Bertrand Barère, although an Occitan from Tarbes himself, claimed before this same Convention: The monarchy had reasons to resemble the Tower of Babel; in democracy, leaving the citizens to ignore the national language [that of Paris], unable to control the power, is betraying the motherland... For a free people, the tongue must be one and the same for everyone.

As a result, the centuries-old singularities of the various Occitan-speaking parts were overlooked and shaken in a deliberate effort by the newly formed government to weaken and parcel out long-established feudal domains so that republican France would subdue traditional allegiances, as Antonin Perbòsc reveals in the foreword to his Anthologie: When the Constituante (National Constituent Assembly) created the départements, their goal was clearly to erase the old geographical and historical distinction of the provinces; however this goal was not as perfectly met as some would have liked: in general, the départements were made up of pieces of existing provinces, quite seldom of the reunion of parts from different provinces.

With fragments of Quercy, Rouergue, Agenais, Lomagne, Gascony and Languedoc, creating a new unit so little vast and yet so diverse of soil, language and race, what a great idea!

And maybe the audacious half-god had only one regret: coming a little too late to redesign according to this pattern all the provinces of old France...[15]In the 20th century, the départements were grouped into régions, to create a level of government between the departmental and national.

As the map shows, there were eleven Occitan-speaking enclaves in the pre-1789 state, such as the powerful lands of Languedoc and Gascony, but they were divided into seven régions with no regard whatsoever for cultural and linguistic identities.

This is how Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur was created out of portions of five Occitan provinces and three capitals were scrapped in favour of Marseille; and Auvergne came to comprise both native and langues d'oïl entities.

Régions of France: A. Aquitaine (Bordeaux) — 41,308 km2 B. Limousin (Limoges) — 16,942 km2 C. Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand) — 26,013 km2 D. Rhône-Alpes (Lyon) — 43,698 km2 E. Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (Marseille) — 31,400 km2 F. Languedoc-Roussillon (Montpellier) — 27,376 km2 G. Midi-Pyrénées (Toulouse) — 45,348 km2

– - -: Occitan / Franco-Provençal linguistic limit In the 1880s, Jules Ferry implemented a series of strict measures to further weaken regional languages in France, as shown in Bernard Poignant's 1998 report to Lionel Jospin.

30 of Loi d'éducation française (French Teaching Law, 1851) stated that: "It is strictly forbidden to speak patois during classes or breaks."

Back then, the French of the Republic, one and indivisible, was to be heard in all schools and those who dared challenge this policy were humiliated with having to wear a clog around their necks or kneel down on a ruler under a sign that read: "It is forbidden to spit on the ground and speak Breton".

And if you refused to speak French, they'd give you some sort of wooden sign to wear until death came, as we said, which meant the last offender, in the evening, had twenty lines to copy.

As a result, some people still call their non-French language patois, encouraged by the fact they were never taught how to write it and made to think only French exists in the written form.

In 1902, in a speech before the Conseil Général of Morbihan, Chief Education Officer Dantzer recommended that "the Church give first communion only to French-speaking children".

[...] France, that under Franco's reign was seen here [in Catalonia] as the safe haven of freedom, has the miserable honour of being the [only] State of Europe—and probably the world — that succeeded best in the diabolical task of destroying its own ethnic and linguistic patrimony and moreover, of destroying human family bonds: many parents and children, or grandparents and grandchildren, have different languages, and the latter feel ashamed of the first because they speak a despicable patois, and no element of the grandparents' culture has been transmitted to the younger generation, as if they were born out of a completely new world.

[25] In a pre-election speech[26] in Lorient, on 14 March 1981, François Mitterrand asserted that: The time has come to give the languages and cultures of France an official status.

The time has come to open school doors wide for them, to create regional radio and TV stations to let them be broadcast, to ensure they play all the role they deserve in public life.These declarations however were not followed by any effective measures.

The text was again refused[30] by majority deputies on 18 January 2008, after the Académie française voiced their absolute disapproval[31][32] of regional languages, the recognition of which they perceive as "an attack on French national identity".

In a pre-electoral speech in Besançon on 13 March 2007 he claimed: If I'm elected, I won't be in favour of the European Charter for Regional Languages.

I am convinced that in France, the land of freedom, no minority is discriminated against and consequently it is not necessary to grant European judges the right to give their opinion on a matter that is consubstantial with our national identity and has absolutely nothing to do with the construction of Europe.His Socialist rival, Ségolène Royal, on the contrary, declared herself ready to sign the Charter in a March 2007 speech[35] in Iparralde for the sake of cultural variety in France: Regional identities represent a tremendous asset for the future and I believe that understanding the link between the fundamental values that make the deep-rooted identity between France and the French nation in its diversity, in its authenticity, in its authentic traditions [...] makes the State work well.On 27 October 2015, the Senate rejected a bill for the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, preventing the adoption of a constitutional reform that would have given a degree of official status to regional languages such as Occitan.

[37] However, the French Minister of Education, opposed to the teaching in minority languages, asked the Conseil Constitutionnel to declare it unconstitutional.

[39] Despite being considered a symbolic gesture, the prefect of the Department, arguing that the political rights of French speakers will be violated, appealed to justice to repeal these initiatives.