Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Minority languages and language revitalisation 109
3. As late as 1972 Pompidou is reported to have declared:
‘Il n’y a pas de place pour les langues minoritaires dans une France destinée à marquer
L’Europe de son sceau.’ [There is no place for regional languages in a France destined to
make its mark in Europe]. (Cited in Temple 1994: 194)
4. France signed the Charter in 1999.
5. The state may grant minority language rights according to either a territorial or a
personality principle. Under the territorial principle, the minority rights are only exercised
within the defined territory of the minority language (as in Belgium). Under the personality
principle, by contrast, language rights are more portable in that they attach to the individual
speaker irrespective of his geographical location. There are fewer examples of states that grant
rights on a personality principle, though Canada and Finland are sometimes cited here.
6. This is in fact a crucial point, and we shall return later to a discussion of the advantages/
disadvantages of the bilingual/multilingual solution, only noting here that much of the world’s
population is fact individually bilingual or multilingual. Monolingualism is a relatively
unusual condition worldwide.
7. The last proposition here draws attention to the potential of technology in language
revitalisation. The Internet, for example, may help minority language speakers build up a
‘virtual community’, thereby partially overcoming the problems of geographical dispersion.
Technology also creates possibilities for distance and on-line language learning.
8. An eisteddfod is a festival of Welsh music, song and poetry recitation. Mitchell (personal
communication), recalling the situation in the 1940s when every small town had its local
eisteddfod and every young person (including himself) competed, makes the point that the
importance of eisteddfodau to the maintenance of Welsh should not be underrated. He draws
attention also to the supportive role of the Urdd Gobaith Cymru (the Welsh League of Youth).
9. It was in fact only a threat by Gwynfor Evans, former Plaid Cymru president, to fast to the
death that finally convinced the London government to discharge its promise to establish a
publicly funded Welsh-medium TV channel.
10. Davies, A. (personal communication) observes that the forceful promotion of Welsh
could provoke a backlash from elements of the English-speaking Welsh population, especially
if they felt disadvantaged in the labour market.
11. Jones (1998a: 305) provides a fascinating account of the Breton ‘orthography wars’.
12. A xenolect has been defined as ‘a foreignised variety spoken natively’, but not a creole
since it has not undergone significant restructuring (Jones 1998a: 323 after Holm 1998).