Actas da - Xunta de Galicia

Philippe Martel
• Breton is the celtical language of western Brittany: according to the last
sample survey (1997) there are around 240 000 speakers.
• Catalan, continuation of the powerfull spanish Catalonia in Pyrénées
Orientales département could be spoken by some 120 000 persons.
• Corsican: in the island, the cultural language was once Italian, and the
various local dialects were considered as popular spoken forms of italian.
The elimination of italian has left face to face french and those dialects,
which the regional conscience has begun to consider as a language of its
own, with its orthography and litterature. Some 2/3 of corsican population
is thought to (be able to)speak corsican.
• Flemish, in the outmost northern corner of France continues the far vaster
area of felmish and netherlandish. But in France, it seems to be on the verge
of extinction (perhaps around 30 000 speakers?)
• German dialects are spoken in "frankish" northern Lorraine (estimation: 250
000 speakers) and "alemanish"Alsace. (somewhat a million speakers at
most).
• Occitan, the romance language of a southern third of french territory is
spoken, through various dialectal modalities by perhaps 2 millions persons.
We put aside local gallo-romance dialects akin to french and termed
"langues d'oïl" as well as francoprovençal in Lyon and northern Alps
region, for their situation -and recognition is still less clear. We must ind
eed insist upon the conjectural nature of the figures given above. Not only
because they are estimations and extrapolations, but because, too, of their
ambiguity: people may claim they can speak breton or occitan, but nobody
is in order to check their declarations. Some may "understand" and yet be
unable to speak more than few words. Moreover, to "be able to" speak does
not mean one will actually speak often, nor that one will enjoy speaking.
Diglossy in France has induced the narrowing of social use of minority
language, and induced, too, many inferiority complexes that may hinder the
practice. And in fact, there seems to be two kinds of speakers: those who
have inherited the language are most often older people, living in rural
zones, with a not-too-high educational level; that is to say, social categories
which are residual in the present-day french society. And besides, another
kind of speakers, with younger, urban middle-classes men or women who
have chosen to speak and consequently often re-acquire- a minority
language: they are the core of the militant movements of nowadays. Both
categories speak basically the same language (putting aside phonological or
lexical differences between native speakers and neo-locutors). But they
do'nt use it the same way, have not the same representations of it, and most
often have little communication with each other. The first ones speak their
"patois", as they often say, with people of their own kind, in their own
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