France’s linguistic problem

There is more than French in France, literally fifteen time more.

A little bit of history: before the French revolution, every region in France used to speak a local dialect more or less understandable with neighbor dialects. After some head hit the floor, we decided that a certain kind of French would be official language. A nice idea as everybody will speak the same language, speaking with someone coming from the other side of France will never be a problem again. Local languages persisted for a long time, were sometime forbidden and are still not well seen by political class today.

Only the region with strong cultural identity resisted and, if they are still spoken today, most of those languages keep losing speakers every years. It’s not surprising, if France officially recognized its regional languages, they are still not official languages, politics isn’t trying to promote those specificity through our territory and see them more like Latin or ancient Greek, relic from the past, forgotten languages owned by history.

France’s logic is simple: the country must be united, therefore only one language must be use. It’s a fear to loose part of its cultural territory that promote this politic. For French people it’s even simpler: if they didn’t learn those dialects as mother’s tongue, most of them don’t find any reason to learn. It’s hard to find courses, it won’t be useful on a resume and if they must learn a language, it’s better if it’s an official language like English or German.

As someone coming from one of the few region were a local language still exist (and that I shamelessly don’t speak), I can tell you that France shot itself in the foot and should change its regional languages politic to become a real international power. Most of those languages are pretty close to foreign countries national languages. By promoting local dialects, people would be able to fluently speak with foreigner, facilitating exchanges, allowing both side to come work in the other country and putting France in an anchor role in Europe.

There is more than 15 official regional languages spoken in France and Its islands !