Unofficial minority languages of France Although France is a signatory to the European Charter for Regional Languages, it has failed

to ratify because to do so would be in contravention of the current French constitution. In any event, it has been official French state policy since 1539 to promote French to the detriment of the other regional languages. This primer only focuses on languages native to France so it excludes languages such as Portuguese and Arabic (in all its forms) spoken by large but more recent immigrant communities. Some of the languages are spoken by very small minorities (such as FrancoProvencal, Ligurian, Picard) whilst others (such as Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Flemish, Luxembourgeois, Occitan) are more or less dominant in their respective regions. Given the relative importance of the latter group of languages, they are the subject of separate primers and are not directly covered here. Alsatian See The Alsatian Language Primer. Basque See The Basque Language Primer. Breton See The Breton Language Primer. Catalan See The Catalan Language Primer. Corsican See The Corsican Language Primer. Flemish See The Flemish Language Primer. Franco-Provencal Not to be confused with Provencal, which is a variant of Occitan, Franco-Provencal is a Romance language (also known as Arpitan) born in eastern France and Switzerland now spoken to varying degrees in France, Switzerland and Italy. FrancoProvencal never achieved the importance of French, Italian or Occitan and has little official protection outside the Aosta Valley (near Turin) in Italy. However, in recent times the language has declined significantly and is on the UNESCO endangered list. Official figures put the number of speakers at around 100,000 but some studies have indicated that it is significantly lower and declining at such speed that the language could become extinct in the coming decades. Ligurian The language is a Romance language that is very distinct from the other Romance languages spoken in France and has definite Italian features. In addition to being spoken along the Southern Mediterranean Coast of France (near Nice), it is spoken in

pockets of Northern Italy (Liguria, Northern Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna), on the islands of Corsica and Sardinia and in Monaco. Indeed the local variety, known as Munegascu, has been adopted as an official language. It is, however, very difficult to come up with reliable statistics as to the number of active speakers and all signs point to the language being in a very precarious state. Luxembourgeois See The Luxembourgeois Language Primer. Occitan See The Occitan Language Primer. Picard Closely related to French, and often mistakenly taken for a French dialect, Picard is spoken in Picardie, the Pas-de-Calais as well as in parts of Belgium (it should not be confused with Walloon, which is a separate Romance language). Due to its geographical proximity, Picard has been heavily influenced by modern French but is nevertheless very distinctive in particular phonetically speaking. Although it has no official recognition in France, Picard has been recognised as a regional language by Belgiums French Community since 1990. Although by no means extinct in the sense that it is very present in regional culture, the language is being increasingly confused with regional French and ever fewer people are able to speak it. How bad the situation actually is remains unclear as reliable statistics are very hard to come by.