Revitalising the Regional Languages of France

Abstract

Although in decline for years, the RLs have refused to go away, and there is now some state recognition in the shape of teaching subsidies, some presence in the media and cultural events, and also some important institutional innovations. There are a number of reasons for this change of heart. The Algerian war and decolonisation in the late 1950s and early 1960s gave rise to the idea that the French regions had also been the victims of ‘colonisation’ and that what the French state had rejected, namely their language and culture, was no longer to be despised but admired and saved. This was, at least, the view of the strongest political RL militants.