What if, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, there were almost no more native speakers of Breton, Corsica or Auvergne? And if, nevertheless, these languages did not disappear completely, but were spoken almost exclusively by “neolocutors”, in other words of the people who would have learned them after French, often depleted? This is a somewhat disturbing idea, of course, but, when you are like me viscerally attached to preserving them, it is advisable to approach it head -on if you do not want to rock illusions.
That there are differences between the language spoken by those who knew it from childhood and that of the “neo” is in itself inevitable. Those of you who have acquired another idiom, whatever it is, know it: it is very difficult, if not impossible, to access the level of a “native”. And this is even more complicated when it comes to a regional language, which we hardly hear in the cafes, shops and streets of our cities-with the notable exception of overseas. Do you want to perfect your English? You just have to spend some time in London or New York: you will immediately be plunged into an English -speaking linguistic bath. Do you want to learn Alsatian or Provençal? No need to go to Strasbourg or Marseille: French is now everywhere.
This situation has major consequences on the language of learners, as shown by these concrete examples analyzed by the academic Jean Sibille about the Languedoc Occitan (1).
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– The imperfect of the subjunctive, of common use in OC – including oral – is “forgotten”, because this time has disappeared in French.
– In French, we use “you” as well to contact a single person that we at vouvoie at a group of people. This is not the case in OC, where there are two different personal pronouns for these two situations, your And Vosautres. Las! The “neo” confuse them most often.
– Their emphasis is also very far from that of natives and tends to calculate on the pronunciation of standard French, including for the letter r. And yet! Better not to confuse marritwith two strongly rolled “R”, which means “bad”, and marit With a single “R”, which means “husband”. Unless of course that we do not want to refer to a violent spouse …
– Another factor, apparently paradoxical, helps to differentiate the language of new learners from that of “ancients”: the desire to move away as much as possible from French. For the sake of “purity”, the former tend to favor the use of rare words, often disappeared from use, but which seem more “authentic” to them. To say “sir”, a native speaker uses mossy ? The new speaker prefers Senher. Rather than using trobar (find), he opts for trapar. Ditto for ibronha (drunk), abandoned in favor embriac. It even happens that some take up a natural speaker by telling him “we don’t say like that!”. A height …
We can mock or criticize these drifts, but we must recognize that it is very difficult to relaunch a declining language. This is evidenced by the example of Ireland, where Gaelic has had an official status since independence, in 1921. And yet, for reasons that I have exposed in another article, family transmission has become a minority . On the other hand, a form of “Modern Irish Irish” is emerging on the island, especially in large cities. An Irishman learned as a second language, very strongly modeled on English, both in lexicon and in syntax. Result ? There is less and less understanding between this Gaelic of cities, practiced by generally affluent and well -educated populations, and that of native speakers, living especially in the countryside. Additional problem: due to their social and cultural capital, these neolocutors often become teachers, authors or journalists. And as they represent about two -thirds of the practitioners, they are now able to impose their way of speaking as the new standard (See the exciting video of linguisticae Youtubeur in the “To Watch” section).
Will it be the same in France? The hypothesis is completely plausible. And to those who are alarmed by such an evolution, we must recall that this is a scenario … optimistic insofar as it contradicts the prognosis formulated by UNESCO: a total disappearance of all languages metropolitan minorities by the end of the century. An extinction which, alas, remains today the most likely hypothesis insofar as, unlike Ireland where the Gaelic benefits from the official support of the public authorities, the State, with us, is not really concerned with the subject. And it’s a litote …
(1) Occitan of neolocutors: between francization and demarcationby Jean Sibille. In Between francization and demarcation: inherited uses and reborn uses of the regional languages of Franceunder the direction of Mercedes Banegas Saorin and Jean Sibille. Editions L’Harmattan.
To read – On the side of the French language
Dictionaries are not the only ones to hold a right of life and death on vocabulary. In reality, the Larousse, the Robert and the others are content, for the most part, to observe the use and to record it (with a small room for maneuver all the same).
The real causes of the domination of English
Contrary to what we sometimes read, the domination of English has nothing to do with its supposed “intrinsic” qualities or with its supposed “ease”. “The spelling of the Englishman is not” transparent “, that is to say that it does not correspond in every way to its pronunciation”, recalls the linguist Margaret Vien. Its success, English owes it in reality to the current geopolitical, economic and cultural power of the United States. And Margaret has just concluded: “If in the United States we spoke Serbo-Croate, it is the Serbo-Croatian which would be the language today that everyone would like to know how to speak.”
Take part in the conference “The French En Marche and on the fringes (s)”
The annual conference, from the AFLS (Association for French Language Studies) will take place in Brussels from July 1 to 3. He will be interested in the geographic variation of French and will be held in particular in the presence of linguists Mathieu Avanzi (Neuchâtel), Jean-Marie Klinkenberg (Liège) and Agnès Steucckardt (Montpellier).
To read – On the side of minority languages
First name Fañch: deputies go back to the niche
“The diacritical signs of the regional languages of France are authorized in the first names and names of the people named in civil status acts are authorized.” This is the single article of the bill tabled on February 4 in the National Assembly to authorize the “diacritical signs” from the minority languages of France in the first names and names of the civil status. A text that concerns names such as Fañch (Breton), Martí (Catalan), Artús (Occitan) or Iñaki (Basque).
Sign the petition for literatures in regional languages at school
What if all the students in France learned that there were and that there are still works written in Occitan, Basque, Breton, Alsatian, Picard or Martinican Creole? What if this long denied reality made a place in school programs in order to return their dignity to these often despised languages? This is the objective of this petition which recently received the support of Amin Maalouf, the perpetual secretary of the French Academy. Sign it in turn so that this claim is accepted by the Ministry of National Education.
Basque and Catalan enter the Sorbonne
The Sorbonne-Nouvelle University will soon offer training of Basque, Catalan and Galicien. These subjects will be integrated into the new discipline entitled “Languages and regional cultures of the Iberian Peninsula: Basque, Catalan and Galician”. This course allows you to prepare for the CAPES and aggregation competitions.
Listen
This is the question to which researcher Wim Remysen answers, in this new Broom devoted to the Francophonie launched by our colleagues from International mail. He was Called Sentinels.
To look
How Ireland is losing its language, by linguisticae
The linguisticae Youtuber explains here why, despite an official language status for a century, Ireland has failed to impose Gaelic in place of English.
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