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The regional languages of France are sometimes called patois, but this term (roughly meaning "dialects") is often considered derogatory. Patois is used to refer to essentially oral languages, [ 6 ] even though some have a current and/or historical use, such as Occitan, which was already being written at a time when French was not and its ...
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European convention (ETS 148) adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe, ratified and implemented by 25 States, but not by France, as of 2014. The charter contains 98 articles of which ...
The Third Republic sought to modernise France and established primary education where the only language recognised was French. Regional languages were discouraged, and the use of French was seen as aspirational, accelerating their decline. [12] This was also generally the case in areas where Oïl languages were spoken.
The Gaulish language, and presumably its many dialects and closely allied sister languages, left a few hundred words in French and many more in nearby Romance languages, i.e. Franco-Provençal (Eastern France and Western Switzerland), Occitan (Southern France), Catalan, Romansch, Gallo-Italic (Northern Italy), and many of the regional languages of northern France and Belgium collectively known ...
(On this page a regional language has parentheses next to it that contain a region, province, etc. where the language has regional status.) National language A language that uniquely represents the national identity of a state, nation, and/or country and is so designated by a country's government; some are technically minority languages.
Article 75-1 asserts that "regional languages are part of the French heritage". Moreover, Gallo is the only langue d'oïl to be recognized as a regional language by the French Ministry of Education. Nevertheless, like all of the other regional languages of France, the use of Gallo has declined since the 19th century.
French is an administrative language and is commonly but unofficially used in the Maghreb states, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.As of 2023, an estimated 350 million African people spread across 34 African countries can speak French either as a first or second language, mostly as a secondary language, making Africa the continent with the most French speakers in the world. [2]
Although the name Franco-Provençal suggests it is a bridge dialect between French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan, it is a separate Gallo-Romance language that transitions into the Oïl languages Burgundian and Frainc-Comtou to the northwest, into Romansh to the east, into the Gallo-Italic Piemontese to the southeast, and finally into the Vivaro-Alpine dialect of Occitan to the southwest.