Already in in official documents — few 16th-century French subjects were educated and familiar with Latin, — it also stated that French and only French was to be made legal (''en langage maternel françoys et non aultrement'') in the kingdom.
But the deliberate process of eradicating non-French '', the origin of the term is disputed but could be a "corruption of ''patrois'', from LL ''patriensis'', a local inhabitant".
Four months earlier ( January 27 ), Bertrand Barère De Vieuzac , despite being an Occitan from Tarbes himself, had claimed {Link without Title} before this same Convention that
The monarchy had reasons to resemble the Tower Of Babel ; in democracy, leaving the citizens to ignore the national language of Paris , unable to control the power, is betraying the motherland... For a free people, the tongue must be one and the same for everyone. [...] How much money have we not spent already for the translation of the laws of the first two national assemblies in the various dialects of France! As if it were our duty to maintain those barbaric jargons and those coarse lingos that can only serve fanatics and counter-revolutionaries now!
This ultra-, Rhône-Alpes , Languedoc-Roussillon . As a result, the centuries-old singularities of the various Occitan-speaking parts were sensibly overlooked and shaken in a deliberate effort by the newly-formed government to weaken and parcel out long-established feudal domains so that republican France would subdue traditional allegiances.
- Toulouse lost 76% of its territory of Languedoc
- Bordeaux lost a little more than half its territory of Gascony and Guyenne
- Limoges increased its administrative area by 43%
- Guéret, Pau, Foix, Riom, Aix-en-Provence, Grenoble, Carpentras ( 1791 ) and Nice ( 1860 ) lost their status as capitals
- Clermont-Ferrand, Montpellier and Marseille became capitals of Auvergne, Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, respectively
- Languedoc was divided into five unequal parts, the largest of which forming Languedoc-Roussillon with the Catalan -speaking province of Roussillon
- The County of Marche, Béarn, the County of Foix and subsequently Comtat Venaissin and the County of Nice lost their autonomy
- Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur is made up of Provence and the County of Nice and bits and pieces of three other provinces
- The north of Languedoc and Comtat Venaissin and the western half of Dauphiné became linguistic minorities in the new Rhône-Alpes region
- The Occitan provinces spread over a little less than 200,000km&2, twice the area of South Korea and just over that of Senegal , more than twenty-three times the surface of Corsica
- The size of Gascony and Guyenne was comparable to that of Sierra Leone , Ireland , Georgia and Sri Lanka , or eight times the land area of Corsica
- The size of Languedoc was comparable to that of Denmark , Estonia and Bhutan , over five times the island of Corsica
- Gascony and Guyenne, Languedoc, Provence and Auvergne accounted for a staggering 78.4% of Occitania in terms of land area, with Gascony and Guyenne making up for over a third of the total surface and Languedoc almost a quarter
In the . These included children being given punishments by their teachers for speaking Occitan in a Toulouse school or Breton in Brittany . As Pêr-Jakez Helias ( 1914 - 1995 ), the author of the 1975 best-selling novel ''Le Cheval d'orgueil'' (The Horse of Pride), recalls in this interview {Link without Title} ,
Now I know, I learned that there was a government policy which goal was obviously to make France one and indivisible, and as a result regional languages had to disappear. But I didn't know it then and maybe the teachers of the Third Republic did, though I asked some of them and they all denied it. Their own job was to teach us French. And consequently, while attending school, we were required to speak French. Whenever we used Breton instead, we weren't doing our share and so we deserved to be expelled. Period.
Among other well-known humiliations was ''clogging'' young rebels, namely hanging a clog (''sabot'') around their necks as this young lady {Link without Title} remembers her grandparents say:
My grandparents speak Breton too, though not with me. As children, they used to have their fingers smacked a stick or ruler if they happened to say a word in Breton. Back then, the French of the Republic, one and indivisible, was to be heard in all schools and those who dared challenge this policy were humiliated with having to wear a clog around their necks or kneel down on a ruler under a sign that read: "It is forbidden to spit on the ground and speak Breton." That's the reason why some older folks won't transmit the language to their children: it brings trouble upon yourself...
Resorting to the practice of ''clogging'' is confirmed by the Autonomes de Solidarité Laïques website {Link without Title} :
School has had a unifying role inasmuch as speaking the "noble" language {Link without Title} reduced the use of regional dialects and ''patois''. Let us mention the humiliation of children made to wear a clog around their necks for inadvertently speaking a word in the language of the people.
As for signs, they were also found in Poitou schools {Link without Title} :
It seems as though Jules Ferry making school free and compulsory in 1881 materialized the work started four centuries earlier the Ordinance Of Villers-Cotterêts ; the method of repression and humiliation that was undertaken bore fruit with, for instance, the famous signs in school reading: "It is forbidden to spit on the ground and speak ''patois''."
The Conselh de Representacion Generala de la Joventut d'Òc (CRGJOC, General Representation Council of the Occitan Youth), through the Youth of European Nationalities website {Link without Title} , reports that
Our language {Link without Title} lost its name, becoming some "''patois''", first at school and then in families through putting pressure on women in education ("''Interdit de cracher par terre et de parler patois''") with the French IIIrd Republic, Mussolini and Franco .
The Confolentés Occitan (Occitan-speaking Limousin ) website {Link without Title} testifies of the methods used by French authorities over the past century or so:
To help efface traditional regional identities, the Occitan language was not merely discouraged but actively suppressed. School pupils were punished well within living memory for speaking their native language on school premises.
The French administration managed to make the Occitan speakers think of their own language as a patois, i.e. as a corrupted form of French used only by the ignorant and uneducated. This alienating process is known as ''la vergonha'' ("the shame").
Many older speakers of Occitan still believe that their native language is no more than a shameful patois. This is one reason why you rarely hear it in public — or anywhere outside of the neighbourhood or family circle.
As can be seen from these examples, Abbé Grégoire's own terms were kept to designate the languages of France: while Breton referred to the so-called dialect spoken in Brittany, the word ''patois'' encompassed all Romance ''dialects'' such as Occitan and Franco-Provençal . In his report, Corsican and Alsatian were dismissed as "highly degenerate" (''très-dégénérés'') forms of Italian and German , respectively. As a result, some people still call their non-French language ''patois'', encouraged by the fact they were never taught how to write it and made to think only French exists in the written form.
In 's plea for the Constitutional Council to amend Art. II and include all vernacular languages spoken on French soil. Yet again, non-French languages in France were denied official recognition and deemed too dangerous for the unity of the country, and Occitans, Basques, Corsicans, Catalans, Bretons, Alsatians etc have still no legal right to exist as such in their home lands.
On the denies any mistreatment and even claims in a pre- Electoral speech in Besançon on March 13 , 2007 that
If I'm elected, I won't be in favour of the European Charter for Regional Languages. I don't want that tomorrow a judge with a historical experience of the issue of minorities different from ours, decides that a regional language must be considered as a language of the Republic just like French.
Because, beyond the text itself, there is a dynamic of interpretations and jurisprudence that can go very far. I am convinced that in France, the land of the free, no minority is discriminated against and consequently it is not necessary to grant European judges the right to give their opinion on a matter that is consubstantial with our national identity and has absolutely nothing to do with the construction of Europe .
His for the sake of cultural variety in France:
Regional identities represent a tremendous asset for the future and I believe that understanding the link between the fundamental values that make the deep-rooted identity between France and the French nation in its diversity, in its authenticity, in its authentic traditions {Link without Title} makes the State work well.
Author Ives Roqueta writes about the shame of being Occitan in France in this text {Link without Title} on the Aprene website:
The red is whirling in my mind, I'm red with anger, red is my rebellion. I'm red, the wine spilled over me, on the Corbières paths. The red is confining my mind, I'm red with shame: I speak Occitan. I'm red, red from the blood in my face. Wake up! Where is the blood of our fathers?
Yet, the Occitan language is still alive, though official seclusion has had a devastating effect on the number of speakers in Occitania. Singer Patric alludes to this whole situation in a song called ''Soi un marrit dròlle'' ("I'm a bad guy") {Link without Title} :
I'm a bad guy for killing your language
But I'll make a much nicer, much better one for you
And when we only speak Occitan
We'll make love with a song
Farewell shame (''vergonha''), I'm married now
With this girl I have many children
And we'll make men out of this country
Farewell shame, I am no outlaw!
{Link without Title} Farewell, o my land; welcome, o my home!
Claudi Martí questions the Obscurantism in France's educational system in ''Perqué m'an pas dit?'' ("Why didn't they tell me?") {Link without Title} :
As every child, I went to school;
As every child, they taught me to read,
They sang me many songs, taught me so many stories: Lutetia ... Paris ... Paris...
But why, o why didn't they tell me the name of my language at school?
Our teacher would tell us about that great king of France
Kneeling down in front of the poor: a real saint, that Saint Louis !
He loved each and every one and fought poverty: a real saint, that saint Louis!
But why, o why didn't they tell me at school that he killed my country? Louis IX Of France played a major role in the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of Occitania and the Inquisition that followed
And as we grew up, we had to speak three languages;
To make a good technician, you needed three languages,
And English and German and what they write in Rome to make a good technician.
But why, o why didn't they tell me the name of my language at school?
Maybe so much knowledge is hiding the truth from our eyes;
We'll learn by ourselves that freedom doesn't rule on earth;
We'll learn about the starvation in India and the mourning of Africans and the death of Che Guevara ,
And why, yes why they didn't say the name of our country at school...
Joan Pau Verdier dedicates his song ''Veiquí l'occitan'' ("This is the Occitan") to fighting ''la vergonha'' and to the pride of being Occitans {Link without Title} :
There was shame in the heart of the land. We had lost the soil, the trees were all dead, slaves in our own country, living a life of bowing down, with no eyes or memory, a rogue nation.
You would tell me: "It's all over!" you my father and you my friends, "There's no coming back now". You'd say: "We must stop dreaming!"
Here comes hope at the end of the road. The new man is standing up. This is the Occitan. The rumour spreads to the smallest towns. We'll keep our land, we will not die!
We were born on a windy day when evil was blowing hard. We're through with being dogs. You see, Father, we aren't dead yet!
I greet you, Brother. Good morning, Farmer. A worker is calling you: another Occitan! Nothing's impossible anymore: we believe in love! And we believe our history is made of the future!
And, Mother, I see you today. Springtime blossoms in your hair. You've understood our sun. You perfectly know we aren't crazy.
Here comes the hope. May the child sing. We'll have a right to live, to be Occitans. I greet you, Brother; good morning, Farmer! The new man is calling you, he's a Basque, a Breton...
Jan Dau Melhau , from Limousin, in ''Lo Diable es jos la pòrta'' (The Devil Lies Under the Door), tells how Occitans learned to feel ashamed of their occitanity in a society that denied them any legitimity {Link without Title} :
There came a time when people felt ashamed:
They felt ashamed of what they spoke;
Of their language mended with the thread of such a long history, they felt ashamed.
There came a time when people felt ashamed:
They felt ashamed of how they spoke;
Of saying so much in so little and making their minds smile, they felt ashamed.
{Link without Title}
There came a time when people felt ashamed:
They felt ashamed of what they were;
Of what had made them what they were, they felt ashamed.
Cursed be the time when people felt ashamed
And cursed be those who let themselves feel ashamed!
Hartèra, a youth movement for the promotion of Occitan, militates against the shaming, as can be seen on this poster {Link without Title} . It reads in both Gascon Occitan and French, with a touch of irony and a renewed confidence in the future of Occitania:
To hell with the shame...
Our ''patois'' is a language: Occitan;
Our South is a country: Occitania;
Our folklore is a culture.
We want respect for our difference.
Share, mix, walk!!
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