We have to brave a lot of security cordons, go around the CRS trucks for a long time.
Who would have thought that the subject of regional languages would require such a tight system?
We hear Emmanuel Macron's voice resounding in a nearby loudspeaker.
Would the president have come in person?
He actually pays tribute a few blocks away to the victims of Hamas.
At the corner of Saint-Simon and Grenelle streets, there are 42 young people who came specially from Corsica, Occitanie, the Basque Country, Alsace and Brittany to demand more resources for the teaching of regional languages.
An initiative supported by the collective “So that our languages live”, set up in 2019 under the leadership of European MP François Alfonsi and Morbihan MP Paul Molac.
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Under the windows of the Ministry of National Education, they brave the drizzle in T-shirts in the colors of the Breton flag or the Occitan cross.
The young people stage a classroom with gagged students, tape over their mouths.
Each in turn, they take the floor to explain the difficulties that the choice to progress in Breton, Corsican or Occitan posed for them.
Also read Paul Molac (Liot) on regional languages: “The policy pursued in France risks causing a significant cultural loss”
Among them, Andria.
This sixteen-year-old young man comes from Ajaccio.
“
My parents and grandparents speak Corsican and teach it to us.
But when I'm in class, I speak French so I don't speak my language all day, and lose my level!
», he confides to Le
Figaro
in his warm and invigorating accent.
“
In high school, Corsican only has the status of a separate option.
We would like to speak Corsican in any subject.
Technology, science…”
, he continues.
“My
history teacher, in third grade, was giving a lesson in Corsican.
For the tests, those who wrote in Corsican had extra points.
» Andria also answered her French patent tests in Corsican.
“
I got a price for that!”
We still encourage young people to write Corsican
.”
The Andria Fazi prize rewards, in addition to the best mark in the Corsican language test, the third bilingual candidate having obtained the best mark in the history and geography test presented in Corsican at the Brevet.
Copies in Breton
In Brittany, some were not so lucky.
In 2018, students from a Diwan (bilingual) high school in Carhaix wrote their papers in Breton to claim the right to take the test in this language.
The rectorate had informed them that only the French parts would be evaluated.
“
I had to take the mathematics test for my certificate in French, even though I have always studied this subject in Breton,
” explains Apolline, in first grade in a bilingual high school in Lannion, in Côtes d’Armor. .
“
I am in a Div Yhez high school, which means that I have Breton lessons, and that history-geography is in Breton.
In college, half of the subjects were in Breton.
And from kindergarten to CM2, all!
» The young girl is one of four high school students, who along with two high school students, are being interviewed this afternoon by the Senate.
“
We want our linguistic, cultural and identity heritage to be preserved by improving their practices and their dissemination in society and in schools
,” reads Yann, in first grade in a high school in Corsica.
He was tasked by the collective with writing the general speech for the gathering.
“
We refuse to let our languages die, those which carry the cultural heritage of our peoples as well as our histories
,” he insists.
Several proposals are put forward: the possibility of choosing these minority languages as modern languages, of “
taking the baccalaureate and the certificate entirely in our dialects
”, and an increase in the teaching of regional languages.
One condition would simplify these measures: obtaining the officialization of these minority languages.
Article 2 of the French Constitution establishes French as the only language of the Republic.
In April 2021, Morbihan MP Paul Molac voted for a law relating to the heritage protection of regional languages and their promotion.
Despite this, the collective “Pour que vivre nos mots” today believes that “
the situation of minority languages in France remains a priority
”.
Paul Molac argued along these lines to Le Figaro:
“France is such a diverse country that it is precious to have a single language, which allows us to communicate more easily.
But for one language to crush all others is intolerable.”