Foreign Perspectives

Well, almost. You didn’t expect it to be so simple as that, did you?

There are various regional languages in France from Breton in Brittany to Catalan in Catalonia. For the most part, these languages are barely paid lip service by the French authorities. For example, the capital of the Pyrenees-Orientale departments bills itself as “Perpignan le Catalán” yet in reality the Catalan language is only represented by the bilingual signs outside villages in Catalonia and the odd article in the magazines distributed by the Conseil Regionale. This lack of support for the language is effectively killing the language in France so, for example, our neighbour’s father speaks Catalán as a native tongue, he speaks it as a second language and his children don’t speak it at all.

Things are very different just over the border where more and more of the signs have dropped bilingualism and are only in Catalán. Even the brochures in the shops are almost exclusively Catalán only. In fact, Catalán is pushed so much that in a recent shopping trip to Girona one or two of the shop assistants all but refused to serve us when we asked for some things in Spanish.

I think it’s sad that the children can’t speak to their grandparents in their native language in France but Spain has definitely taken it too far and I feel sure that it will end up as being very devisive.

This series is available in reference form on our Living in France pages.