« Adishatz ! » (Hello :) ), I’m a Gascon (a french “citizen”), and I want to thank you for this article, hopefully it will help my international friends understand why I’m relearning my grandparents’ language, as well as raise awareness abroad.
You did a great job explaining what happened in a nutshell. People usually can’t believe me when I tell them France has tens of languages. Relearning it means growing past the shame, the scorn, the humiliations. In the 60’s and 70’s, people stopped teaching their own language to their kids, after generations of punishment and shaming in schools and elsewhere. It took me years to accept that it’s not ridiculous and useless to know our language. That’s how far the endoctrination goes. And that’s why we have a generational gap where almost all elderly people speak the language while people in their 40s don’t. They are what we call “minorized” languages, as in languages that were majority but have been suppressed into minority. Our languages are terribly hurt and might never recover, they may die in a generation. However I want to be part of those who resisted and got conscious of the importance of saving them. And also fuck empires, we won’t go away silently. And we might even win.
You didn’t mention the Occitan languages (besides the map), of which my Gascon dialect is part : we are usually overlooked in favour of Basque or Breton. And I know why you’re interested in Catalan (wink). But we are by far the biggest chunk of the suppressed languages. Here, there is a revival movement with literature, radios, bilingual schools. The French state is actively suppressing us though, with no official recognition in sight and lack of any sort of financial support. It is still considered an outrage against the republic to be using any other language than French in the public spheres. The scorn from the Paris elites is as high as it’s ever been, it’s even accompanied now with complete ignorance of any diversity : the intellectual elites don’t even know about us, because we’ve become so insignificant they don’t need to.
And thank you so much for connecting that oppression to colonisation, nobody wants to believe it. All they care about is borders, so if it’s inside the French state, it’s not colonising. Why isn’t it the same? An outside power came and destroyed our culture.
Also, I want to mention that in the case of Occitans (Gascon, Langadocian, Provençau, Lemosin…), the revival movements are mostly left-wing : inclusive, cultural (not ethnic), anti-nationalist, often anti-state (we’ve learned by necessity to abandon all hope in the state) and often radical. And I’m so grateful for that because many basques or bretons or corsicans just want another border. Keep an eye on the Occitanists :)
I do want to push back on one thing. A key element of how colonialism unfolds on planet Earth is whiteness, and the brutality of white supremacy (and slavery, mass displacement, and genocide) has systematically been a part of the colonialism of the French, English, Spanish states (etc.) that those same states have not used on Occitania, Catalunya, Cornwall, etc. On the contrary, those peoples who do face cultural and linguistic erasure are still invited into whiteness and on the whole have been rewarded for participating in the imposition of colonialism abroad and the reproduction of white supremacy at home (remembering that there are both left and rightwing versions of white supremacy).
So I just want to make that distinction, while still emphasizing the seriousness of language erasure as a fundamental part of the invention of nation-states.
How do I say "thank you" and "have a good day!" in Gascon?
Yes, I see what you mean and I agree. I don’t want to pretend we are victims of colonizing as it was seen outside of Europe. A lot of the stories told in Gascon that you can still hear today are from old men, about how they went to war in Algeria and fought the Arabs. So yes we were included in the colonial project, after some necessary cultural “cleansing”. I myself am included in the french cultural hegemony through my job…
Some people trace this history back to the crusades against the Cathars of the 13th century. And I’m not enough of a historian to say if it’s completely wrong or not but it sounds a bit far fetched. It’s a narrative that does exist.
You can also find some examples of outspoken racism against so-called “meridionals” (southerners):
“In the south, only the well-off people are French, the common people are something entirely different, perhaps Spanish of Moorish.” That’s from historian Jules Michelet.
Another from Hippolyte Taine visiting Toulouse : “Seeing them move, approaching each other, we feel that we are in the presence of another race: a mixture of the pug and the monkey (…) My impression is that these people need to be governed by someone else.”
Of course these are just individual quotes, it doesn’t mean much. Just worth noting.
Mercés e bon dia ! (Gascon is so close to catalan :) )
E mercés tanben per tot çò qui hès ! :) Thanks for everything you do, we love “Anarchy Works” :)
Hi Peter! I'm not an expert on the matter, but I'm born and raised in Sardinia and this topic hit close to home. We Sardinian as a people have been colonized (and tried to) for a long part of our history and even if we're considered part of Italy we don't really feel that way (not many of us at least). Our autochthonous language has been deprived of its use, flattened and fought with the same patterns you mentioned in your article and it has been really damaging for our culture and identity (and yeah, that's colonization) I also wanted to say that Sardinian language is actually very ancient and some experts consider it pre-indoeuropean exactly as Euskera. I thought you might be interested!
Peter, as a pedant, you may wish to know that Breton isn't a Gaelic language as you state above.
There are two branches of the insular Celtic languages, the Brythonic group, which includes that spoken in what's now known in English as Brittony, Cornwall and Wales (the Breton culture have departed from what's now known as Cornwall during an exodus following the arrival of the Angles, Saxons etc. in the so-called 'British Isles' after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and NOT a remnant of the pre-Roman or Romanised Gaulish culture, to simplify), and which can be mutually-comprehensible between the three groups (including of course sub-groups, etc.).
It contains more Latin influence than the other branch, which is the Goidelic branch (also known as Gaelic and also to some degree mutually-comprehensible over its sub-groups), spoken in what's now known in English as Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland (although there is also Scots in Scotland, which is NOT a dialect of English as commonly thought but actually a distinct split from the same Germanic root which English comes from, given the difference in history between what's known now as the Scottish Lowlands vs. the Scottish Highlands, and its sub-dialects like Doric... and so on and so on).
Otherwise, fucking great wee article and important clarifications too in the comments, as always.
Against nationalism, for the flowering of a thousands tongues!
« Adishatz ! » (Hello :) ), I’m a Gascon (a french “citizen”), and I want to thank you for this article, hopefully it will help my international friends understand why I’m relearning my grandparents’ language, as well as raise awareness abroad.
You did a great job explaining what happened in a nutshell. People usually can’t believe me when I tell them France has tens of languages. Relearning it means growing past the shame, the scorn, the humiliations. In the 60’s and 70’s, people stopped teaching their own language to their kids, after generations of punishment and shaming in schools and elsewhere. It took me years to accept that it’s not ridiculous and useless to know our language. That’s how far the endoctrination goes. And that’s why we have a generational gap where almost all elderly people speak the language while people in their 40s don’t. They are what we call “minorized” languages, as in languages that were majority but have been suppressed into minority. Our languages are terribly hurt and might never recover, they may die in a generation. However I want to be part of those who resisted and got conscious of the importance of saving them. And also fuck empires, we won’t go away silently. And we might even win.
You didn’t mention the Occitan languages (besides the map), of which my Gascon dialect is part : we are usually overlooked in favour of Basque or Breton. And I know why you’re interested in Catalan (wink). But we are by far the biggest chunk of the suppressed languages. Here, there is a revival movement with literature, radios, bilingual schools. The French state is actively suppressing us though, with no official recognition in sight and lack of any sort of financial support. It is still considered an outrage against the republic to be using any other language than French in the public spheres. The scorn from the Paris elites is as high as it’s ever been, it’s even accompanied now with complete ignorance of any diversity : the intellectual elites don’t even know about us, because we’ve become so insignificant they don’t need to.
And thank you so much for connecting that oppression to colonisation, nobody wants to believe it. All they care about is borders, so if it’s inside the French state, it’s not colonising. Why isn’t it the same? An outside power came and destroyed our culture.
Also, I want to mention that in the case of Occitans (Gascon, Langadocian, Provençau, Lemosin…), the revival movements are mostly left-wing : inclusive, cultural (not ethnic), anti-nationalist, often anti-state (we’ve learned by necessity to abandon all hope in the state) and often radical. And I’m so grateful for that because many basques or bretons or corsicans just want another border. Keep an eye on the Occitanists :)
I appreciate this!
I do want to push back on one thing. A key element of how colonialism unfolds on planet Earth is whiteness, and the brutality of white supremacy (and slavery, mass displacement, and genocide) has systematically been a part of the colonialism of the French, English, Spanish states (etc.) that those same states have not used on Occitania, Catalunya, Cornwall, etc. On the contrary, those peoples who do face cultural and linguistic erasure are still invited into whiteness and on the whole have been rewarded for participating in the imposition of colonialism abroad and the reproduction of white supremacy at home (remembering that there are both left and rightwing versions of white supremacy).
So I just want to make that distinction, while still emphasizing the seriousness of language erasure as a fundamental part of the invention of nation-states.
How do I say "thank you" and "have a good day!" in Gascon?
gràcies i bon dia!
Yes, I see what you mean and I agree. I don’t want to pretend we are victims of colonizing as it was seen outside of Europe. A lot of the stories told in Gascon that you can still hear today are from old men, about how they went to war in Algeria and fought the Arabs. So yes we were included in the colonial project, after some necessary cultural “cleansing”. I myself am included in the french cultural hegemony through my job…
Some people trace this history back to the crusades against the Cathars of the 13th century. And I’m not enough of a historian to say if it’s completely wrong or not but it sounds a bit far fetched. It’s a narrative that does exist.
You can also find some examples of outspoken racism against so-called “meridionals” (southerners):
“In the south, only the well-off people are French, the common people are something entirely different, perhaps Spanish of Moorish.” That’s from historian Jules Michelet.
Another from Hippolyte Taine visiting Toulouse : “Seeing them move, approaching each other, we feel that we are in the presence of another race: a mixture of the pug and the monkey (…) My impression is that these people need to be governed by someone else.”
Of course these are just individual quotes, it doesn’t mean much. Just worth noting.
Mercés e bon dia ! (Gascon is so close to catalan :) )
E mercés tanben per tot çò qui hès ! :) Thanks for everything you do, we love “Anarchy Works” :)
Hi Peter! I'm not an expert on the matter, but I'm born and raised in Sardinia and this topic hit close to home. We Sardinian as a people have been colonized (and tried to) for a long part of our history and even if we're considered part of Italy we don't really feel that way (not many of us at least). Our autochthonous language has been deprived of its use, flattened and fought with the same patterns you mentioned in your article and it has been really damaging for our culture and identity (and yeah, that's colonization) I also wanted to say that Sardinian language is actually very ancient and some experts consider it pre-indoeuropean exactly as Euskera. I thought you might be interested!
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing.
Peter, as a pedant, you may wish to know that Breton isn't a Gaelic language as you state above.
There are two branches of the insular Celtic languages, the Brythonic group, which includes that spoken in what's now known in English as Brittony, Cornwall and Wales (the Breton culture have departed from what's now known as Cornwall during an exodus following the arrival of the Angles, Saxons etc. in the so-called 'British Isles' after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and NOT a remnant of the pre-Roman or Romanised Gaulish culture, to simplify), and which can be mutually-comprehensible between the three groups (including of course sub-groups, etc.).
It contains more Latin influence than the other branch, which is the Goidelic branch (also known as Gaelic and also to some degree mutually-comprehensible over its sub-groups), spoken in what's now known in English as Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland (although there is also Scots in Scotland, which is NOT a dialect of English as commonly thought but actually a distinct split from the same Germanic root which English comes from, given the difference in history between what's known now as the Scottish Lowlands vs. the Scottish Highlands, and its sub-dialects like Doric... and so on and so on).
Otherwise, fucking great wee article and important clarifications too in the comments, as always.
Against nationalism, for the flowering of a thousands tongues!
Night night.
thanks!!! I definitely slipped when I called it Gaelic instead of Celtic, but now I've got a much better grasp of the difference
Love this topic. A few years ago, I did a video on Language Liberation. https://youtu.be/BZGWRObWlC4?si=UThJjrLzHcKwoiGK
thanks for sharing this!
Let people speak what they want or like or choose. Dialect itself gets pulled into language in time, and ends up as accepted.