Language diversity in Europe: can the EU prevent the genocide of the French linguistic minorities?

Abstract

Introduction: All references about France, be they about French language, French culture, French arrogance or French cuisine seem to indicate that this country is homogeneous, mono-lingua and mono-cultural. If we consider some of its regions we can note a huge linguistic and cultural diversity: Corsica is Italo-Roman, Brittany is Celtic, Flemish is spoken in the North of France, Alsace is Germanic, the language in the Basque region is pre Indo-European while Catalan and Occitan both form part of the "occitano-roman group, half way between Gallo-Roman and Ibero-Roman." According to the new Atlas of Endangered World Naguages published by UNESCO, all these languages, with the exception of Corsican, are part of the 3000 languages in danger of extinction.