Language Transmission in France in the Course of the 20Th Century
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https://archined.ined.fr Language transmission in France in the course of the 20th century François Héran, Alexandra Filhon et Christine Deprez Version Libre accès Licence / License CC Attribution - Pas d'Œuvre dérivée 4.0 International (CC BY- ND) POUR CITER CETTE VERSION / TO CITE THIS VERSION François Héran, Alexandra Filhon et Christine Deprez, 2002, "Language transmission in France in the course of the 20th century", Population & Societies: 1-4. Disponible sur / Availabe at: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12204/AXCwcStFDxhNsJusqTx6 POPU TTIION &SOCIÉTTÉÉS No.FEBRU ARY37 20062 Language transmission in France in the course of the 20th century François Héran *, Alexandra Filhon ** and Christine Deprez *** “French shall be the only language of education”, pro- Institute of Linguistics’ languages of the world data- claimed the Ministerial Order of 7 June 1880 laying base [4]. The ten most frequently recalled childhood down the model primary school regulations. “The lan- languages are cited by two thirds of the respondents, guage of the Republic is French”, recently added arti- while a much larger number are recalled by a bare cle 2 of the Constitution (1992). But do families follow handful. the strictures of state education and institutions? What The Families Survey distinguishes languages were the real linguistic practices of the population of “usually” spoken by parents with their children (fig- France in the last century? Sandwiched between the ure 1A) from those which they “also” spoke to them, monopoly of the national language and the spread of i.e., occasionally-used languages (figure 1B). This English, what has become of French regional dialects, and what is happening to the languages introduced by immigration? The linguistic strand of the Families survey Hundreds of languages known The Families survey linked to the March 1999 census, to a quarter of the adult population entitled “Family History Survey”, was carried out by INSEE and co-designed with INED [1]; the results are The exceptionally large sample (380,000 people) of the being used by both institutes [2]. The strand on linguis- Families Survey means that an answer can be given to tic practices received funding from the National these questions (box). The most striking thing is the Commission for the French Language and the rich mix of languages known. On being asked “in Languages of France (DGLFLF). which language, dialect or patois” their father and Preceded by an exploratory survey conducted mother in that order “usually” spoke to them at about in 1992 on a sample of 5,300 parents of schoolchil- age 5, a high percentage of respondents —26% of the dren [3], this strand breaks new ground in French adults now living in metropolitan France, or 11.5 mil- public statistics collection. Never has such a consistent lion people—recalled that their parents spoke to them picture been constructed of all the languages spoken in in another language as well as or instead of French. In six out of ten cases, that language was transmitted the country from such a large national sample. The concurrently with French. Half of the cases were questionnaires were completed at the same time as the regional or frontier languages; the other half were lan- census returns by 380,000 adults living in metropolitan guages of immigration, and were learned before or France, the oldest of whom were born before World after resettlement in France. No less than 6,700 lan- War One. The sample was made more representative guage and dialect descriptions were reported, match- by deliberately over-representing certain areas ing nearly 400 languages identified in the Summer (Flanders, Alsace, Moselle, Corsica, the Catalan Region, the Basque Region, Brittany), then rectifying * INED. the results for publication. ** INED and University of Versailles–Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. BULLETIN MENSUEL D’INFORMATION DE L’INSTITUT NATIONAL D’ÉTUDES DÉMOGRAPHIQUES NATIONAL DE L’INSTITUT BULLETIN MENSUEL D’INFORMATION *** University of Paris-V, Laboratory of Sociolinguistics. Editorial – Language transmission in France in the course of the 20th century • Hundreds of languages known to a quarter of the adult population - p. 1 • A one-in-three parent-child transmission rate - p. 3 • Reversing the shift? - p. 4 CONTENTS 2 Language transmission in France in the course of the 20th century contrast between the two practices is informative. The fication of immigration flows has led to the appear- transmission of languages of immigration in child- ance of new African and Asian language families hood was more often usual than occasional: 940,000 whose method of transmission — almost always adults living in metropolitan France recall that their usual—reflects more recent arrival: they have gener- parents initially spoke Arabic to them in their earliest ally been acquired from both parents in the country of childhood, against only 230,000 who recall occasional origin pre-immigration. Turkish is a similar case in transmission, generally secondary to French. Likewise point. Portuguese, which was handed on to 580,000 adults Unlike foreign languages, most regional lan- on a usual basis, versus 100,000 on a purely occasion- guages were transmitted only on an occasional basis, al basis. Spanish and Italian — both languages of secondarily to French, and more often by one parent longer-established immigration—had a higher fre- only. This was particularly so for the langue d’oc and quency of secondary transmission. Lastly, the diversi- the langues d’oïl, already being rapidly lost among the Figure 1 - Main languages other than French received in childhood and transmitted to the next generation Number of adults living in metropolitan France reporting that their parents C - Number of adults 1 - Regional languages, spoke to them at around 5 years of age in a language other than French who handed languages of A - Usually spoken B - No more than these languages on frontier departments by father or mother occasionally spoken to their own children Alsatian langue d'oc langues d'oïl Breton Creole languages Platt Lorraine Catalan Franco-Provençal Corsican Basque Flemish 2 - Languages of immigration Arabic Portuguese Spanish Italian German Polish Berber languages Turkish English Italian dialects Vietnamese Both parents Both parents Other African languages usually spoke this language to them only spoke this language Usually Khmer, Lao occasionally to them Only one parent Bantu languages usually spoke Only one parent Serbo-Croat this language to them, spoke this language Occasionally the other spoke it occasionally to them Indo-Iranian languages occasionally or not at all Pulaar, Wolof, Serer Chinese languages INED Tamil, Telugu 021A02 0 200 400 600 800 1000 0 200 400 600 800 1000 0 200 400 600 Thousands of adults Thousands of adults Coverage: adults living in metropolitan France. Interpretation: 660,000 adults reported that their father and/or mother usually spoke Alsatian to them when they were 5 years old (including 600,000 both parents). A further 240,000 said that their parents only spoke Alsatian to them occasionally (these two figures are additive and cover a period from 1905 to approximately 1985). 410,000 of these adults handed on Alsatian to their children in turn. Source: INSEE, Families survey 1999. Population et Sociétés, 376, February 2002 INED Language transmission in France in the course of the 20th century 3 older generation. That notwithstanding, both lan- the share of adults who have inherited a foreign lan- guages were recalled from the childhoods of very guage from their parents has increased in France with many still-living adults: 610,000 usually and 1,060,000 rising immigration. Since the late Sixties, for example, on a purely secondary basis for the langue d’oc (Occitan Arabic has become the linguistic heritage of 3% rather and its variants: Nissart, Provençal, Languedocien, than 1% of adults living in France. But over time, set- Rouergat, Limousin, Gascon), 570,000 and 850,000 for tled immigrants have tended to shift towards the use the langues d’oïl (Picard, chtimi or “Northern patois”, of French in the family. The transmission of Arabic as Lorraine Romance, Norman, Gallo-Breton, Vendeen, a usual language has declined by over half in the span Bourbonnais, etc.). of a generation, in the same way as Berber and 280,000 people recall frequently having had Breton Portuguese, to a comparable extent with that of spoken to them in childhood, and another 400,000 had Basque or Alsatian. So the share of the monolingual it transmitted secondarily to French. Alongside French-speaking community has risen steadily for a Corsican, Catalan and the Creole languages (bearing century (figure 3). But a new factor has now been in mind that the survey was confined to metropolitan added to the scene—English, often transmitted to France), Breton is one of the languages whose trans- children but not forming part of the family linguistic mission was even then more often occasional than heritage. usual, although the shift was less acute than for the The fact is that when the survey adults were ques- langues d’oïl and langue d’oc. Not so Alsatian, which tioned on the languages spoken in non-parent/child even a generation ago was still the best-transmitted regional language, being transmitted more usually (660,000 people) than occasionally (240,000). Likewise, Figure 2 - Language loss in a generation: proportion of fathers who did not usually speak across most of nearby Moselle, families still usually to their 5-year-old children in the language communicated in a Frankish dialect, Platt Lorraine. that their own father usually spoke Elsewhere in France, only Basque was in a similar sit- in to them at the same age uation. Franco-Provençal A one-in-three parent-child Breton transmission rate Flemish langue d’oc Is the linguistic heritage of childhood being passed on Polish to the next generation? The Families survey asked Creole languages adults currently living in metropolitan France in Italian (incl.