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Concept
Vergonha
Summary
In Occitan, vergonha (beɾˈɣuɲo̞, veʀˈɡuɲo̞, meaning "shame") refers to the effects of various language discriminatory policies of the government of France on its minorities whose native language was deemed a patois, where a Romance language spoken in the country other than Standard French, such as Occitan or the langues d'oïl, as well as other non-Romance languages such as Alsatian and Basque, were suppressed. Vergonha is imagined as a process of "being made to reject and feel ashamed of one's (or one's parents') mother tongue through official exclusion, humiliation at school and rejection from the media", as organized and sanctioned by French political leaders from Henri Grégoire onward.
Vergonha is still a controversial topic in modern French public discourse where some, including successive French governments, have denied discrimination ever existed or downplayed its effects; it is a commonly cited example of sanctioned systematic linguicide and cultural genocide. In 1860, before French schooling was made compulsory, native Occitan speakers represented more than 39% of the whole French population, as opposed to 52% for francophones proper; their share of the population declined to 26–36% by late 1920s, Since the end of World War II, it experienced another sharp decline, to less than 7% by 1993.
France has also continuously refused to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and native non-French languages in France continue to be denied official recognition, with Occitans, Basques, Corsicans, Catalans, Flemings, Bretons, Alsatians, Nissarts, and Savoyards still having no explicit legal right to conduct public affairs in their regional languages within their home lands.
Beginning in 1539 with Art. 111 of the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, non-French languages in France were reduced in stature when it became compulsory "to deliver and execute all [legal] acts in the French language" (de prononcer et expedier tous actes en langaige françoys).
Official source
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