History of ‘Top-Down’ Policy towards Regional Languages in France

Abstract

During the Ancien Régime (Old Regime or Former Regime) from the sixteenth century until the late eighteenth century, French was the language of a powerful monarchy and a language of culture. Even some years after the French Revolution, French was still the exclusive property of cultivated elites in France and was spoken by a small minority of the population, while the rest of France spoke other languages: patois,¹ dialects and what are today called ‘regional languages’. This chapter outlines briefly the changing relations of French vis-à-vis regional languages from the sixteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century.