Читать книгу The Mysteries of Bilingualism. Unresolved Issues онлайн

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France does not have language questions in their census either. The word “langue” (language) does not appear in the 2020 census form, nor in the preceding ones. When I wrote in 2013 to the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) which is in charge of the census, the curt reply I received was that the information I requested did not fall within what it offers. This is due to the fact that, officially, the French Republic wants to give equal treatment to everyone by interacting directly with the individual, without going through minorities, communities, or groups, be they religious, regional, linguistic, etc. A less official reason is that it also prefers not to put too strong a light on the fact that France contains many minority languages, including immigrant languages, spoken by literally millions of people. This said, regional languages were finally recognized as belonging to the French national heritage in an amendment to the French Constitution in 2008, and various language surveys do exist, some sponsored or cosponsored by the state. It will be one of these surveys that we will refer to in the next part.