In Occitan, vergonha (pronounced [beɾˈɣuɲɔ, beʀˈɡuɲɔ, veʀˈɡuɲɔ], lit. 'shame') refers to the effects of various language discriminatory policies of the government of France on its minority or regional languages, (including Romance languages such as Occitan and Catalan, as well as non-Romance languages such as Alsatian and Basque), deemed patois, as opposed to standard French 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 successive French governments, have denied discrimination ever existed or downplayed its effects; all the same, 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 the 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, Savoyards and other langues d'oïl speakers still having no explicit legal right to conduct public affairs in their regional languages within their home lands.
Overview
16th to 18th century 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). Originally meant as a way to eliminate Latin in official documents—few 16th-century French subjects were educated and familiar with Latin—it also stated that French and only French was legal in the kingdom (en langage maternel françoys et non aultrement).
Late 18th to late 19th century
Abbé Grégoire's "Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois" The deliberate process of eradicating non-French vernaculars in modern France and disparaging them as mere local and often strictly oral dialects was formalized with Henri Grégoire's Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalise the use of the French language, which he presented on 4 June 1794 to the National Convention; thereafter, all languages other than French were officially banned in the administration and schools for the sake of linguistically uniting post-Bastille Day France. At the time, only one tenth of the population were fluent in French. In reference to "patois", Jean Jaurès famously claimed that "one names patois the language of a defeated nation". According to the Chambers Dictionary, the origin of the term is disputed but could be a "corruption of patrois, from LL patriensis, a local inhabitant". Four months earlier (27 January), Bertrand Barère, although an Occitan from Tarbes himself, claimed before this same Convention:
The monarchy had reasons to resemble the Tower of Babel; in democracy, leaving the citizens to ignore the national language [that of Paris], unable to control the power, is betraying the motherland... For a free people, the tongue must be one and the same for everyone. [...] How much money have we not spent already for the translation of the laws of the first two national assemblies in the various dialects of France! As if it were our duty to maintain those barbaric jargons and those coarse lingos that can only serve fanatics and counter-revolutionaries now!
The end of traditional provinces This policy can be noted by the way France's internal borders were redrawn, creating 83 départements. The law was passed on 22 December 1789 and took effect the following year, on 4 March 1790. As a result, the centuries-old singularities of the various Occitan-speaking parts were overlooked and shaken in a deliberate effort by the newly formed government to weaken and parcel out long-established feudal domains so that republican France would subdue traditional allegiances, as Antonin Perbòsc reveals in the foreword to his Anthologie:
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