QUEVEN, France -- Day and night on France's windy western coast, Radio Kerne transmits a bright mix of music sprinkled with local news. It is a new station run by young people for a young audience -- but with a difference. Most of Radio Kerne's operators are volunteers, working with the zeal of missionaries. Their preferred music comes from bagpipes and flutes. And they broadcast only in Breton, a Celtic language spoken for more than 2,000 years that until recently seemed doomed to disappear. "Saving the culture of Brittany is very much on people's minds," said Isig Flatres, who is the manager of the station. "This generation is no longer embarrassed about speaking or being Breton."
What is more, the language of the druids --- who had kept writing secret -- is now out on the Internet with its own Web sites. After being banished for more than a century from Brittany's schools, the language has found new defenders in the pro-Breton movement, and its activists are developing software, translating centuries-old texts and sending their children to new bilingual schools that teach Breton and French.
Reflecting a growing trend in Europe, all the minority languages of France -- banned after the revolution in the name of the equality -- are getting a new lease on life. Since the Socialist Government took office in 1997, greater tolerance has allowed for more teaching of Occitan, Basque, Corsican and Alsatian in France's schools.
The change is not undisputed: President Jacques Chirac, several Government ministers and the nation's highest court have weighed in on the unresolved argument over whether it is constitutional to promote a language other than French. Teaching regional languages is "an enterprise that can destroy the unity of the nation," said Maurice Druon, the head of the French Academy. "We risk pulverizing French. Why sacrifice a glorious language to local dialects?"
But the renaissance of local cultures is not confined to France. This is one of the more intriguing side effects of a uniting Europe: as national boundaries fade within the 15-member European Union, more political power flows to Brussels and more countries beg to join the group, local cultures and languages are reasserting their strength.
And while a blanket of sameness has settled over consumer trends and styles in Europe, historians say that more people are interested in protecting minority languages and asserting local differences then at any other time in this century. Gaelic has returned to schools in Scotland and Wales, which have both gained more political power from the once highly centralized Government in London. Northern Italy has courses in Friulian. Dutch radio stations broadcast in Frisian and Limburgs. "In Finland, we can now get the news in Saami," said Tom Moring, a Finnish linguist. Regionalism is perhaps strongest in Spain, where Basque is making a comeback in the north, bolstered by the local government. In Catalonia, Barcelona's authorities insist on doing all official business in Catalan, which now prevails over Spanish.
"Brussels bureaucrats may try to steamroller us into oneness, but people are stubborn," said Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a German who has written often on European and regional identity. "The more global and uniform our civilization, the more people want to anchor themselves in their own culture. The fact is, Europe has a few thousand years of settled cultures -- it can't simply turn into an American-type melting pot."
Some students of the trend believe the identity of Europe's ethnic groups is strengthening because anchors like religion and nationality have weakened. "Being a citizen of Europe is still rather vague, rather abstract as an identity", Mr. Moring said.
Some Europe-wide institutions are helping in the belief that grass-roots movements fostering local pride are good for democracy. The Council of Europe, a 41-nation group that promotes democracy and human rights, has
adopted a charter pledging to encourage the use of indigenous languages in schools, media and public life. The council says that of the 500 million or so Europeans, more than 50 million speak a local language that is not their country's official tongue.
The European Union has created the Bureau for Lesser-used Languages, which finances projects such as developing Internet browsers in Welsh and cartoon books in Alsation. Next, it promises a news agency. "When the media report on ethnic groups, it's usually about conflict", said Bertrand Menciassi out of the language bureau. "We want to provide some balance. There's so much else going on that's very rich".
In Brittany, some linguists wonder whether the revival is not coming too late. Of Brittany's four million people, only about 10 percent still know Breton, and most of these are elderly. But 10,000 adults are enrolled in evening classes in Breton, and in the past 20 years, the Diwan movement -- Diwan is Breton for "seed" -- has built up 34 Breton-speaking schools, with 5,000 pupils.
Valerie le Gal, the director of a Diwan school in Lorient, said that unlike state-run institutions, teachers are short of money and materials. They have adapted some textbooks by pasting Breton passages over them. In her class, 7-year-olds were learning to read and write in a language that has few ties to French. For zero, they wrote "mann"; the word "keriaden" means village. Breton linguists working with Celtic specialists in Ireland, Scotland and Wales have created modern words such as skinwell (television), pellgomz (telephone) urzhiataer (computer).
The cultural revival may thrive if it continues to produce economic benefits. Julien le Mentec has just opened his second Breton tavern in Lorient, where he serves local dishes and offers Breton music and language courses to a clientele mostly under 25. Young activists network with Celtic counterparts in Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland. This year's Inter Celtic Music Festival in Lorient drew 400,000 visitors, many of them from Britain. The young people have helped the language and culture to open up, which may be a key to survival, said Michel Le Bris, a Breton novelist. "We now except that our identity can have several layers", Mr. Le Bris said. "We can feel European and French and Breton all at once. But the answer is to remain open. If not, you become a bastion, a Serbia."
Posted by proutist-universal on March 2, 2006 5:24 PM | TrackBack
|
"In economic life there is extreme inequality and exploitation. Although colonialism no longer exists openly in the political and economic sphere, still it persists indirectly, and this should not be tolerated... In this respect you should remember that in economic life, we will have to guarantee the minimum requirements of life to one and all... There cannot be any sort of adjustment as far as this point is concerned. The minimum purchasing requirement must be guaranteed to all. Today these fundamental essentialities are not being guaranteed. Rather, people are being guided by deceptive economic ideas like outdated Marxism, which has proven ineffective in practical life and has not been successfully implemented in any corner of the world. Why do people still believe in such a theory, which has never been proved successful? The time has come for people to make a proper assessment of whether they are being misguided or not." |
|
"Human beings have still not been able to form a human society, and have still not learned to move with the spirit of a pilgrim. Although many small groups, motivated by self-interest, work together in particular situations, not even a small fraction of their work is done with a broader social motive. By strict definition, shall we have to declare that each small family unit is a society in itself? If going ahead in mutual adjustment only out of narrow self-interest or momentary self-seeking is called society, then in such a society, no provision can be made for the disabled, the diseased or the helpless, because in most cases nobody can benefit from them in any way... in that case there always remains the possibility of some people getting isolated from the collective. All human beings must attach themselves to others by the common bond of love and march forward hand in hand; then only will I proclaim it a society." |