This week is regional languages week. In France, as France Bleu indicates in a recent article, we qualify as “regional” a language with a “historical anchor” of national dimension, spoken in the territory before the generalization of French.

At Fransk kulturhus, the immersive teaching that we promote offers an important place to cultural diversity and, therefore, to regional languages. These languages also contribute to an important value of our cultural center: the promotion of multilingualism.

Through card games, our students learn, for example, from the lowest levels, the history of the regions of France or even notions of Breton or Alsatian languages. For more advanced courses, and in particular our conversation courses, many debates take place around the subject of regional languages. To do this, we use reports, press articles or resources specially designed by our teaching team (notably quizzes).

Recently, we also dedicated a special episode of our podcast Frank-norsk kafé to the subject of regional and minority languages. Our guest, Sigrun, talks in particular about the similarities between New Norwegian (Nynorsk) and regional languages in France. An episode that you can listen to by clicking here!