Editing Culture of France (section)

==French culture ==
{{Main|French language|Languages of France|Language policy in France}}
The [[Académie Française]] sets an official standard of [[linguistic purism]]; however, this standard, which is not mandatory, is occasionally ignored by the government itself: for instance, the left-wing government of [[Lionel Jospin]] pushed for the feminisation of the names of some functions (''madame la ministre'') while the Académie pushed for some more traditional ''madame le ministre''.

Some action has been taken by the government to promote French culture and the French language. For instance, they have established a system of subsidies and preferential loans for supporting [[French cinema]]. The [[Toubon law]], from the name of the conservative culture minister who promoted it, makes it mandatory to use French in advertisements directed to the general public. Note that contrary to some misconceptions sometimes found in the Anglophone media, the French government neither regulates the language used by private parties in commercial settings, nor makes it compulsory that France-based [[WWW]] sites should be in French.

France counts many regional languages, some of them being very different from standard French, such as [[Breton language|Breton]] (a Celtic language close to [[Cornish language|Cornish]] and [[Welsh language|Welsh]]) and [[Alsatian language|Alsatian]] (an [[Alemannic German|Alemannic]] dialect of German). Some regional languages are [[Romance languages|Roman]], like French, such as [[Occitan language|Occitan]]. The [[Basque language]] is completely unrelated to the French language and to any other language in the world; it is spoken in an area that straddles the border between the southwest of France and the north of Spain.

Many of these languages have enthusiastic advocates; however, the real importance of local languages remains subject to debate. In April 2001, the Minister of Education, [[Jack Lang (French politician)|Jack Lang]], admitted formally that for more than two centuries, the political powers of the French government had repressed regional languages. He announced that [[bilingual education]] would, for the first time, be recognised, and bilingual teachers recruited in French public schools to support teaching these other languages. 
In French schools, pupils are expected to learn at least two foreign languages, the first of which is typically German or English.

A revision of the [[French constitution]] creating official recognition of [[regional languages]] was implemented by the Parliament in Congress at Versailles in July 2008.<ref>Article 75-1: (a new article): "Les langues régionales appartiennent au patrimoine de la France" ("Regional languages belong to the patrimony of France"). See [[:fr:Loi constitutionnelle du 23 juillet 2008|Loi constitutionnelle du 23 juillet 2008]].</ref>