Vergonha

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.