Good question, and I’m not sure if I have the answer to that. After all, the language issues in Estonia and Latvia are largely due to the fact that they both have a large linguistic minority that was imposed on them through forced immigration during an occupation. (Not all Russian speakers in Estonia and Latvia came after WWII, but the vast preponderance of them did.)

I would say it is really a question of time and will. If, using your hypothethical example, there were a large group of immigrants to a country who maintained cultural cohesion and wanted schooling in their native tongue, it would be hard politically to gainsay them after it became apparent that there were a voting bloc with clear aims. My impression is that this is actually rarely the case though. For example, most North Africans in Europe aren’t terribly interested in retaining whichever dialect of Arabic they grew up with, as far as I can tell.

I know in the US, there were numerous German-speaking schools in the Midwest and Spanish-speaking schools in the West. These ended for political reasons as far as I can tell. The German-speaking schools were shut down because of WWI.

These French peripheral areas have precisely been depressed since the 1970s when poorly qualified jobs were delocalized to cheaper and less unionized places… That’s why these kids have never seen their fathers or their older brothers work. Just like kids in any other Western “black hole” (Castells) or urban ghetto.

The language question is actually quite relevant – Algerian-French linguist Mohamed Benrabah (author of a book on language policy in Algeria) once said that it’s because these kids are caught in between two languages that they have this conflictual relationship to the host dominant culture… well, I guess 50-60% unemployment does not help either.

The EU enlargement (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) last year is a key trigger for these events. What has changed particularly is the transfer of jobs by multinational companies from France to other newer EU countries in the East like the Poland and Czech Republic. These countries have low labour costs and attractive tax incentives for inward investment. This is causing rising unemployment across all sections of the economy.

Consequently we must watch in the future we may see a similar state of riot and anarchy in other inflexible western economies, as in the strike-laden 1970s.

However, your point about “indigenous” versus “immigrant” languages is highly relevant to the ongoing riots. If enough people are born in Bradford and grow up with (say) Hindi as a first language, is that an “indigenous” language?

Three different bloggers, different parts of the country, their sites closed down, their political affiliations to be investigated, now facing a five-year stretch for “incitement to commit aggression against other people”. No word on what they actually wrote.

Ok, so we agree that the language of markets isn’t very useful for government language policy. Since it isn’t that useful, I don’t know why we are still talking about it.

Government-mandated language use (which is what public schooling in a single language is) is a huge “market” distortion. Effectively it is a subsidy, since the government forces you to use that language for a significant part of your existence.

This isn’t a network effect case of “I use MS Windows because everyone else uses MS Windows.” This is a case of “The government forces me to learn and use MS Windows.”

Mostly, I was reacting to the laughable idea that there is a free market in language usage, when the state only supports one language and forces people to learn and use it.

I would have no trouble arguing for them directly—especially in an immigrant-driven society like the US. But the analogy with one business is extremely thin. It is certainly more efficient for a government to do business in a single language. Acting on that fact is not a ‘subsidy’. Teaching in that language is an efficency, not a subsidy. Conducting transactions in that language is not a subsidy either. I agree that the market analogy as a whole isn’t all that exciting for governmental language analysis, but you totally pervert any small use it might have had with the subsidy talk. The market side of the analogy is on the demand side if it is useful at all. The most useful economics analogy is likely to be “network effect”.

With the discovery of the little bomb factory, it has been revealed that there is at least a little bit more organization to these riots than has been previously recognized. That isn’t a good sign for the immediate future.

Breton is a language that is older than French, and has been spoken in Brittany for over a thousand years. Seems pretty viable to me.

But I don’t demand university education in Breton. Let’s start with primary education in Breton, which the French state seems allergic to.

“Note that French universities will offer courses in English, but they won’t offer them in Breton, for example”

Do you think they might, if they thought is was viable? They acepted English, didn’t they?

If you are a French citizen, you are not allowed to interact with the court in Basque, for example. If you are a Spanish citizen, you can, because Basque is recognized on the Spanish side as an official language.

Perhaps this has changed recently, but that certainly was true a couple of years ago.

Note that French universities will offer courses in English, but they won’t offer them in Breton, for example.

“If the government pays for schooling in only one language and allows only one language in its courts and all other interactions with it, then it obviously isn’t a free market at all, is it? In that case, the government is subsidizing one language at the expense of others”

I’m not sure how you meant this, but foreign languages are of course allowed before French courts, and no interpreter is required if the judge understands the respective language.

French universities also increasingly offer courses in English, in order to attract foreign students – and the courses of course are subsidised by the French state.

Did I misunderstand you somewhere?

“President Jacques Chirac, in private comments…. acknowledged that France has failed to integrate the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants in poor suburbs who have been taking part in the violence, according to Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, ….Chirac “deplored the fact that in these neighborhoods there is a ghettoization of youths of African or North African origin” and recognized “the incapacity of French society to fully accept them.” Chirac said unemployment runs as high as 40 percent in some suburban neighborhoods, four times the national rate of just under 10 percent, Vike-Freiberga said.”

So, in the end, incapacitated by racial ‘stock’ … and so it goes.

No argument of that sort has been made. What you are describing is a maximalist position, which no one I have heard of subscribes to.

First of, we are talking about states – I said nothing about the EU. That’s a separate issue, though obviously related.

Usually the discussion is of indigenous languages, not the languages of immigrants. So Arabic in France wouldn’t qualify, for example. Secondly, provision of minority languages in government is usually related to demand. All of the languages we are discussing here have large numbers of speakers and have organized themselves to demand more language rights.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/language/scots/

Crivvens an’ help ma boab. Scots claik ma dowp. I counted, at most, six words there in Scots. The rest is simply the babble one hears in Leith at closing time. Badly spelt English.

‘e Parlie wuid hev bin beter scrievin’ it in Fryslan.