by Gwendolyn Childers In 1972, then-president of France Georges Pompidou encompassed The State’s longtime repression of regional minority languages in the following statement: “There is no room for regional languages in a France that is destined to set its seal on Europe” (ELA, 2012). Even a decade later, J.P. Chevenement, the Minister of Education under president Francois Mitterrand, said in reference to the Corsican language that “teaching the youth languages that offer them no perspective is not doing them a good service,” (Kelly-Holmes, 35). These disheartening statements about regional minority languages have been fairly de rigueur throughout France’s history. So how is Breton still surviving against all odds? Like many severely endangered languages today, Breton has had a history ripe with repression and degradation in status. In recent years, Breton has made strides to reconstitute its status, in a similar way to Irish Gaelic and Welsh. Although the education system has like...