Savoyard dialect

Savoyard (endonym: savoyârd) is a Franco-Provençal dialect of the Gallo-Romance family. It is spoken in some territories of the historical Duchy of Savoy, nowadays a geographic area spanning Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France and the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It has around 35,000 speakers today. The Savoyard language is included in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages as a dialect of the Franco-Provencal. However, Savoyard is itself subdivided into many sub-dialects in almost all major valleys. Savoyard has seen its number of speakers greatly decrease since the annexation of Savoy to France in 1860, in particular because of the prohibition of speaking it at school, military service, as well as during the two world conflicts. The 20th century saw the number of speakers decrease from almost all of the population of the Savoyard countryside to a few tens of thousands. However, during the 1980s, a renewed interest existed with the organization of many international festivals of the Franco-Provencal language, the creation of several associations with the aim of safeguarding this language, in particular, the group of Conflans, and the "Institut de la langue savoyarde", the publication of many books (monographs, books, novels), as well as the teaching – although difficult, because of the lack of recognition as a regional language. Many exchanges between students who have taken this option are organized each year, especially during the Constantin-Désormeaux competition to reward the best work of students in this language. Bilingual signage is also beginning to be present in Savoy at the entrance of the agglomerations. The way in which Savoyard must evolve, as for a possible pseudo-uniformization, a spelling common to the whole of the Franco-Provencal area, is however subject to many controversies between several currents. These currents are most often divided into two groups. Patoisants, a group mainly formed...