Not speaking the language

Written by Reporter - March 2007

Sounds local

“How can you live in Monaco and understand the country without speaking the language?” so says Eliane Mollo who makes her living teaching Munagascu the old native tongue of the Principality. When we quoted this to Flash Harry (as we’ll call him), a British resident, he turned aside from his FT and snorted: “Look, mate, I hardly know a word of French so I’m not taking on any other language.” Well, in a sense he was right to feel that way but Eliane Mollo was using the word “understand” in a way that Flash Harry didn’t quite grasp. Like other speakers and especially teachers of the ancient tongues of southern France she believes that Munagascu, Nissart and the rest enshrine many elements of old regional cultures which can’t be truly accessed in any other way.

So what state are these languages in today – languages, not dialects, remember. Every so often an enthusiast will announce a “revival”. The truth is that these tongues are marginal, certainly, but by no means dying. Their survival is due to two things. In some families, especially around Nice and in Monaco, there’s been a tradition of speaking a local language, whatever negative influences exist. This was, by the way, the case of Jacques Médecin’s family and, as one of our team reported many years ago, the former mayor loved to display his fluency in Nissart. What has also been critical is the presence of these languages in the schools. Every year a hundred young niçois take the bac in the ancient idiom of the county and then, in many cases, try to keep it alive in their own families. In the Principality, children have obligatory Munagascu for five years and some youngsters become quite keen on it. We always wondered, at least until recently, why the pathologically secretive government hadn’t made use of this in the civil service. Maybe they were fearful of scuta-peti. That’s the word for people who like listening to and spreading gossip.

From Riviera Reporter Issue 121, June/July 2007

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