Following a call from the organisation "Pour que vivent nos langues/Let our languages live", demonstrations have taken place in the Gironde, Dordogne and Pyrénées-Atlantiques regions, reports RFI.
The protestors are unhappy with the recent rejection by the French constitutional court of parts of a law intended to protect regional languages.
Despite the fact that at least 20 regional languages are spoken in mainland France, and a further fifty if you include the French overseas territories, the official language of the republic, according to the constitution, is French.
On that basis, the court which ensures that proposed legislation does not infringe the constitution last week removed a crucial passage concerning intensive courses in regional languages from the so-called Molac law, intended to protect and promote regional tongues, and named after the MP Paul Molac who has spearheaded the project in the French parliament.
Six different groups were behind the organisation of protests in the south-central Dordogne, where the local language is Occitan, spoken by an estimated 9 percent of the 37,000 inhabitants of the city of Périgueux, where many families have chosen Occitan as the language of education of their children.