Language, and its place in the constitution, has passions running high in France. The issue is not English this time around.

Instead, politicians say they are worried by steps to recognize and promote France's half-dozen or so regional languages.

In May, the French government signed a European Charter to promote these tongues, many of them ancient and fading from use. It selected charter articles which would make it easier to use the languages in schools, radio and television, and on street signs, as long as there was an interest in them.

But in June, legal experts decided the charter would violate the constitution, which says French is the official language.

Most Parisians wouldn't have a clue about what some French radio announcers are saying. That's because they are speaking in Breton, one of France's regional languages. Others include Alsatian, Corsican, and Occitan, the biggest regional language, spoken by an estimated 1 million people in southern France.

Specialists say the number of people speaking these tongues is steadily declining, despite campaigns to revive interest in them. This year, the government decided to give a helping hand by signing the Council of Europe's Charter on Regional and Minority Languages.

Critics, however, warn that applying the charter will open a political Pandora's box.

Jean-Yves Camus is the language adviser to one of the charter's leading opponents, left-wing politician Georges Sarre. He says charter supporters are often separatists. "Their goal is political, their aim is political. In Corsica for example, clearly independence. And in Brittany, for a part of them too, or at least a very large kind of autonomy, like that of Scotland and Wales, for example."

Politicians on both the left and the right have issued similar warnings. They say if children learn regional tongues before French, they won't be able to participate in French democratic life as adults. They warn of rising youth unemployment as young Breton-speakers, for example, have to pass up jobs which require good French.

This kind of linguistic Balkanization, they say, threatens the very French republic itself.

But not everybody agrees. Linguist Bernard Cerquilini selected the 75 languages the charter would recognize and promote. "I don't think there is any danger for the Republic," he says.

Cerquilini says two-thirds of the languages are spoken in France's overseas territories, on tiny islands in Polynesia, for example. Many have very few speakers and some don't even have a name.

But it's the seven mainland regional tongues charter opponents are worried about. Cerquilini says they're scare-mongering. "What the government now wants to do, is to help building bilingualism, that is, if you speak Breton at home, you may if you want. But school must give you the national language. So it's not the idea of having people speak only Breton. It's impossible."

Right now, there's a political stalemate because the country's constitution would have to be changed to adopt the charter. French President Jacques Chirac is against such a move. But Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, says he will try to get parliament to push for a change next fall.