Pierre Escudé’s text begins with a reminder of the history of dialects across France, and particularly Occitan. He draws our attention back to the nineteenth century and France’s systemic repression of minority languages. Against this tide, he gradually became the ambassador of these so-called dialect languages and developed the field of intercomprehension, actively challenging the adage: “One country, one language”. On the contrary, he describes how linguistic diversity may reinforce national identity surprisingly, through its most recent immigrants: “If my little one speaks Occitan, he will really be French.”