More than four-thousand people have staged a demonstration in the French town of Quimper in Brittany, calling for official recognition of the Breton language.

Protesters carried black and white Breton flags with banners carrying the slogan: "a language not taught is a language assassinated".

A spokesman for a Breton language association said the constitution recognised only French as the language of France, and had to be amended to include other regional languages spoken within the country.

Correspondents say successive French governments remain firmly attached to the republican principle, in place since the Revolution of 1789, of a unitary state inhabited by one nation of citizens, and have consistently rejected demands for regional autonomy or recognition of regional languages.