Place des langues sacrées chez des immigrants indiens en Europe : quelles compétences, quels rôles et quels usages ?

The place of sacred languages among Indian immigrants in Europe: competences, roles and uses? As of now, few studies have been done on the role of sacred languages in-side the home from a sociolinguistic perspective. This paper critically examines an empirical study on the issue among Indian immigrants settled in four European countries—France, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Although sacred languages, which are Qur’anic Arabic, Sanskrit and Old Punjabi, have not been reported by any of the respondents, their presence was revealed through ethnographic tools deployed in the field. According to the religion, its place in the household and according to the country of immigration, each family adopts a different language policy in order to transmit sacred languages and values to the second generation. Skills in the language of worship, no matter how low they may be, allow each member of immigrant families not only to communicate with God, to mark their own identity within the wider society, but also to create and expand their own social network.