Flavour Mixing and Fermion Mass Generation as a Result of Symmetry Breaking

It is shown that a simple breaking of the subnuclear democracy leads to a successful description of the mixing between the second and third family. In the lepton channel the $\nu _{\mu } - \nu_{\tau }$ oscillations are expected to be described by a mixing angle of $2.65^ {\circ }$ which might be observed soon in neutrino experiments.