Talk:Occitan language

Status of the language: language or languages?

I have removed from the article the statement that languages are differentiated on the basis of mutual intelligibility - this cannot be backed up!

We could list many dialects which are perfectly, or to a large extent, mutually intelligible (or to be more accurate, dialects which form unbroken continua of intelligibility) but which are divided for political reasons into dialects - and just as easily, many 'languages' which are actually a plethora of vastly diverse dialects. I put just a few examples in the article.

In addition, it's impossible to decide which languages are mutually intelligible and which aren't - this isn't a yes/no issue. Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to some extent. To a Portuguese person, Castilian (Spanish) is perfectly understandable, but to a Spaniard, Portuguese is only intelligible to a limited extent. Catalans and Portuguese understand each other suprisingly well, however. Add to this that none of these languages is totally unified, but each form patchworks of dialects - how can we decide which are 'mutually intelligible' and which aren't in this mess? (This is also why I don't think it's fair to say that intelligibility between Occitan dialects is higher than between Occitan and Catalan - which dialects of Catalan and Occitan do you mean? The intelligibility between Provençal and Gascon is fairly low, whereas the intelligibility between southern Lengadocian and northern Catalan is fairly high - though it would be easy to find examples to the contrary.)

Kieron a m 16:22, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

(edit: oops forgot to sign, sorry ^_^ )

We cannot define if spoken varieties are separated languages or mere dialects of the same language only because they are mutually intelligible. This is a sociolinguistic question, not a pure linguistic one. Various german or arabic dialects are barely intelligible to each other's speakers and are considered varieties of the same language. At the same time Norwegian, Swedish and Danish (or for that matter Portuguese and Galician or Spanish) are largely mutually intelligible but considered to be different languages.

According to this article, Occitan is an artificial construct with virtually no social base. In Provence, for instance, most of the speakers consider Provencal to be a language of its own, different from Languedocian, Gascon, Auvergnian and Limousin:

http://www.uhb.fr/alc/erellif/credilif/ValenceEnglish.pdf

Sergio Morales

Then we are in agreement ^_^ kieron 11:41, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

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Sabiai pas que la pagina occitana de Wikipedia existissia.Cresiai que la lenga occitana era desbrembada e me regausissi donc de la descobrir. Comencèri de ne redigir una(Lupus Aquitanus) mas me maini que, fin'finala, es pas gaire necessari d'o far e qu'aquesta pagina esperava sonque de se balhar un contengut. Soi uros, benastruc, d'aver descobert aqueste siti enciclopedic.

Se i a de mond que s'alegran a parlar e escriure la lenga nòstra, aquò m'agradarà que jamai pus d'escambiar amb els e elas, de parlar de tot en occitan, e d'aprene de contunh , e pas sonque d'occitan( d'articles d'antròpologia, de botanica, de chinés e que te sabi mai, mas en occitan...).

A leu donc, e al còp que ven sul Wikepedia occitan

Lop l'Aquitan Lupus Aquitanus(Lupus, Lop paire d'Euda ,duc e primièr prince d'Aquitania).Lupus demorarà un siti a basa d'occitan ma s'avodarà puslèu a l'Aquitania.

P.S Benastrugui los qu'an creat aqueste projècte d'enciclòpedia respectuosa de la diversitat. Aprene e difusir dins la lenga d'una part dels mieus aujèols m'agrada.

Per avança mercés al mèstre de la tèla de m'aver assabentat sus l'existencia de l'interfacia occitana de Tarquin.

A perpaus,voldriai volentièr contribuïr amb d'autres a la concepcion del Oiquipedia occitan , mas cossi far per capitar lo prètzfach d'obtener de polidas paginas sul siti, sabi pas trèop plan utilizar l'utis encara?

En vacancas fins al 21/08/2003

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Occitan is an Ibero-Romance language, isn't it? I know French and Spanish and I hope I can contribute... It is not very difficult for me to understand the gist of the Occitan so I'll summarize: "I didn't know the Occitan Wikipedia page existed. I thought that the language had been dissolved, and I didn't expect to find one..... ....I want to contribute to the Occitan version of the site" (Sorry for my incompletion)

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hi. I'm afraid nobody speaks occitan here. Could you write in english (or in french -- we can talk on the french wikipedia). is this about help setting up the Occitan Wikipedia? or does it say "if you can read this, go help with the occitan wikipedia"? -- Tarquin 21:03 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I wonder if that line at the end means "I'm on vacation till August 21, 2003." -- ESP 23:26 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm almost sure -- Error 03:29, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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The following are translations of "Occitan" into several languages. In my understanding of interlanguage links, you only link to existing pages. It is not intended as a multilanguage dictionary. So I left only those links to existing pages with some information.

af:Occitaans ar:الأوكسيتانية az:Oksitanca be:Правансальская bh:oseetan bs:oksitanski ca:Occità cs:okcitánština cy:ocitan da:occitansk el:Οσιτανικά eo:Okcitana es:Occitano eu:Okzitaniera fa:فرانسوی fi:oksitaani fr:occitan fy:Oksitaansk ga:Ocatáinis gl:occitano hu:Okcitán ia:occitano id:Occit it:Occitano ja:オック語 la:Aquitana lt:provansalų lv:ocitāņu mk:Окситански nl:Occitaans no:provençalsk oc:occitan pl:Prowansalski pt:Occitano ru:Окситанский sk:ocitánčine sl:ocitanščina sq:Oksitanisht sr:oksitanski su:Ossita sv:occitanska sw:Kiositani te:Occitanu th:ภาษาออกซิตัน uz:Oksitan tilida zh:歐西坦語 zu:Isi-Osithani

-- Error

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Why is this warning at the bottom of the page:

(The views presented on this site are contrary to the opinion of the vast majority of linguists.)

It does not say which views specifically are against common scholarly opinion. If no one can make it clearer then I'll remove it. Kricxjo 03:02, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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Ericd', I don't appreciate you moving the mention of Dante and then changing "Provencal" to "Occitan". According to virtually every critical apparatus on Purgatorio, the language which Dante puts in Arnaut's mouth is Provencal. Similarly, the language in which Arnaut composed his love poetry is specfically Provencal. By taking the mention of Dante out of Provencal and putting it here, you are contradicting centuries of Dantean study by people much more qualified in the matter than any of us. Kricxjo 14:25, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

About Dante I'm not sure to be right but see my comment on the talk page for Provencal. The use of Provencal for Langue d'Oc seems to be common in English. I'll try to have a look at some study of Dante in French. Ericd 20:04, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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languedocien, auvergnat, limousin, gascon and provençal are dialects of occitan and not languages. [Gnu_thomas]

Unfortunately, there is debate on that issue. Many English-language and Italian-language resources treat Provencal as separate from Occitan. Seeing as some dialects of Provencal are not mutually intelligible to speakers from, for example, Toulouse, that's IMHO valid. Kricxjo 14:49, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

for the IEO (institut d'estudis occitans) which can be considered as the "académie française" for the occitan, occitan is a set of dialects inter-intelligible. There are also errors on the specific dialects page. The dialect the closest of old occitan used by trobadors is the languedocien not the provençal. The limit of the limousin doesn't correspond to the limit of the adminstrative region, as reader can understand seeing the map. [Gnu_thomas]

About language versus dialects : This inter-intelligibillity thing is the typical exemple of a case where human sciences classifications have problem to deal with real life. Inter-intelligibillity is not a binary notion a large number or language are more or less inter-intelligible. For instance I'm a French speaker and can understand a few Italian or Spanish without having learned them....

Ericd 18:51, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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The discussion of the Latin origins of Romance language names for "yes" seems to be incorrect; the Latin word from which "si" and similar Romance language words for "yes" is derived is "sic" (thus, so), not "si" (if, whether). Right?

-- Seth Schoen (not registered on Wikipedia)

Deleted sentence

"The word Occitan is modelled after the historical region of Occitania, which in turn is modelled after Aquitania, a former Roman administrative region."

This sentence contradicts those prior to it. It is my understading that "Occitania" is derived from "Occitan" and not the other way around. Also, the area some call Occitania is much larger than Auquitain. Nathan 02:33, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Romanian list

Note that Romanian branza is not from caseus (branza is considered to be a pre-Roman Dacian word). But Latin caseus does survive in Romanian as caş, which did evolve from Latin caseus. Romanian biserica is from Latin basilica. Latin ecclesia was not transmitted into the Eastern Romance languages. Both ecclesia (>ekklesia), and basilica (>basilike) entered Latin from Greek. Alexander 007 01:34, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Romanian equivalents in the chart are all correct as of now. Alexander 007 01:29, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

English words on chart

In case anybody was wondering, English plaza is borrowed from Spanish; English cheese is from Old English cese, from Germanic kasjus, which was an early borrowing from Latin caseus; English language was borrowed from Old French langage, which is from Latin lingua. The rest of the English words are unLatin. Alexander 007 00:52, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't sing be replaced with chant? Also, the note below the chart indicates that French has no equivalent to record -- yet battre un record (beat/set an athletic record, for example) is commonly said and is semantically related, no? --anon

The Romance words mean "sing", although the borrowed word "chant" is a more related cognate. Btw, it seems unclear if the word "jump" comes from Occitan, or if it has a different etymology...

I'd actually like to know the source giving the Occitan etymology of these words. For example, here are the etymologies the O.E.D. gives:

jump [A word of mod. Eng., known only from c1500; app. of onomatopic origin: cf. bump, etc. Words app. parallel are MHG. and dial. Ger. gumpen to jump, hop, Da. gumpe, Sw. dial. gumpa, Sw. guppa to move up and down, Icel. goppa to skip; but it does not appear how the 16th c. Eng. jump could be historically or phonetically related to these.]

rave [? a. OF. raver, app. a variant (of rare occurrence) of rêver to dream, be delirious, etc., of obscure origin: for conjectures, see Diez (s.v. rêve) and Körting (s.v. rabia).]

record [a. OF. record (recort, recor-s, etc.), f. recorder to RECORD. Cf. Sp. recuerdo, It. ricordo. The original stressing (rI'kO:d) is found in verse as late as the 19th c.]

The fact that "record" exists in Occitan and English but not in French does not seem interesting unless Occitan is the only language that kept it. But, as it is, both Spanish and Italian (and probably others) have a form of the word record, all from the Latin recordare. I'm going to take out this sentence, unless someone strongly objects. It would be interesting to list words (which I'm sure exist) that can be traced to Occitan. I will look into that. Lesgles 22:15, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Ligurian in the Var ?

Where is Ligurian spoken in the Var ? Ericd 00:19, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

24 000 Hz range

Somebody correct this please? Most humans can't go beyond 16 kHz, and less than 1% go beyond 20 kHz, and that's a physiology limitation. See ear Hearing (sense)elpincha 06:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

During the middle ages, there was a state where now exists catalonia. In this state, the official language was catalan. As well as in the kingdoms of mallorca and valencia. In fact, until 1714 spanish castillian wasn't an oficial language in catalonia. I supose that you are a bit confuse and you think that the crown of aragon was the same as the kingdom of aragon.

The ancient Crown of Aragon could be compared to some sort of federal state as well as most medieval kingdoms -all Iberic ancient kingdoms were of that kind. Nowadays there's a strong effort from some Catalan nationalists to base their political positions on a partial vision of Catalonia and Aragon history. There´s no sense in talking about official languages in Spain before 19th century and Castillian, also known as Spanish abroad, was already a known but minoritary language in Catalonia and Aragon from 13th century.

BTW there are no reasons but historical and political ones to say Catalan is not an Occitan variant since it´s closer to Provençal and Nord-Occitan than Gascon.

Catalan has different diphtongs, it hasn't got the phoneme /y/ and conversions from some Latin consonants to Catalan vowels have evolved differently. Those differences basically are enough to argument Catalan as separate from Occitan, besides the fact that a Catalan speaker has a very hard time understanding spoken Occitan (even Provençal) and vice versa...

Oïl languages

It has been proposed that Languages of Oïl be renamed and moved to Langues d'Oïl. Comments and votes on Talk:Languages of Oïl, please, if you're interested. Man vyi 09:16, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Important!

Many users do not realize (or frequently forget, such as I) that Wikipedia searchs are case sensitive. This creates confusion between OC and Oc. The redirect should link to OC, the disambiguation page, which I have edited to include this article.

Occitan and Catalan.

Good evening. As a native speaker of Catalan and as a speaker of Occitan, I'd like to know what linguists say that the Catalan and Occitan languages are the same. In the Spanish Wikipedia the same thing happened, and after discussion we decided to eliminate the assertion that some linguists think they are the same. When you read the same article in Occitan and then in Catalan, it's very easy to think they are the same, because the orthographies are very similar, but Occitan's pronunciation is the most distinctive of all the Romance languages, and it's completeley different from Catalan. Remember, brothers but not the same! KekoDActyluS 16:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Occitan and Catalan are clearly not the same, mainly due to how diphtongs and conversions from Latin consonants to Romance vowels have evolved differently - and most linguists support this...

Can someone cite evidence of the following claim, which is made on the page? "Modern Occitan is the closest relative of Catalan. The languages, as spoken in early medieval times, might be considered variant forms of the same language." To my knowledge, the truth of the first sentence is disputed -- linguists don't agree on whether Catalan is more closely related to French (and hence Occitan) or to Spanish. (Sorry, my reference for that is in German.) UKoch (talk) 13:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Occitan and Catalan are generally classified as members of the same linguistic subfamily, as shown in the chart included in the Romance languages article. Closeness to Spanish is less likely simply because the amount of words of Arabic origin in Spanish is much higher than in either Occitan or Catalan. --jofframes (talk) 20:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

does anyone have a photo of an Occitan street sign?

You know what would be perfect for this article is a photograph of some of the last vestiges of Occitan in southern French cities. I just got back from Toulouse a few weeks ago, and all I saw of Occitan (true to the article) was the occasional street sign.

Surely SOMEONE must have a photograph of a street sign in Toulouse, near La Capitole, where they post both the French and the Occitan street name?? That really would be a nice touch if anyone has one or knows where we can get one.

• Ask and you shall receive ^_^ Kieron a m 02:02, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

btw the carrièra del taur is the street that goes from plaça de la capitola to plaça sant sermin, significant cos it is where the libreria occitania is. shall i mention this? is it relevant? Kieron a m 02:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

• By all means!!

Occitan and Catalan, again

I think all discussions of the similarities and differences between Occitan and Catalan should be moved to a separate article. One comes to Occitan language to see a quick summary, not a huge discussion involving overly specific details about a totally different language. Anon IP, you should be ashamed for trying to turn this into another Catalan article. CRCulver 11:56, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree.

I disagree. While there could be a specific section for it, you just cannot discuss Catalan and Occitan without addressing their similarities and dissimilarities. FilipeS (talk) 18:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Gallo-Romance or Ibero-Romance?

hi,

the infobox in the article says Gallo-Romance and the list in Gallo-Iberian languages says Ibero-Romance. one of them must be wrong but i have no idea which one. --ArinArin 11:34, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

it's a point of contention - gallo-romance, ibero-romance, or neither? i think wikipedia should avoid language-tree classifications altogether - at the end of the day, they are all more or less arbitrary... kieron 10:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Catalan language is in both, as it's transitional between both. And Occitan is transitional between Catalan and other Gallo-Romance. If there is truly a debate, I don't necessarily see a problem of classifying it as both at least for the sake of categorization. - Gilgamesh 17:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no move. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move (expired)

• Occitan language → Occitan … Rationale: An article about a language should not have "language" in the title unless it is meant to disambiguate … Please share your opinion at Talk:Occitan language. — Dissident (Talk) 17:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Strong oppose. Current name follows Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) so it should not be moved. Vegaswikian 22:36, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. I can't believe this is still an issue for some editors. Wikipedia standardized on "X language" years ago now. CRCulver 22:44, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, per Crculver & Vegaswikian. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 23:47, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose - Occitan can refer to occitan regions, occitan peoples, etc., and there could well be articles on this in the future. Also agree with Crculver & Vegaswikian.kieron 14:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose Every language should be named "XXX language" unless there is some compelling reason (and I know of none.) -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 20:57, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

Hm, I prefer Occitan language but that's not how I read the naming convention. There isn't a collision with Occitan people or whatnot in this case. --Dhartung | Talk 03:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

There could be an article "Occitan people", if one wanted to talk about the shared culture and history of the speakers of Occitan. FWIW, my Occitan textbook, L'occitan sans peine by Assimil, talks about occitans all the time. CRCulver 03:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Then why isn't Occitan a disambiguation page rather than a redirect? --Ptcamn 21:21, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Simply because those other articles haven't been written yet. The fact remains that 'Occitan' does not refer exclusively to a language (as does, for example, Hindi), but can be used to refer to a people, a region, a style of architecture, a literary tradition, etc. etc., and so the article 'Occitan' should be left clear so it might be used as a disambiguation page in the future.kieron 22:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Concerning the move

The only thing that could be considered a valid argument against a move to Occitan above is that there could be an article called Occitan people. However, I question the validity of such an article. Please show us acknowledged sources in English that actually refer to "Occitans" that aren't simply referring to the speakers of the language, for whom we never stard separate articles. I also doubt that all Occitan speakers in Spain, France and Italy consider their ethnicity to be "Occitan" rather than being nationals of the respective countries or belonging to some other minority.

The argument that "Occitan" as an adjective may refer to a lot of things is also irrelevant, since neither Occitan cuisine nor Occitan literature can be called just "Occitan". For a parallel see Latin, Latin alphabet, Latin literature, etc. The naming convention is very clear about this for a long time, I might add. The usage of a disambiguator is applicable only if there's a need for it.

Peter ^Isotalo 14:04, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Could I get some responsens to this comment? All of the votes above are based on false premises, especially the ones citing the naming convention. The "language" in language article titles hasn't been considered mandatory for at least a year. And since Occitan people doesn't seem to be appearing any time soon, we shouldn't be using uncalled-for disambiguators. If no comments are forthcoming, I'm posting a request at Wikipedia:Requested moves#Uncontroversial proposals.

Peter ^Isotalo 10:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

• Support, as the move would be in accordance with Wikipedia's naming conventions. "Occitan" is a language. To the best of my ample knowledge, the Occitan language is the only thing on this world commonly referred to by "Occitan".Unoffensive text or character 12:52, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, French and native scholarship uses the term "occitan" to refer to a speaker of the language. Even in English one could see the need for disambiguation between language and people. CRCulver 12:59, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

This is not a vote, so stop trying to turn it into one. If y'all start voting, it will be about taking sides rather than providing good arguments.

Culver, considering your claims, it's very odd that the Occitan and French Wikipedias don't seem to be bothered with keeping a separate article for the "Occitan people". They don't even have disambiguators. Why hasn't someone written this self-evident article here for that matter? And even if the term is used (apparantly sparingly) in French and Occitan, I think it's questionable to automatically assume that a) the term has the same meaning in English and b) that there's an Occitan people that exist as a reasonably well-defined ethnic group. Like I've pointed out before, we don't keep separate articles just for the speakers of a language. Now, you're the one making unsupported claims, so please back them up with a source that would be more generally applicable and neutral than a textbook in Occitan.

Peter ^Isotalo 19:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Personally, though an enthusiast for languages for the past 45 years, somewhat familiar with "languedoc" and "provençale" from past literary studies, and with Catalan from recent study of a sort, I had never heard of an "Occitan language" (or family of languages/dialects), and find it helpful to have the full expression in the title ... especially given that there is considerable linguistic (and political?) debate as to the nature and scope of that language. Had I simply seen the title "Occitan", I'd have likely passed it by, unaware that it was a languge at all. For those not in the field, the expression is not needlessly redundant. FutharkRed 05:42, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Not encyclopedic statement

"More widely accepted wisdom suggests that as few as half a million proficient speakers remain in France, for example." What the heck is "more widely accepted wisdom" suppposed to mean? The statement should either be supported with a citation, or deleted. Even if it's retained, it needs to be re-worded to more encyclopedic language (e.g., "Several widely accepted sources suggest..."). 4.243.152.88 05:54, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Orthographic norms

Which one is closer to the orthography of Catalan, the classical orthography of Occitan, or the Mistralian orthography? Th article should explain this. FilipeS 16:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC

The classical orthography is closer to the Catalan orthography.--Aubadaurada 23:41, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Gallo-Romance language >>> Occitan language

It is certainly more appropriate to classify the Occitan language under the family of Gallo-Romance languages rather than under the family of Ibero-Romance languages. The Occitan language belongs primarily to Southern France. The Occitan language extends to eastern Spain and Western Italy but the areas that interest these countries are minimal.

ICE77 -- 81.104.129.226 19:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

This question was already resolved by the linguist Pierre Bec: Occitan is a transition between Gallo-Romance and Ibero-Romance. When you say that "The Occitan language belongs primarily to Southern France", such an argument is ill-conceived. Linguistic classification follows linguistic criteria: state boundaries are uninteresting for linguistic classification.--Aubadaurada 22:46, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

If the Occitan language is a transitional language between Gallo-Romance and Ibero-Romance languages then it should be classified under the Gallo-Iberian languages and not under Gallo-Romance and Ibero-Romance at the same time. In Gallo-Iberian languages it's classified under Ibero-Romance and in Occitan language is classified under Gallo-Romance. It doesn't make much sense to talk about the same thing and have two separate classifications under two different pages.

ICE77 -- 81.104.129.226 22:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Read Pierre Bec. The only widely accepted set is the Romance languages. All its subsets (Ibero-Romance, Gallo-Romance, and so on) are controversial and not rigid. Transitional sets are perfectly possible because Romance languages are a continuum.--Aubadaurada 13:58, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

political vs. linguistic classification

Most of the conventional, but still in use, sub-families of romance languages were rather based on political facts than on linguistic study: actually the country in which a language or dialect is mainly spoken used to set its sub-group. Thus the fact that occitan is still often classified as gallo-roman, while catalan is sometimes said ibero-roman.

People can argue for centuries on similarities or differences. The fact remains that cat. & oc. are very close compared to the distance from each of them to any other roman language.

Just to compare, portuguese, galician & spanish (castilian) are usually described as closely related. Actually, studying them shows astonishing similarities in all aspects of the languages -- except for nasal vowels, while they share higher differences with other romance languages. They may be called sister languages and form together an (west-)iberian sub-family. Then, compared to that group, the catalan/occitan pair, or the set of catalan and occitan varieties or dialects, is even (much) closer. There are differences, such as the occitan -o feminine ending, still they are few compared to the ones between portuguese and castilian. I would call them twin languages, which may be appropriate in respect to history: some signs show that they formed a common set of dialects in the late middle ages, which eventually evolved on separated (political) paths.

Upon the relation between french and occitan, and catalan-occitan forming a bridge between gallo-roman and ibero-roman languages : I don't agree with that. On one side, french, or rather the set of oïl language varieties, form a highly different sub-family, compared to all other romance languages, including romanian. The catalan-occitan group may be said to form a bridge between other romance sub-families, excluding french. French is nearly as far to occitan (or catalan) than to italian or castilian. Below how I see the romance family :

romance
    northern romance/gallo-roman/franco-roman/french/oïl 
    southern romance
        rumanian (2)
        italian/official/center & south (2)
        northern italian (3)
        sarde (& corsican?)
        occitan-catalan
        ibero-roman (4)

(1) long term frankish rule (2) vowel plural ending (3) -s plural ending (4) long term arabic rule As an axample of typical occitan-catalan feature: they have lost masculine and neutral endings (-o in other southern romance) and very often kept the latin root unchanged. For instance latin 'focus' --> oc-cat 'foc', it. 'fuoco', span. 'fuego', port. 'fogo', rom. 'foc', fr. 'feu' -- think at en. 'focal'.

--Denispir (talk) 09:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Poitiers

Was Poitiou never part of the Aquitaine?64.134.101.98 08:54, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Destroy 200 Years of Culture

Occitans, as a result of nearly 200 years of conditioned suppression and humiliation …

I don’t know much about the history of the region, but does this strike anybody else as POV? —Wiki Wikardo 19:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree--it should be deleted.

Categorization

Please see Talk:Romance languages#Confusion in categories. Any input is appreciated. --Amir E. Aharoni 12:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Concerning Occitan, Catalan and the Occitano-Romance subgroup, a response is there.--Aubadaurada 13:38, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Occitan language in Monaco

One of the last interests of Aubadaurada is to include Monaco in the Occitan language aerea. He already tried on WP fr: (and he is tempting on WP it:). His only sources (Bec, Arveiller) tell the exact contrary: nobody speaks Occitan there (except a big mistake, once again, of Ethnologue.com that states that 4,500 people speaks Occitan in Monaco… It is just a big confusion). I do recognize that, between 1860 and 1930' (and perhaps the 40s), few people, mainly immigrants from Nice and Cannes, were Occitan speakers. But there are more Russian, English or Italian speakers in Monaco than Occitan ones…-Enzino 14:13, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

audio

Are there any links to audio files of someone speaking Occitan? Preferably with subtitles in English (or French). Have any feature films been made in the Occitan language? Or are there any Youtube clips? In any event, an audio file would be a useful addition to this article, either as media or as an external link. I tried the link to radio-occitania.com but it does not seem to have streaming audio. --Cinematical (talk) 01:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Here you go: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483206/ Dësbela Ambërbojada (talk) 23:27, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Sentence in the Lourdes statue

I have changed the sentence that appears in the statue to "Que soy era immaculata councepciou", as it reads in the image. --Eleder (talk) 14:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You're wrong. The correct and codified orthography is the former one: "Que soi era Immaculada Concepcion".--Nil Blau (talk) 22:03, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Some small changes in Occitan phonology...

Hi, I've made some changes in the transcription of the final unstressed -a. Some people may (/will) disapprove it but actually the usual description (Bec, Coustenoble, the diverse Linguistic Atlas) state that this vowel seems to be a mid-back rounded vowel just like in Spanish and many other languages. Some modern trends think it is an open-mid back vowel however it is really far from sounding just like the -ò- de pòrta for instance. See you, de còr e d'òc, Capsot (talk) 11:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move. JPG-GR (talk) 17:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Occitan language → Occitan — The term "Occitan" does not appear to have any other primary meaning than the language. There's no evidence of an "Occitan people", despite claims in previous move requests. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) states that any term that isn't actually in need of the "language" disambiguator should not use it. I'm hoping we won't repeat the previous polarized reflex-polling, but rather that we weigh conventions, guidelines and the arguments of individual editors to make an informed decision. — Peter ^Isotalo 12:35, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Oppose - I see no need for this. It would be a change for change's sake. The current name is not misleading and i find "Occitan language" clearer than "Occitan". Also, a lot of links point to "Occitan language". --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Is this really necessary? The conventions are perfectly clear about this. I feel that your opposition is what's being done for it's own sake. What's the reason for making this article an exception to both common practice and long-standing guidelines? If it hadn't been for the fact that Occitan was a redirect that had been edited, I would've simply moved the article as a formality instead of going through the whole WP:RM procedure. Peter ^Isotalo 13:11, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Read the previous move proposals, they answer all your questions. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:18, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

They make no sense at all. First people opposed the move because they thought it was against conventions (which it was not) or that it had to be disambiguated from the "Occitan people" (that doesn't exist). Again, why is it so important to make this an exception from the convention? Peter ^Isotalo 17:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

It is not terribly against the letter of the convention and it certainly against its spirit. The whole idea of good article naming is to make articles easier to find, read and link to. "Occitan language" is easier to find, read and link to than "Occitan". Count the links to it, for example. Leaving this article at "Occitan language" is hardly an exception from the written convention, but renaming it to "Occitan" is an inconvenient exception from the de facto convention of naming nearly all language articles with the word "language". I'm not saying anything new - the comments at the previous discussion say the same and make a lot of sense. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:16, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

The spirit of the convention as far as I can tell is to have short, unambiguous titles which are easy to link to. It's even worded in the "in a nutshell"-summary. "Occitan" appears to fulfill both criteria quite nicely. "Occitan language" merely adds one more word without any benefit. I'm quite aware that people are insisting on that an ethnic group called "Occitan people" exists, but no one appears to be able to support it with references. As far as I can tell, it's about as relevant as an "Esperanto people" or "Yiddish people". Peter ^Isotalo 12:10, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support. There's nothing to disambiguate with, so the "language" bit is superfluous in the title.--Boffob (talk) 17:57, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - I also do not see the need. Also, in spite of the comment above, Occitan could be used in reference to Occitania and not restricted to just language. Dionix (talk) 20:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Disambiguations are relevant only to nouns, not adjectives. The term "Occitan" has only one meaning in an encyclopedic context, just like Latin, Hindi, Inuktitut, etc. Moreover, Occitania is an area dependent on the language, not the other way around. The language is far more well-known than the area which defines its extent. Peter ^Isotalo 07:43, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
    • There are people who will disagree to the statement that it's only a language and not an area. I don't necessarily agree with them, but there is no clear consensus about it. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:16, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - If that move would be accepted, then when somebody will create for instance Occitan people it will have to be moved back again. I would suggest to be practical and leave it as it is instead of wasting time with changes back and forth. --Carles Noguera (talk) 08:12, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
• Neutral. "Occitan" already redirects here, and that's convenient. But "Occitan" would also be the appropriate adjetival form of Occitania, from which Occitan was formed by backformation. Perhaps we need a hatnote to Occitania. That would satisfy me and then I would support the move. Srnec (talk) 19:12, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Both Occitania and this article link to each other in the first sentence of the lead. Hatnotes seems a bit excessive. Peter ^Isotalo 10:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
    • I dislike unnecessary hatnotes as much as anybody, but in this case I worry that the adjetival form of Occitania might be taken to be "Occitanian" and the term Occitan thought to only refer to the language. Srnec (talk) 16:19, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - no compelling need; current title is clearer. Biruitorul ^Talk 20:12, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

I am not voting in this poll, but in the long linguistic tradition of forcing everything to look like Latin, I guess the proposal makes sense. And if/when someone decides to write an article about the Occitan people, they can call it "Occitans" (cf. Latins). And then we can AfD it. CapnPrep (talk) 12:23, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

It strikes me that several of the articles associated with this one also refer to their subjects as "languages", when they might be more accurately referred to as "dialects". We have Aranese language and Limousin language, which could be profitably moved to Aranese dialect and Limousin dialect (cf. Kansai dialect, Kunming dialect, Cumbrian dialect, etc.). If this ends up moved to the plain title, I suppose Provençal should remain where it is now. Dekimasuよ! 03:28, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Just a comment: I read a grammar of Aranese (in Aranese) and a few articles about it, and the tendency is to call it a "language", and to admit at the same time that it is a variety of Gascon Occitan. It is a bit confusing, but nevertheless there are external sources that call it a language, so we should do the same. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:41, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Sources tend to refer to languages with a disambiguator only when it is necessary for clarity. Pretty much the same as is the case here on Wikipedia.

Peter ^Isotalo 06:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

English language

The word Occitan was entirely new to me. I found the article very interesting, but directed a bit too much to the specialist, i.e., linguist. The English on the whole is good, but there are numerous places that show it to be written by a non-English speaker or speakers. I say this from nearly thirty years of experience correcting scientific texts written by non-native speakers. When I read something that contains what I see as language errors, I become suspicious of whether other parts of the text mean what I think they mean. Ami Ralph (talk) 01:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

First map on page

The first map would be helpful if the surrounding countries are labeled, because otherwise, one would have no idea where the Occitan language is spoken if they looked quickly at the article. The map pictured doesn't give one a sense of area at all. 74.69.7.20 (talk) 15:56, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. The map is only useful if you consult another map at the same time. That's nutty. I thank the person who took the time to make it, but it needs labels! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.237.255.106 (talk) 08:13, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

typo in Gascon sample?

Totas las personas que naishen liuras e egaus en dignitat e en dreit. Que son dotadas de rason e de consciéncia e que'us cau agir enter eras dab un esperit de hrairessa.

Looks as if the fourth word "que" might be redundant here? Flapdragon (talk) 16:51, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Not at all. This use of que before a verb is perfectly normal in Gascon Occitan. It indicates an affirmative sentence.--Nil Blau (talk) 15:58, 25 December 2008 (UTC)