Occitan language

Occitan, or langue d'oc is a Romance language spoken across the southern third of France (to the south of the Loire), as well as in some of the Alpine valleys in Italy and in the Val d'Aran in Spain.

The name of the language comes from oc, the medieval Occitan word for yes, as opposed to northern French or langue d'oïl (the ancestor of the modern French oui). The word oc came from Latin hoc, while oïl originated from Latin hoc ille. The word Occitan is modelled after the historical region of Occitania, which in turn is modelled after Aquitania, a former Roman administrative region.

Languages or dialects?

The actual use of the term Occitan seems rather confusing. Some authors consider that Occitan is a family of languages, including:

Auvergnat (Auvernhat)
Gascon
Limousin (Lemosin)
Languedocian (Lengadocian)
Provençal
Alpine Provençal
Shuadit or Judeo-Provençal (considered extinct since 1977)

which are seen as separate languages. Béarnais is considered as a dialect of Gascon.

Many linguists and almost all Occitan writers disagree with the view that Occitan is a family of languages and think that Limousin, Auvergnat, Gascon, Languedocien and Provençal, and Alpine Provençal are dialects of a single language.

Despite the differences in these languages or dialects, most of the speakers can understand usage from the other dialects. The same is true about Catalan, as some linguists consider Occitan and Catalan to be two varieties of the same language.

In France Occitan is used for all the dialects spoken, while Provençal is used for the dialects spoken in the South-East, the Rhône River (Rose in Occitan) being more or less the border with the notable exception of Nimes.

The term Provençal is also used by English, but according to linguistic classification Provençal is just one of the dialects grouped under the label Occitan, the variant of the Provence region, the literary dialect used by Frederic Mistral and the Felibrige.

Linguistic science contradicts the popular belief that Provençal and Occitan are two separate languages, a belief that could be traced back to Frederic Mistral. Despite the fact that Mistral himself was a republican, the agenda of the Felibrige was to promote a revival of the Provençal tongue, which was largely in contradiction with the republican ideal of reinforcing the unity of France by enforcing the use of French language to the exclusion of all other languages. The claim that Provençal and Occitan were two languages was probably made by the conservative members to avoid integrating South-West members in the Felibrige as the South-West of France was (and remained for a long time) a region strongly supporting the left-wing of the republicans.

Provençal is also used as a synonym for Occitan.

History of Occitan

Occitan was the vehicle for the first vernacular poetry of medieval Europe, that of the troubadors. With the gradual imposition of French royal power over its territory, Occitan declined in status from the 14th century on. Its greatest decline was during the French Revolution, where diversity of languages was seen as a threat.

Usage in France

Though it was still the everyday language of most of the rural population of the South well into the 20th century, it had been replaced in more formal usage by French. Today there are still several million native speakers of Occitan, though they are to be found mostly in the older generations. Ethnic activism, particularly the Occitan-language preschools, the Calandretas, have reintroduced the language to the young.

Usage outside France

In the Val d'Aran, a valley in the north of Catalonia (in north-eastern Spanish), Aranese (a dialect of Occitan) is treated as an official language, together with Catalan and Spanish. In Italy Occitan is also spoken in some Alpine valleys of the Province of Cuneo in Piedmont. Occitan-speaking colonies have existed in Calabria (Italy) since the 14th century, and in Württemberg (Germany) since the 18th century, the latter as a consequence of the Camisard war.

Features of Occitan

Among the diachronical features of Occitan as a Romance language:

Unlike French, stressed A of Latin is preserved (Latin mare > Oc. mar, but > Fr. mer).
Like French, changed Latin U to [y] and shifted the series of back vowels U>y, o>u O>o.
Gascon changed initial Latin F to aspirated [h] (Latin filiu > Gascon Oc. hilh), like medieval Spanish did (Gascon and Spanish were under Basque influence).
Other lenition and palatalisation phenomena shared with other western Romance languages, especially with Catalan.

Occitan Orthography

There are two orthographies currently used for Occitan, one (known as classical) which is based on that of Mediaeval Occitan, and one (sometimes known as mistralian, due to its use by the Felibres, including Mistral) which is based on modern French orthography. There is some conflict between users of each system.

The classical orthography has the advantage of maintaining a link with earlier stages of the language, and reflects the fact that Occitan is not merely a variety of French. It also allows speakers of one dialect of Occitan to write intelligibly for speakers of other dialects (e.g. the Occitan for day is written jorn in the classical orthography, but could be jour, joun or journ, depending on the writer's origin, in mistralian orthography).

The mistralian orthography has the advantage of not forcing Occitan speakers who are already (as is usually the case) literate in French to learn an entirely new system. It has also been used by a number of eminent writers, particularly in Provençal.

The digraphs lh and nh, used in the classical orthography, were adopted by the Portuguese norm.

Vocabulary table

This table compares Occitan with other Romance languages

Latin	French	Italian	Spanish	Occitan	Catalan (Central)	Portuguese	Romanian	English
clavis	clef	chiave	llave	clau	clau	chave	cheie	key
nox	nuit	notte	noche	nuèit	nit	noite	noapte	night
cantare	chanter	cantare	cantar	cantar	cantar	cantar	cânta	sing
capra	chèvre	capra	cabra	cabra	cabra	cabra	capra	goat
lingua	langue	lingua	lengua	lengua	llengua	lingua	limbă	language
platea	place	piazza	plaza	plaça	plaça	praça	piaţă	plaza
pons	pont	ponte	puente	pònt	pont	ponte	pod	bridge
ecclesia	église	chiesa	iglesia	glèisa	església	igreja	biserică	church
caseus \| Vulgar Latin formaticum	fromage	formaggio	queso	formatge	formatge	queijo	brânză	cheese

Note that the English meanings are included purely to indicate meaning of the words, and do not necessarily denote a connection with the latin words.

Dante and Occitan

Dante was the first to have used the term of "lingua d'oco." He raised the notion of langue d'oc (Occitan), the langue d'oil (French), and the langue des si (Italian). He based it on each language's use of "yes." In the first, "yes" was oc, the second was oil, and si was used for the Italian dialects. The three terms came from Latin: hoc for the first, hoc ille for the second, and si for the third.

Occitan quotes

One of the most notable passages of Occitan in Western literature occurs in the 26th canto of Dante's Purgatorio in which the troubadour Arnaut Daniel responds to the narrator:

«Tan m'abellis vostre cortes deman, / qu'ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire. / Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan; / consiros vei la passada folor, / e vei jausen lo joi qu'esper, denan. / Ara vos prec, per aquella valor / que vos guida al som de l'escalina, / sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor»

The above phrase, translated:

So pleases me your courteous demand, / I cannot and I will not hide me from you. / I am Arnaut, who weep and singing go;/ Contrite I see the folly of the past, /And joyous see the hoped-for day before me. / Therefore do I implore you, by that power/ Which guides you to the summit of the stairs, / Be mindful to assuage my suffering!

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