Occitan language

Occitan language, modern name given by linguists to a group of dialects that form a Romance language that was spoken in the early 21st century by about 1,500,000 people in southern France, though many estimates range as low as one-third that number. The UNESCO Red Book lists some of the dialects of Occitan as “seriously endangered.”

All Occitan speakers use French as their official and cultural language, but Occitan dialects are still used for everyday purposes. The name Occitan is derived from the old geographical name Occitanie (formed on the model of Aquitaine) of the area now known as Languedoc. The medieval language is often called langue d’oc, which denoted a language using oc (from Latin hoc) for “yes” in contrast to langue d’oïl, which used oïl (modern oui) for “yes” (from Latin hoc ille). In the area itself, the names Lemosí (Limousin) and Proensal (Provençal) were formerly used, but those names were too localized to designate the whole range of dialects. The name Provençal originally referred to the Occitan dialects of the Provence region and is used also to refer to the standardized medieval literary language and still-vigorous literary movement based on the dialect of Provence. Because of that long literary tradition, many in the Provence region still prefer to call their language Provençal.

Provençal was a standard and literary language in France and northern Spain in the 12th to 14th century and was widely used as a vehicle for poetry; it was the primary language of the medieval troubadours. The earliest written material in Occitan is a refrain attached to a Latin poem said to date from the 10th century.

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As represented chiefly by Provençal, Occitan was rich in poetic literature in the Middle Ages until the north crushed political power in the south (1208–29). The standard language was well established, however, and it did not really succumb before French until the 16th century, while only after the Revolution of 1789 did the French language begin to gain popularity over Occitan. In the mid-19th century a literary Renaissance, led by the Félibrige and based on the dialect of the Arles-Avignon region, lent new lustre to Occitan, and a modern standard dialect was established. The most famous figure of that movement was Frédéric Mistral, a Nobel Prize-winning poet. Almost contemporaneously, a similar movement based in Toulouse arose and concentrated on problems of linguistic and orthographic standardization to provide a wider base for literary endeavour.

The Occitan dialects have changed comparatively little since the Middle Ages, though now French influence is increasingly evident. Perhaps this influence has helped them to remain more or less mutually intelligible. The main dialect areas are Limousin, in the northwest corner of the Occitan area; Auvergnat, in the north-central region of this area; northeastern Alpine-Provençal; and Languedoc and Provençal, on the west and east of the Mediterranean seacoast, respectively.

Gascon, in the southwest of France, is usually classified as an Occitan dialect, though to most other southerners it is today less readily comprehensible than Catalan. Some scholars claim that it has always been distinct from Occitan, because of the influence of a non-Celtic Aquitanian pre-Roman population. The Roman name of the region, Vasconia (from which the name Gascony derives), suggests the relationship of its original population with the non-Indo-European Basques.