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Occitan, or langue d'oc is a Romance language characterized by its richness, variability, and by the intelligibility of its dialects. It is spoken by 2 to 10 million people in France, Italy, and Spain 8. An estimated 7 million people in France understand the language. It must be noted that that the use of the name "Occitan" and the idea that it represents a single language is controversial. One could just as well characterize the langues d'oc as a family of distinct languages as one could see a linguistic unity in Occitan that surpasses that of a dialect. Gascon and Catalan pose a particular problem in Iberian-Roman classification: "It is difficult [...] to separate Catalan from Occitan if one does not grant the same status to Gascon."1 The most neutral nomenclature would be to speak of the Occitano-Roman linguistic group, inclusive of both Occitan and Catalan. The name Occitan 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.
Traditional Occitan-speaking regions
Occitan around the worldOccitan-speaking colonies developed in southern Italy (Calabria), Spanish Basque country (Gascon was spoken in the center of San Sebastián until the beginning of the twentieth century), Germany (duchy of Württemberg), Argentina, Uruguay, and the United States (western states such as Idaho and Oregon). Some colonies still speak Occitan, or use a dialect mixed with the local language. Linguistic characterizationJules Ronjat has sought to characterize Occitan by 19 principal criteria, as generalized as possible. Of those, 11 are phonetic, 5 morphologic, one syntactic, and two lexical. Closed vowels (French: pâte, rose, yeux) are rare or absent in Occitan. This characteristic often carries through to an Occitan speaker's French, leading to a distinctive méridional accent. Unlike French, it is a pro-drop language allowing the omission of the subject (canti: I sing; cantas you sing). Among these 19 discriminating criteria, 7 are different from Spanish, 8 from Italian, 12 from Franco-provençal, and 16 from French. Languages or dialects?The actual use of the term Occitan seems rather confusing. Some authors consider that Occitan is a family of languages, including:
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 Nîmes. 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 Frédéric Mistral and the Félibrige. Linguistic science contradicts the popular belief that Provençal and Occitan are two separate languages, a belief that could be traced back to Frédéric 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 OccitanOccitan 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 FranceThough 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 FranceIn 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 OccitanAmong the diachronical features of Occitan as a Romance language:
Occitan OrthographyThere 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 tableThis table compares Occitan with other Romance languages
Dante and OccitanDante 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 quotesOne 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! See also: Languages of France External links
af:Oksitaans ar:الأوكسيتانية ast:Occitanu bh:oseetan bs:Oksitanski ca:Occità cs:Okcitánština cy:Ocitan da:Occitansk de:Okzitanische Sprache el:Οσιτανικά eo:Okcitana lingvo es:Occitano fr:Occitan it:Lingua occitana ja:オック語 li:Occitaans nl:Occitaans oc:Occitan pl:Język prowansalski pt:Língua occitana ro:Limba occitană ru:Окситанский язык sl:Okcitanščina sv:Occitanska te:Occitanu uz:Oksitan tilida wa:Occitan zu:Isi-Osithani zh:歐西坦語 zh-tw:歐西坦語
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