The lost tongue of Provence

The lost tongue of Provence

By Ros Taylor / Europe
Wednesday 6th September 2006

Unless you happen to be at the Occitan festival in the Italian village of Sancto Lucio di Coumboscuro this week, it's extremely unlikely that you will hear Occitan spoken by more than a few elderly people. (But if you do want to know what that sounds like, listen to Radio Occitania).

There are a few places in France where you might encounter Occitan - in Toulouse, for example, which has bilingual street signs. But Britons who are familiar with the high street soap and unguent purveyor L'Occitane en Provence might assume that the language is only spoken in that region.

In fact, there are dwindling Occitan-speaking populations in Spain, Italy and Monaco and even corners of Germany and the United States. Quite how many people use Occitan on a daily basis is not clear: several hundred thousand in France, perhaps, most of them elderly. So great is the number of sub-dialects that no one has much idea how big the lexicon is: estimates vary between 250,000 and a million. But very few, if any, of them speak no other language.

Occitan (or Languedoc) speakers are rightly irked by the suggestion that their language is merely a dialect of French (or Langue d'oil). Languedoc - 'oc' means 'yes', where northern French speakers said 'oil' (the modern 'oui') - was the language of medieval troubadour poets during the 13th century.

But linguists trace its decline back to the Edict of Villers-Cotterets in 1539, which established the langue d'oil as the language of all French administration. As France's national identity emerged during the Sun King's reign, the revolution and the first world war, so Occitan became marginalised. It rallied slightly in the late 19th century when a Provencal poet, Frederic Mistral, took up the cause and was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for his efforts.

Occitan is not to be confused with Catalan, either, though a speaker of one can usually understand the other (as is often the case in Scandinavia). No doubt the revival of Catalan in the Spanish region of Catalonia and the official promotion of Welsh have encouraged Occitan speakers to call for more broadcasts in the language.

The EU's support for minority languages has also helped embolden them. Occitan has not stood still: it has a word for the web (oèb) - and indeed it could be the web that saves Occitan from the fate of, say, Cornish. After all, if Geoffrey Chaucer can blog in Middle English, what's to stop Occitan speakers from following his example?

guardian.co.uk

To adam

Hey, I'm a speaker of occitan (vivaro-alpin dialect). We're not all dead, I've learnt the language when I was 15 and still can speak it. We (all of us here) already know that France (better say "the french state") wants our language and every minority language to die but we'll keep it alive, as the Basques, the Catalans, the Corsicans and so on did.

Fai temps, èrem pas franceses, parlàvem nòstra pròpia lenga, pauc a cha pauc l'avèm perdut mas l'anma occitana a pas desapareguda e tornarà faire viure dins los còrs nòstra tant amada lenga.

Vincent,

It's great that you can speak occitan, but how can it survive except be a hobby?

In Wallonie in the last century the walloon language was nearly disappeared, after some generations when before it had been the mother tongue of the most of the population in wallonie. Now, very, very few people can speak walloon.

Adam has written about broadcasts ; the walloon language can be heard about one hour during each week. It hasn't respect I think, and not much people are wishing to learn it. It was the mother tongue of my grand-parents, but for my generation it's more important speak french and foreign languages. For what use is walloon ? - it will enter in the history in the museum. I think it's too late for protect it ; this was necessary 100 years ago.

That this languages they're disappearing, yes, it's a pity I think, but not tragic.

<<It's great that you can speak occitan, but how can it survive except be a hobby?>>

It can survive if people are willing to speak it, teach it, and promote it as a viable and vibrant language, and not a relic of the past. There was a time when Hebrew and Catalan were nearly dead languages until resilient and proud people brought them back.

Occitan may not have a stong chance of surviving in France, but it is a co-official language in regions of Spain and Italy, so as long as it has that level of recognition and governments continue to support its use, then it will continue to exist as a spoken language.

______________________________________

Fight is on as language of survival finds a voice
Times Online UK

From Richard Owen in Rome

SPEAKERS of Occitan have begun a campaign to preserve what many Europeans regard as an obscure dialect but which its defenders maintain is spoken as a first language by two million people.

Two hundred delegates are attending a week-long Occitan Festival at the village of Sancto Lucio di Coumboscuro, near Cuneo, on Italy’s border with France. The langue d’oc — from its word for “yes” — is a Romance language spoken in the Languedoc region of the south of France but also in parts of Italy, Spain and in Monaco.

Sergio Arneodo, an Occitan-speaking poet and the moving force behind the festival, said that people had travelled from Arles, Nantes, Durance and Queyras in France, the Val d’Aran in Catalonia and Piedmont in northern Italy. He said that annual Occitan gatherings had been held before, but it was time to save and promote the language and traditions of an “invisible nation”.

“Occitan was the language of the medieval troubadors,” he said. “We are divided by mountains but united by a noble language.”

At the gathering Occitan speakers dance and sing to harmonicas, flutes and violins, wearing folk costumes and waving red-and-yellow flags, the colours of Provence and Catalonia. Many Occitan speakers refer to themselves as Provençal. Evenings are devoted to feasts of polenta washed down with mulled wine.

Organisers said that many had travelled to the festival on foot over ancient mountain tracks. Signor Arneodo noted that Stefania Belmondo, the Italian cross-country skiing champion who lit the flame at the Turin Winter Olympics this year, was an Occitan speaker. “Because of her, Occitan was used in announcements at the Turin Games, but the television commentators were baffled because they didn’t know what it was,” he said. “No one knew how to translate it.”

An earlier Occitan celebrity, the writer Frédéric Mistral, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904. A poet from Provence, he wrote in Occitan — or Provençal — and even compiled a dictionary of the language. But Mistral is a largely forgotten figure, and there are fears that the language is dying out and being replaced by French, Spanish and Italian.

Organisers of the festival denied that there were plans for a political movement promoting “Occitania” as a nation. But they said that European laws offered protection of linguistic minorities, and they were campaigning for Occitan television and radio programmes as well as teaching the language in schools.

Dante, the medieval poet and author of The Divine Comedy, is said to have been the first writer to make a distinction between those who used oc for yes (derived from the Latin hoc), oui (originally oïl) and si. In De Vulgari Eloquentia he wrote: “nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil” (some say oc, others say si, others say oïl).

Guest said:
"It can survive if people are willing to speak it, teach it, and promote it as a viable and vibrant language, and not a relic of the past. There was a time when Hebrew and Catalan were nearly dead languages until resilient and proud people brought them back. "

Que pòdi dire de mai? O diguères tot. / What more can I say? You said it all. Moreover - Pauline - one doesn't speak a language only for its usefulness, a language is a universe, it's a culture, you cannot reduce it to the mere material world.

I've tried in vain to discover why the French are so unwilling to defend their regional languages; the majority seem to see no value in such an endeavour. Il me parait que la plupart sont content qui'il n'y a que des etrangers qui s'interessent a l'occitan.

You will be labelled a "regionaliste," which seems to be a terrible thing only in regard to languages.

Check this out:

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t3446.htm

<I've tried in vain to discover why the French are so unwilling to defend their regional languages; the majority seem to see no value in such an endeavour. Il me parait que la plupart sont content qui'il n'y a que des etrangers qui s'interessent a l'occitan.>

Historically the French state was concerned by encouraging local dialects in particular regions it could spell the end of the French Republic.

Hey, I'm a speaker of occitan (vivaro-alpin dialect). We're not all dead, I've learnt the language when I was 15 and still can speak it. We (all of us here) already know that France (better say "the french state") wants our language and every minority language to die but we'll keep it alive, as the Basques, the Catalans, the Corsicans and so on did.

Bai! arrazoina baduzu! euskaldun naiz eta ez dut galduko nire hiskuntza ez!

Euskaldun bat naiz 'ta hantustekoa!
Je suis basque et fier de l'être!
I'm Basque and proud to be it!
¡Soy vasco y orgulloso serlo!
Ich bin baskisch und stolz, es zu sein!