Occitan language
Occitan, also known by its native speakers as lenga d'òc, sometimes also referred to as Provençal, is a Romance language spoken in southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, as well as in the Catalonian Val d'Aran; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitania. It is also spoken in the southern Italian province of Cosenza. There it is referred to as Gardiol, which is considered a separate Occitanic language. Some include Catalan as a dialect of Occitan, as the linguistic distance between this language and some Occitan dialects is similar to the distance between different Occitan dialects. Catalan was considered a dialect of Occitan until the end of the 19th century and still today remains its closest relative. Occitan has a particularly rich lexicon. Lo Panoccinari, considered the most comprehensive dictionary ever published in this language, records over 250,000 unique words.
Occitan is an official language of Catalonia, Spain, where a subdialect of Gascon known as Aranese is spoken. Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to be the officially preferred language for use in the Val d'Aran.
Across history, the terms Limousin, Languedocien, Gascon, in addition to Provençal later have been used as synonyms for the whole of Occitan; nowadays, the term "Provençal" is understood mainly as the Occitan dialect spoken in Provence, in southeast France.
Unlike other Romance languages such as French or Spanish, Occitan does not have a single written standard form, nor does it have official status in France, home to most of its speakers. Instead, there are competing norms for writing Occitan, some of which attempt to be pan-dialectal, whereas others are based on a particular dialect. These efforts are hindered by the rapidly declining use of Occitan as a spoken language in much of southern France, as well as by the significant differences in phonology and vocabulary among different Occitan dialects.
According to the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages, four of the six major dialects of Occitan are considered severely endangered, whereas the remaining two are considered definitely endangered.
Name
History of the modern term
The name Occitan comes from the term lenga d'òc, òc being the Occitan word for yes. While the term would have been in use orally for some time after the decline of Latin, as far as historical records show, the Italian medieval poet Dante was the first to have recorded the term lingua d'oc in writing. In his De vulgari eloquentia, he wrote in Latin, "nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil", thereby highlighting three major Romance literary languages that were well known in Italy, based on each language's word for "yes", the òc language, the oïl language, and the sì language.The word òc came from Vulgar Latin hoc, while oïl originated from Latin hoc illud. Old Catalan and now the Catalan of Northern Catalonia also have hoc. Other Romance languages derive their word for "yes" from the Latin sic, "thus , , etc.", such as Spanish sí, Eastern Lombard sé, Italian sì, or Portuguese sim. In modern Catalan, as in modern Spanish, sí is usually used as a response, although the language retains the word oi, akin to òc, which is sometimes used at the end of yes–no questions and also in higher register as a positive response. French uses si to answer "yes" in response to questions that are asked in the negative sense: for example, "Vous n'avez pas de frères?" "Si, j'en ai sept.".
The name "Occitan" was attested around 1300 as occitanus, a crossing of oc and aquitanus.
Other names for Occitan
For many centuries, the Occitan dialects were referred to as Limousin or Provençal, after the names of two regions lying within the modern Occitan-speaking area. After Frédéric Mistral's Félibrige movement in the 19th century, Provençal achieved the greatest literary recognition and so became the most popular term for Occitan.According to Joseph Anglade, a philologist and specialist of medieval literature who helped impose the then archaic term Occitan as the standard name, the word Lemosin was first used to designate the language at the beginning of the 13th century by Catalan troubadour Raimon Vidal de Besalú in his Razós de trobar:
La parladura Francesca val mais et plus avinenz a far romanz e pasturellas; mas cella de Lemozin val mais per far vers et cansons et serventés; et per totas las terras de nostre lengage son de major autoritat li cantar de la lenga Lemosina que de negun'autra parladura, per qu'ieu vos en parlarai primeramen.
The French language is worthier and better suited for romances and pastourelles; but from Limousin is of greater value for writing poems and cançons and sirventés; and across the whole of the lands where our tongue is spoken, the literature in the Limousin language has more authority than any other dialect, wherefore I shall use this name in priority.
The term Provençal, though implying a reference to the region of Provence, historically was used for Occitan as a whole, for "in the eleventh, the twelfth, and sometimes also the thirteenth centuries, one would understand under the name of Provence the whole territory of the old Provincia romana Gallia Narbonensis and even Aquitaine". The term first came into fashion in Italy.
Currently, linguists use the terms Provençal and Limousin strictly to refer to specific varieties within Occitan, using Occitan for the language as a whole. Many non-specialists, however, continue to refer to the language as Provençal.
History
One of the oldest written fragments of the language found dates back to 960, shown here in italics mixed with non-italicized Latin:italic=no
Carolingian litanies, though the leader sang in Latin, were answered to in Old Occitan by the people.
Other famous pieces include the Boecis, a 258-line-long poem written entirely in the Limousin dialect of Occitan between the year 1000 and 1030 and inspired by Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy; the Waldensian La nobla leyczon, , the Romance of Flamenca, the Song of the Albigensian Crusade, Daurel e Betó, Las, qu'i non-sun sparvir, astur and Tomida femina.
Occitan was the vehicle for the influential poetry of the medieval troubadours and trobairitz: At that time, the language was understood and celebrated throughout most of educated Europe. It was the maternal language of the English queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and kings Richard I and John.
With the gradual imposition of French royal power over its territory, Occitan declined in status from the 14th century on. The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts decreed that the langue d'oïl should be used for all French administration. Occitan's greatest decline occurred during the French Revolution, in which diversity of language was considered a threat.
In 1903, the four Gospels were translated into Provençal as spoken in Cannes and Grasse. The translation was given the official Roman Catholic Imprimatur by vicar general A. Estellon.
The literary renaissance of the late 19th century was attenuated by World War I, when many Occitan speakers spent extended periods of time alongside French-speaking comrades.
Origins
Because the geographical territory in which Occitan is spoken is surrounded by regions in which other Romance languages are used, external influences may have influenced its origin and development. Many factors favored its development as its own language.- Mountains and seas: The range of Occitan is naturally bounded by the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Massif Central, Alps, and Pyrenees, respectively.
- Buffer zones: arid land, marshes, and areas otherwise impractical for farming and resistant of colonization provide further separation.
- Constant populations: Some Occitan-speaking peoples are descended from people living in the region since prehistoric times.
- Deeper Roman influence: The Romans had established an earlier presence in Southern France in 121 BC beginning with Gallia Narbonensis, where the seeds of the Occitan language were first sown. According to Müller, "France's linguistic separation began with Roman influence"
- A separate lexicon: Although Occitan is midway between the Gallo-Romance and Iberian Romance languages, it has "around 550 words inherited from Latin that no longer exist in the langues d'oïl or in Franco-Provençal"
- Lack of Germanic influence: "The Frankish lexicon and its phonetic influence often end above the oc/oïl line"
Occitan in the Iberian Peninsula
At the end of the 11th century, the Franks, as they were called at the time, started to penetrate the Iberian Peninsula through the Ways of St. James via Somport and Roncesvalles, settling in various locations in the Kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon enticed by the privileges granted them by the Navarrese kings. They settled in large groups, forming ethnic boroughs where Occitan was used for everyday life, in Pamplona, Sangüesa, and Estella-Lizarra, among others. These boroughs in Navarre may have been close-knit communities that tended not to assimilate with the predominantly Basque-speaking general population. Their language became the status language chosen by the Navarrese kings, nobility, and upper classes for official and trade purposes in the period stretching from the early 13th century to the late 14th century.
Written administrative records were in a koiné based on the Languedocien dialect from Toulouse with fairly archaic linguistic features. Evidence survives of a written account in Occitan from Pamplona centered on the burning of borough San Nicolas from 1258, while the History of the War of Navarre by Guilhem Anelier, albeit written in Pamplona, shows a linguistic variant from Toulouse.
Things turned out slightly otherwise in Aragon, where the sociolinguistic situation was different, with a clearer Basque-Romance bilingual situation, but a receding Basque language. While the language was chosen as a medium of prestige in records and official statements along with Latin in the early 13th century, Occitan faced competition from the rising local Romance vernacular, the Navarro-Aragonese, both orally and in writing, especially after Aragon's territorial conquests south to Zaragoza, Huesca and Tudela between 1118 and 1134. It resulted that a second Occitan immigration of this period was assimilated by the similar Navarro-Aragonese language, which at the same time was fostered and chosen by the kings of Aragon. In the 14th century, Occitan across the whole southern Pyrenean area fell into decay and became largely absorbed into Navarro-Aragonese first and Castilian later in the 15th century, after their exclusive boroughs broke up.
Gascon-speaking communities were called to move in for trading purposes by Navarrese kings in the early 12th century to the coastal fringe extending from San Sebastian to the river Bidasoa, where they settled down. The language variant they used was different from the ones in Navarre, i.e. a Béarnese dialect of Gascon. Gascon remained in use in this area far longer than in Navarre and Aragon, until the 19th century, thanks mainly to the fact that Donostia and Pasaia maintained close ties with Bayonne.