Provençal dialect

Provençal is a variety of Occitan, spoken by people in Provence and parts of Drôme and Gard. The term Provençal used to refer to the entire Occitan language, but more recently it has referred only to the variety of Occitan spoken in Provence. However, it can still be found being used to refer to Occitan as a whole, e.g. Merriam-Webster states that it can be used to refer to general Occitan, though this is going out of use.
Provençal is also the customary name given to the older version of the Occitan language used by the troubadours of medieval literature, when Old French or the langue d'oïl was limited to the northern areas of France. Thus, the ISO 639-3 code for Old Occitan is .
In 2007, all the ISO 639-3 codes for Occitan dialects, including for Provençal, were retired and merged into Occitan. The old codes are no longer in active use, but still have the meaning assigned to them when they were established in the Standard.
Some groups have called for Provençal's recognition as a full language, distinct from Occitan. The Regional Council of Provence has variously labelled Provençal as a dialect of Occitan or as a distinct language, depending on different lobbies and political majorities.

Subdialects

The main subdialects of Provençal are:Rodanenc around the lower Rhone river, Arles, Avignon, Nîmes.

* A Rodanenc subvariety, the Shuadit, has been considered extinct since 1977. It was spoken by the Jewish community around Avignon. When Jews were granted freedom of residence in France the dialect declined.Maritim or Centrau or Mediterranèu around Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Toulon, Cannes, Antibes, Grasse, Forcalquier, Castellane, Draguignan.Niçard in the lower County of Nice.

Gavòt, spoken in the Western Occitan Alps, around Digne, Sisteron, Gap, Barcelonnette and the upper County of Nice, but also in a part of the Ardèche, is not exactly a subdialect of Provençal, but rather a closely related Occitan dialect, also known as Vivaro-Alpine. So is the dialect spoken in the upper valleys of Piedmont, Italy. Some people view Gavòt as a variety of Provençal since a part of the Gavot area belongs to historical Provence.

Orthography

When written in the Mistralian norm, definite articles are lou in the masculine singular, la in the feminine singular and li in the masculine and feminine plural. Nouns and adjectives usually drop the Latin masculine endings, but -e remains; the feminine ending is -o. Nouns do not inflect for number, but all adjectives ending in vowels become -i, and all plural adjectives take -s before vowels.
When written in the classical norm, definite articles are masculine lo, feminine la, and plural lei/leis . Nouns and adjectives usually drop the Latin masculine endings, but -e remains; the feminine ending is -a . Nouns inflect for number, all adjectives ending in vowels become -ei/-eis in some syntactic positions, and most plural adjectives take -s.
Pronunciation remains the same in both norms, which are only two different ways to write the same language.
The IETF language tags register for the Mistralian orthography and for the classical one.

Literature

Modern Provençal literature was given impetus by Nobel laureate Frédéric Mistral and the association, Félibrige, which he founded with other writers, such as Théodore Aubanel. The beginning of the 20th century saw other authors like Joseph d'Arbaud, Batisto Bonnet and Valère Bernard. It has been enhanced and modernized since the second half of the 20th century by writers such as Robèrt Lafont, Pierre Pessemesse, Claude Barsotti,,,,,,, Bernat Giély, and many others.