Often incorrectly referred to as Provencal in English, Occitan (or Langue d’oc) is one of the a lot of so-called Romance languages that grew out of “Vulgar Latin”. Whereas the Langue d’oil dominated the north of France, the Langue d’oc dominated a lot of the south. Historically, it was dominant from Aquitaine within the west, across the Pyrenees to Languedoc-Roussillon and along the Mediterranean Coast towards the French and Italian Alps.

Occitan was very influential in the early middle ages, even getting the vehicle for the poetry of the famed troubadours. As the power of the French State grew, and in particular following the 1539 Villers-Cotterets Ordinance in which King Francis I made Langue d’oil the official State language, Occitan began to decline in stature. The monarchy’s disdain for regional languages carried over into the revolution when the central government produced strident and somewhat successful efforts to eradicate the language. Although it did experience a literary revival in the 19th century, Occitan never ever managed to regain its former glory.

Related languages
Distinguishing between dialects, variants and languages can occasionally be quite hard. In the case of Occitan, there is certainly a minority view that it truly is not in fact a language but rather a group languages comprised of Auvergnat, Gascon, Limousin, Languedocian and various forms of Provencal. Whilst there are definitely differences between them, they are extremely mutually intelligible, and the predominant view is the fact that they are merely variants of Occitan.

Occitan is similarly extremely close to Catalan with both languages stemming from exactly the same source and only diverging inside the early middle ages. Mutual intelligibility, in particular with regard to written texts, is extremely high. Because of its geographic location in the crossroads of the romance languages, Occitan shares features with all its neighbours and mutual intelligibility is relatively high.

Current status
Whilst only a tiny percentage of Occitan speakers live in the Vall d’Aran in northwest Catalonia in Spain (you will find around 4,000 and they actually speak Aranese, which is actually a form of Gascon), this is the only place where the language is officially recognised. It truly is nevertheless also still spoken in pockets of Southern France and the Occitan valleys of Italy (Piedmont & Liguria).

Whilst some studies claim that you’ll find as a lot of as two million native speakers across France, Italy and Spain plus an additional seven to eight million people who can understand the language, anybody who has visited the region will know that you simply practically in no way hear it spoken in the street. A lot of argue that this is caused by a mistrust of outsiders born of long centuries of oppression that has contributed to a certain hesitance to speak the language in public. The real story, however, is the fact that France’s longstanding French only policy has led to a dramatic decline in the number of native speakers, with around 600,000 getting a a lot more realistic quantity. Like most dwindling languages, really few of these are young folks and also the outlook for the language is just not good.