This article, gee... :-) it was obviously written by Occitan activists. One hint: nobody spoke 'Occitan', that's a modern artificial construction, based on a u

This article, gee... :-) it was obviously written by Occitan activists. One hint: nobody spoke 'Occitan', that's a modern artificial construction, based on a unification spread after the languages were already dying (such artificial unifications can work, like in the case of Basque, but this one never took off). The languages were different from an area to another even though they shared a large common root, and even different from a valley from another at my place, where communication is difficult for geographical reasons. So just imagine the differences across the supposed 'Occitan' area that occupies half of France, on areas that were not under the same rule and had no peculiar communication! I remember the reaction of my old uncle from the center of France, the day some of those activists told him he was an Occitan speaker: "what the heck is that? We never spoke it. So now we are supposed we were speaking Occitan? Like the people from the South? First news!" What's funny is that most Occitan activists I met are not true speakers: they learned it as a foreign language, if I may say so, and it shows! they have a terrible French accent when they speak, and they use typical French turns of phrase (as when I speak and write English :-) ).