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Alas, occitan is a dead language. Of course, a few old people still use their local dialect, but how many parents mainly speak in occitan to their children? How

Alas, occitan is a dead language. Of course, a few old people still use their local dialect, but how many parents mainly speak in occitan to their children? How many people learn it out of school? Who grows speaking occitan with friends and enriching it with new expressions, like any living language? Occitan may have 3 millions of speakers in France, the Latin language still has more. The occitan language that is learned in school is mostly a toy language. When Littré wrote his famous dictionary, from 1850 to 1875, he mentioned multiple dialects of the "langue d'Oc" which were still active in the South of France. Gascon, limousin, languedocien, catalan and provençal were distinct dialects. But there are no teachers fluent in any of these dialect, so during the 20th century they forged the "occitan" language which is a mix of these, but mostly built from provençal. Overall, this article is very superficial. It wrote about troubadours, but forgot to mention a reference well-known in the UK: Richard Lionheart spoke in French and Provençal, and was probably not fluent in English. Living in France, in Aquitaine, he composed poetry in "langue d'Oc". It's well known in France that the French Republic though that the local cultures were an obstacle to the unity of the nation. So they forbid every local language. There were panels in some schools with the text: "It is forbidden to spit and to speak Breton".

fao_ 8y ago
In South Wales of the UK, we were forbidden from speaking Welsh (I should note that the southern dialect is different from the northern, and vice-versa). Any child that spoke Welsh in school would have a thick and heavy board attached to their neck, to wear in shame (The "Welsh Knot"[1]). It was forbidden across the board, and gradually died out. So, we slowly forgot our own language (the other parts of the country that were not dominated by the English to such a degree, actually look down on us a little bit, because we do not speak Welsh as our main dialect...). Recently due to pushes from the government, more and more children are growing up and learning welsh, and it's now at the point that most jobs in wales are successfully requiring Welsh-speakers as part of their hiring. It's completely possible to resurrect a dead language with native language speakers still in existence, it's faster than killing the language (It took 300 years to completely eradicate Welsh and only about 50 years of government efforts to resurrect it), it just requires the collective will to be there, and the wish to restore the culture (or some bastardized idealized version of it). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not
- AlunAlun 8y ago
  Nice post, I would add a couple of points re. Welsh. The first is that it was not really dead 50 years ago. It got as low as 15% of the population in the 50s/60s, and was undoubtedly headed for obscurity and ‘death’, until the revival, as you mentioned. But it was still alive (q.v. Dafydd Iwan’s [0] most famous song, “Yma o Hyd”). Now welsh is spoken by around 18% of adults and 25% of children, and is increasingly seen as an important part of modern Wales. The other important thing to realize is that Welsh was ‘formalized’ in 1620 when the Bible was translated into it[1]. This had the double effect of unifying the distinct regional dialects into ‘high Welsh’ (a distinction which exists to this day!) but also, crucially, providing a standard text which people could use to learn to read and write. It meant that Welsh was able to flourish into a full legal language, and not just used as a ‘home’ language. This gave it a backbone which was not present in other ‘regional’ languages (such as its nearest relation, Cornish), which in turn have all but died out. With respect to the original post, I note that the Bible was only translated into Occitan in the modern era [2], which would support the evidence of it still being a language only used at home, and not in formal situations. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafydd_Iwan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafydd_Iwan [1] https://cy.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beibl https://cy.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beibl [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_the_languages_of_France#Occitan_and_Provençal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_the_...
pjmlp 8y ago
To give an example similar to fao_, very few foreigners are aware that Portugal actually has two official languages. Mirandese used to be a very local language spoken in the north, and it was a dying language. The last couple of years, a group of people started pushing to rescue it, and nowadays the situation has improve a lot with published books, dictionaries, even Asterix gets published in Mirandese and it gets taught to children on the primary schools on the region as additional activity. Will this save the language long term? Maybe not, but I really like that they at least are trying to keep it alive.
- taejo 8y ago
  > even Asterix gets published in Mirandese Asterix seems to be a favourite for minority languages. There are seventy Asterix albums published in German regional dialects: https://www.asterix.com/de/die-buecher/die-asterix-mundart-reihe/ https://www.asterix.com/de/die-buecher/die-asterix-mundart-r...
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Oh, now I need to get Plattdeutsch and Kölsh editions. :)
  - dnnrly 8y ago
    My dad learned French from Asterix after he married my (French) mum while spending summer's out there with her family. Coincidentally in Provençe. I wonder if the mix of pictures along with uncomplicated but correct dialogue makes Asterix popular for promoting languages.

fao_ 8y ago

In South Wales of the UK, we were forbidden from speaking Welsh (I should note that the southern dialect is different from the northern, and vice-versa). Any child that spoke Welsh in school would have a thick and heavy board attached to their neck, to wear in shame (The "Welsh Knot"[1]). It was forbidden across the board, and gradually died out. So, we slowly forgot our own language (the other parts of the country that were not dominated by the English to such a degree, actually look down on us a little bit, because we do not speak Welsh as our main dialect...). Recently due to pushes from the government, more and more children are growing up and learning welsh, and it's now at the point that most jobs in wales are successfully requiring Welsh-speakers as part of their hiring. It's completely possible to resurrect a dead language with native language speakers still in existence, it's faster than killing the language (It took 300 years to completely eradicate Welsh and only about 50 years of government efforts to resurrect it), it just requires the collective will to be there, and the wish to restore the culture (or some bastardized idealized version of it). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not

AlunAlun 8y ago
Nice post, I would add a couple of points re. Welsh. The first is that it was not really dead 50 years ago. It got as low as 15% of the population in the 50s/60s, and was undoubtedly headed for obscurity and ‘death’, until the revival, as you mentioned. But it was still alive (q.v. Dafydd Iwan’s [0] most famous song, “Yma o Hyd”). Now welsh is spoken by around 18% of adults and 25% of children, and is increasingly seen as an important part of modern Wales. The other important thing to realize is that Welsh was ‘formalized’ in 1620 when the Bible was translated into it[1]. This had the double effect of unifying the distinct regional dialects into ‘high Welsh’ (a distinction which exists to this day!) but also, crucially, providing a standard text which people could use to learn to read and write. It meant that Welsh was able to flourish into a full legal language, and not just used as a ‘home’ language. This gave it a backbone which was not present in other ‘regional’ languages (such as its nearest relation, Cornish), which in turn have all but died out. With respect to the original post, I note that the Bible was only translated into Occitan in the modern era [2], which would support the evidence of it still being a language only used at home, and not in formal situations. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafydd_Iwan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafydd_Iwan [1] https://cy.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beibl https://cy.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beibl [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_the_languages_of_France#Occitan_and_Provençal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_the_...

pjmlp 8y ago

To give an example similar to fao_, very few foreigners are aware that Portugal actually has two official languages. Mirandese used to be a very local language spoken in the north, and it was a dying language. The last couple of years, a group of people started pushing to rescue it, and nowadays the situation has improve a lot with published books, dictionaries, even Asterix gets published in Mirandese and it gets taught to children on the primary schools on the region as additional activity. Will this save the language long term? Maybe not, but I really like that they at least are trying to keep it alive.

taejo 8y ago
> even Asterix gets published in Mirandese Asterix seems to be a favourite for minority languages. There are seventy Asterix albums published in German regional dialects: https://www.asterix.com/de/die-buecher/die-asterix-mundart-reihe/ https://www.asterix.com/de/die-buecher/die-asterix-mundart-r...
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Oh, now I need to get Plattdeutsch and Kölsh editions. :)
- dnnrly 8y ago
  My dad learned French from Asterix after he married my (French) mum while spending summer's out there with her family. Coincidentally in Provençe. I wonder if the mix of pictures along with uncomplicated but correct dialogue makes Asterix popular for promoting languages.