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51-599: Châtellerault lies on the river Vienne , a few km downstream from its confluence with the Clain in Cenon-sur-Vienne . Châtellerault was an important stronghold on the northern march of Poitou, established by the Count of Poitiers to secure his borders in the early 10th century. The count's local representative, the Vicomte de Châtellerault was established as a hereditary appointment by

102-542: A common origin (see Occitano-Romance languages ). The language was one of the first to gain prestige as a medium for literature among Romance languages in the Middle Ages. Indeed, in the 12th and 13th centuries, Catalan troubadours such as Guerau de Cabrera , Guilhem de Bergadan, Guilhem de Cabestany, Huguet de Mataplana , Raimon Vidal de Besalú, Cerverí de Girona , Formit de Perpinhan, and Jofre de Foixà wrote in Occitan. At

153-636: A consonant), whereas the southernmost dialects have more features in common with the Ibero-Romance languages (e.g. betacism ; voiced fricatives between vowels in place of voiced stops; - ch - in place of - it -), and Gascon has a number of unusual features not seen in other dialects (e.g. /h/ in place of /f/ ; loss of /n/ between vowels; intervocalic -r- and final -t/ch in place of medieval - ll -). There are also significant lexical differences, where some dialects have words cognate with French, and others have Catalan and Spanish cognates. Nonetheless, there

204-611: A journey of 372 km it reaches the Loire at Candes-Saint-Martin in the department of Indre-et-Loire . The Vienne flows through the following departments and towns: Tributaries include: Occitan language Italy Occitan ( English: / ˈ ɒ k s ɪ t ən , - t æ n , - t ɑː n / ; Occitan pronunciation: [utsiˈta, uksiˈta] ), also known as lenga d'òc ( Occitan: [ˈleŋɡɒ ˈðɔ(k)] ; French : langue d'oc ) by its native speakers, sometimes also referred to as Provençal ,

255-729: A part of a wider Occitano-Romanic group. One such classification posits three groups: According to this view, Catalan is an ausbau language that became independent from Occitan during the 13th century, but originates from the Aquitano-Pyrenean group. Occitan has 3 dialects spoken by Jewish communities that are all now extinct. A sociolect of the Gascon dialect spoken by Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Gascony . It, like many other Jewish dialects and languages, contained large amounts of Hebrew loanwords. It went extinct after World War 2 with

306-540: 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 (1423, Pamplona 's boroughs unified). Gascon-speaking communities were called to move in for trading purposes by Navarrese kings in

357-538: 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

408-522: A spring in the department of Corrèze , at the foot of Mont Audouze, on the Plateau de Millevaches , near Peyrelevade . It then flows roughly west to the city of Limoges where it once played a major role in the famous Limoges porcelain industry. A little way after Limoges it takes a turn to the north. En route to its confluence with the Loire, the Vienne is joined by the rivers Creuse and Clain . Finally, after

459-469: A unitary language, as it lacks an official written standard . Like other languages that fundamentally exist at a spoken, rather than written, level (e.g. the Rhaeto-Romance languages , Franco-Provençal , Astur-Leonese , and Aragonese ), every settlement technically has its own dialect, with the whole of Occitania forming a classic dialect continuum that changes gradually along any path from one side to

510-605: A weapon manufacturing facility in 1968. It saw the creation in 1886, and later the mass production, of the Lebel rifle which was the main French infantry weapon used during the First World War (1914–1918). It also was the source of the first 500,000 production Model 1891 Mosin–Nagant rifles, as the Russian armament industry could not tool up quickly enough to produce them for the rearmament of

561-608: 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 (1276), 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 (cf. Basques from

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612-410: Is "probably not more divergent from Occitan overall than Gascon is". There is no general agreement about larger groupings of these dialects. Max Wheeler divides the dialects into two groups: Pierre Bec divides the dialects into three groups: In order to overcome the pitfalls of the traditional romanistic view, Bec proposed a "supradialectal" classification that groups Occitan with Catalan as

663-614: Is a Romance language spoken in Southern France , Monaco , Italy 's Occitan Valleys , as well as Spain 's Val d'Aran in Catalonia ; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitania . It is also spoken in Calabria ( Southern Italy ) in a linguistic enclave of Cosenza area (mostly Guardia Piemontese ). Some include Catalan in Occitan, as the linguistic distance between this language and some Occitan dialects (such as

714-617: Is a major river in south-western France . It is 363 km (226 mi) long. It is a significant left tributary of the lower Loire . It supports numerous hydroelectric dams, and it is the main river of the northern part of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Two French departments are named after the Vienne: Haute-Vienne (87) in the Limousin region and Vienne (86) both in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. The Vienne rises as

765-411: Is a significant amount of mutual intelligibility . Gascon is the most divergent, and descriptions of the main features of Occitan often consider Gascon separately. Max Wheeler notes that "probably only its copresence within the French cultural sphere has kept [Gascon] from being regarded as a separate language", and compares it to Franco-Provençal, which is considered a separate language from Occitan but

816-413: Is the other native language. Up to seven million people in France understand the language, whereas twelve to fourteen million fully spoke it in 1921. In 1860 , Occitan speakers represented more than 39% of the whole French population (52% for francophones proper); they were still 26% to 36% in the 1920s and fewer than 7% in 1993. Occitan is fundamentally defined by its dialects, rather than being

867-411: Is worthier and better suited for romances and pastourelles ; but [the language] 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

918-518: The òc language (Occitan), the oïl language (French), and the sì language (Italian). The word òc came from Vulgar Latin hoc ("this"), while oïl originated from Latin hoc illud ("this [is] it"). Old Catalan and now the Catalan of Northern Catalonia also have hoc ( òc ). Other Romance languages derive their word for "yes" from the Latin sic , "thus [it is], [it

969-622: The Romance of Flamenca (13th century), the Song of the Albigensian Crusade (1213–1219?), Daurel e Betó (12th or 13th century), Las, qu'i non-sun sparvir, astur (11th century) and Tomida femina (9th or 10th century). Occitan was the vehicle for the influential poetry of the medieval troubadours ( trobadors ) and trobairitz : At that time, the language was understood and celebrated throughout most of educated Europe. It

1020-582: The Gascon language ) 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 is an official language of Catalonia, Spain, where a subdialect of Gascon known as Aranese is spoken (in the Val d'Aran ). Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to be

1071-617: The Imperial Russian Army . The facility has now been transformed into the central repository ( Centre des Archives de l'Armement et du Personnel ) of all the French military archives related to armament matters. Archived and declassified MAC records are open to bona fide scholars and researchers upon written request. Châtellerault was the birthplace of: Châtellerault is twinned with: Vienne (river) The Vienne ( French pronunciation: [vjɛn] ; Occitan : Vinhana , pronounced [viɲaˈno] )

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1122-461: The UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages , four of the six major dialects of Occitan (Provençal, Auvergnat , Limousin and Languedocien) are considered severely endangered , whereas the remaining two ( Gascon and Vivaro-Alpine ) are considered definitely endangered . The name Occitan comes from the term lenga d'òc ("language of òc "), òc being the Occitan word for yes. While

1173-574: The Val d'Aran cited c.  1000 ), but a receding Basque language (Basque banned in the marketplace of Huesca, 1349). 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

1224-539: The " Dangereuse de Châtellerault ", married his son, William X of Aquitaine , and was mother of Eleanor of Aquitaine . The title, Vicomte de Châtellerault, passed in turn to each of three great French noble families: La Rochefoucauld , Lusignan and, from the thirteenth century until the French Revolution , to the family of Harcourt . However, in return for services offered to the Crowns of Scotland and France ,

1275-592: The Judeo-Occitan dialects, Judeo-Niçard was spoken by the community of Jews living in Nice , who were descendants of Jewish immigrants from Provence, Piedmont, and other Mediterranean communities. Its existence is attested from a few documents from the 19th century. It contained significant influence in both vocabulary and grammar from Hebrew. All three of these dialects have some influence in Southern Jewish French,

1326-452: The cities in southern France is unlikely to hear a single Occitan word spoken on the street (or, for that matter, in a home), and is likely to only find the occasional vestige, such as street signs (and, of those, most will have French equivalents more prominently displayed), to remind them of the traditional language of the area. Occitan speakers, as a result of generations of systematic suppression and humiliation (see Vergonha ), seldom use

1377-485: 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 . Though it

1428-890: 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

1479-522: 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. Catalan in Spain's northern and central Mediterranean coastal regions and the Balearic Islands is closely related to Occitan, sharing many linguistic features and

1530-476: The language at the beginning of the 13th century by Catalan troubadour Raimon Vidal de Besalú(n) in his Razós de trobar : La parladura Francesca val mais et [es] 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

1581-456: The language in the presence of strangers, whether they are from abroad or from outside Occitania (in this case, often merely and abusively referred to as Parisiens or Nordistes , which means northerners ). Occitan is still spoken by many elderly people in rural areas, but they generally switch to French when dealing with outsiders. Occitan's decline is somewhat less pronounced in Béarn because of

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1632-474: The language. Following the pattern of language shift , most of this remainder is to be found among the eldest populations. Occitan activists (called Occitanists ) have attempted, in particular with the advent of Occitan-language preschools (the Calandretas ), to reintroduce the language to the young. Nonetheless, the number of proficient speakers of Occitan is thought to be dropping precipitously. A tourist in

1683-457: The larger collection of dialects grouped under the name langues 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 ( "Lis Evangèli" , i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were translated into Provençal as spoken in Cannes and Grasse. The translation

1734-505: The last speakers being elderly Jews in Bayonne . About 850 unique words and a few morphological and grammatical aspects of the dialect were transmitted to Southern Jewish French. Judeo-Provençal was a dialect of Occitan spoken by Jews in Provence . The dialect declined in usage after Jews were expelled from the area in 1498, and was probably extinct by the 20th century. The least attested of

1785-772: The latter term for the language as a whole. Many non-specialists, however, continue to refer to the language as Provençal . One of the oldest written fragments of the language found dates back to 960, shown here in italics mixed with non-italicized Latin: De ista hora in antea non decebrà Ermengaus filius Eldiarda Froterio episcopo filio Girberga ne Raimundo filio Bernardo vicecomite de castello de Cornone ... no·l li tolrà ni no·l li devedarà ni no l'en decebrà  ... nec societatem non aurà , si per castellum recuperare non o fa , et si recuperare potuerit in potestate Froterio et Raimundo lo tornarà , per ipsas horas quæ Froterius et Raimundus l'en comonrà . Carolingian litanies ( c.  780 ), though

1836-643: The leader sang in Latin , were answered to in Old Occitan by the people ( Ora pro nos ; Tu lo juva ). 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 (dated 1100), Cançó de Santa Fe ( c.  1054 –1076),

1887-415: 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

1938-422: The negative sense: for example, "Vous n'avez pas de frères?" "Si, j'en ai sept." ("You have no brothers?" "But yes, I have seven."). The name "Occitan" was attested around 1300 as occitanus , a crossing of oc and aquitanus ( Aquitanian ). For many centuries, the Occitan dialects (together with Catalan ) were referred to as Limousin or Provençal , after the names of two regions lying within

1989-534: The officially preferred language for use in the Val d'Aran. Across history, the terms Limousin ( Lemosin ), Languedocien ( Lengadocian ), Gascon , in addition to Provençal ( Provençal , Provençau or Prouvençau ) 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

2040-478: The other. Nonetheless, specialists commonly divide Occitan into six main dialects: The northern and easternmost dialects have more morphological and phonetic features in common with the Gallo-Italic and Oïl languages (e.g. nasal vowels ; loss of final consonants; initial cha/ja- instead of ca/ga- ; uvular ⟨r⟩ ; the front-rounded sound /ø/ instead of a diphthong, /w/ instead of /l/ before

2091-538: 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

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2142-653: The province's history (a late addition to the Kingdom of France), though even there the language is little spoken outside the homes of the rural elderly. The village of Artix is notable for having elected to post street signs in the local language. The area where Occitan was historically dominant has approximately 16 million inhabitants. Recent research has shown it may be spoken as a first language by approximately 789,000 people in France , Italy , Spain and Monaco . In Monaco, Occitan coexists with Monégasque Ligurian , which

2193-513: 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

2244-623: 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" ("for some say òc , others sì , yet others say oïl "), thereby highlighting three major Romance literary languages that were well known in Italy, based on each language's word for "yes",

2295-429: The time of Airaud who was probably a kinsman of the counts of Auvergne and dukes of Aquitaine ; his heirs were vicomtes (viscounts) until the mid-11th century. The daughter of Aymeric I , Ænor of Châtellerault (c. 1103 – c. 1130), whose mother had been the "mistress" in the new courtly love poetry of the troubadour lord William , sixth Count of Poitiers and ninth Duke of Aquitaine, who lodged in his tower

2346-569: The title of Duc de Châtellerault (1548) was presented to James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran , Chief of the Name, and regent of Scotland during the infancy of Mary, Queen of Scots , and of France . This title, though now without any benefices, remains in contention between the heir male and the heir general of Arran, respectively the Duke of Abercorn and the Duke of Hamilton . (See Chatelherault Country Park , Lanarkshire.) From medieval times, Châtellerault

2397-444: Was done], 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

2448-478: Was given the official Roman Catholic Imprimatur by vicar general A. Estellon. The literary renaissance of the late 19th century (in which the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Frédéric Mistral, among others, was involved) was attenuated by World War I , when (in addition to the disruption caused by any major war) many Occitan speakers spent extended periods of time alongside French-speaking comrades. Because

2499-454: Was known for its cutlery and swordmaking industry, and in 1816 the commune became a center for arms manufacture for the French government. The Manufacture d'armes de Châtellerault was one of France's four principal state-owned arms manufacturers, providing most of the infantry small arms used by the French Army and Navy. MAC was created in 1819, and operated continually until it was closed as

2550-543: Was still an everyday language for most of the rural population of southern France well into the 20th century, it is now spoken by about 100,000 people in France according to 2012 estimates. There is a movement in regions of France where Occitan was widely spoken to introduce educational programs to encourage young people in these regions to learn the language. According to the 1999 census, there were 610,000 native speakers (almost all of whom were also native French speakers) and perhaps another million people with some exposure to

2601-511: Was the maternal language of the English queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and kings Richard I (who wrote troubadour poetry) 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 (1539) decreed that the langue d'oïl (French – though at the time referring to the Francien language and not

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