Occitania

A version of the flag frequently used by Occitan activists.

Linguistic map of Occitania

Occitania (Occitan: Occitània, IPA: [uksiˈtanjɔ], [ukʃiˈtanjɔ], [usiˈtanjɔ], [uksiˈtanja] or [utsiˈtanjɔ]),^[1][2] also sometimes lo País d'Òc, "the Oc Country"), is the region in southern Europe where Occitan was historically the main language spoken, and where it is sometimes still used, for the most part as a second language. This cultural area roughly encompasses the southern half of France, as well as Monaco and smaller parts of Italy (Occitan Valleys, Guardia Piemontese) and Spain (Aran Valley). Occitania has been recognized as a linguistic and cultural concept since the Middle Ages, but has never been a legal nor a political entity under this name, although the territory was united in Roman times as the Septem Provinciæ^[3] and the early Middle Ages (Aquitanica or the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse^[4]) before the Frankish conquest started in the early 1200s.

Currently about a half million people out of 16 million in the area have a proficient knowledge of Occitan,^[5] although the languages more usually spoken in the area are French, Italian, Catalan and Spanish. Since 2006, the Occitan language has been an official language of Catalonia, which includes the Aran Valley where Occitan had gained official status in 1990.

Under later Roman rule (after 355), most of Occitania was known as Aquitania,^[6] itself part of the Seven Provinces with a wider Provence, while the northern provinces of what is now France were called Gallia (Gaul). Gallia Aquitania (or Aquitanica) is thus also a name used since medieval times for Occitania (i.e. Limousin, Auvergne, Languedoc and Gascony), including Provence as well in the early 6th century. Thus the historic Duchy of Aquitaine must not be confused with the modern French region called Aquitaine: this is the main reason why the term Occitania was revived in the mid-19th century. The names "Occitania"^[7] and "Occitan language" (Occitana lingua) appeared in Latin texts from as early as 1242-1254^[8] to 1290^[9] and during the following years of the early 14th century; texts exist in which the area is referred to indirectly as "the country of the Occitan language" (Patria Linguae Occitanae). This derives from the name Lenga d'òc that was used in Italian (Lingua d'òc) by Dante in the late 13th century. The somewhat uncommon ending of the term Occitania is most probably a portmanteau French clerks coined from òc [ɔk] and Aquitània [ɑkiˈtanjɑ], thus blending the language and the land in just one concept.^[10] Occitan and Lenga d'òc both refer to the centuries-old set of Romance dialects that use òc for "yes".

Geography

Occitania includes the following regions:

• The southern half of France: Provence, Drôme-Vivarais, Auvergne, Limousin, Guyenne, Gascony, southern Dauphiné and Languedoc. French is now the dominant language in this area, where Occitan is not recognized as an official language.
• The Occitan Valleys in the Italian Аlps, where the Occitan language received legal status in 1999. These are fourteen Piedmontese valleys in the provinces of Cuneo and Torino, as well as in scattered mountain communities of the Liguria region (province of Imperia), and, unexpectedly, in one community (Guardia Piemontese) in the region of Calabria (province of Cosenza).
• The Aran valley, in the Pyrenees, in Catalonia (Spain) where Occitan has been an official language since 1990 (status granted by the partial autonomy of Aran Valley, then confirmed by the Catalan Statute)
• The Principality of Monaco (where Occitan is traditionally spoken besides Monégasque).

Occitan or langue d'oc (lenga d'òc) is a Latin-based Romance language in the same way as Spanish, Italian or French. There are six main regional varieties with easy intercomprehension among them: Provençal (including Niçard spoken in the vicinity of Nice), Vivaroalpenc, Auvernhat, Lemosin, Gascon (including Bearnés spoken in Béarn) and Lengadocian. All these varieties of the Occitan language are written and valid. Standard Occitan is a synthesis which respects soft regional adaptations. See also Northern Occitan and Southern Occitan.

Catalan is a language very similar to Occitan and there are quite strong historical and cultural links between Occitania and Catalonia.

History

Written texts in Occitan appeared in the 10th century: it was used at once in legal then literary, scientific and religious texts. The spoken dialects of Occitan are centuries older and appeared as soon as the 8th century, at least, revealed in toponyms or in Occitanized words left in Latin manuscripts, for instance.

"Speak French, Be Clean" written across the wall of a Southern French school

Occitania was often politically united during the Early Middle Ages, under the Visigothic Kingdom and several Merovingian and Carolingian sovereigns. In Thionville, nine years before he died (805), Charlemagne vowed that his empire be partitioned into three autonomous territories according to nationalities and mother tongues: along with the Franco-German and Italian ones, was roughly what is now modern Occitania from the reunion of a broader Provence and Aquitaine.^[11] But things didn't go according to plan and at the division of the Frankish Empire (9th century), Occitania was split into different counties, duchies and kingdoms, bishops and abbots, self-governing communes of its walled cities. Since then the country was never politically united again, though Occitania was united by a common culture which used to cross easily the political, constantly moving boundaries. Occitania suffered a tangle of varying loyalties to nominal sovereigns: from the 9th to the 13th centuries, the dukes of Aquitaine, the counts of Foix, the counts of Toulouse and the Aragonese kings rivalled in their attempts at controlling the various pays of Occitania.

Occitan literature was glorious and flourishing at that time: in the 12th and 13th centuries, the troubadours invented courtly love (fin'amor) and the Lenga d'Òc spread throughout all European cultivated circles. Actually, the terms Lenga d'Òc, Occitan, and Occitania appeared at the end of the 13th century.

But from the 13th to the 17th centuries, the French kings gradually conquered Occitania, sometimes by war and slaughtering the population, sometimes by annexation with subtle political intrigue. From the end of the 15th century, the nobility and bourgeoisie started learning French while the people stuck to Occitan (this process began from the 13th century in two northernmost regions, northern Limousin and Bourbonnais). In 1539, Francis I issued the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts that imposed the use of French in administration. But despite measures such as this, a strong feeling of national identity against the French occupiers remained and Jean Racine wrote on a trip to Uzès in 1662: "What they call France here is the land beyond the Loire, which to them is a foreign country."^[12]

In 1789, the revolutionary committees tried to re-establish the autonomy of the "Midi" regions: they used the Occitan language but the Jacobin power neutralized them.

The 19th century witnessed a strong revival of the Occitan literature and the writer Frédéric Mistral was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904.

But from 1881 onwards, children who spoke Occitan at school were punished in accordance with minister Jules Ferry's recommendations. That led to a deprecation of the language known as la vergonha (the shaming): the whole fourteen million inhabitants of the area spoke Occitan in 1914,^[13] but French gained the upper hand during the 20th century. The situation got worse with the media excluding the use of the langue d'oc. In spite of that decline, the Occitan language is still alive and trying to gain fresh impetus.

Outer settlements

Although not really a colony in a modern sense, there was an enclave in the County of Tripoli. Raymond IV of Toulouse founded it in 1102 during the Crusades north of Jerusalem. Most people of this county came from Occitania and Italy and so the Occitan language was spoken.

Today

There are 14 to 16 million inhabitants in Occitania today. According to the 1999 census, there are 610,000 native speakers and another million persons with some exposure to the language. Native speakers of Occitan are to be found mostly in the older generations. The Institut d'Estudis Occitans (IEO) has been modernizing the Occitan language since 1945, and the Conselh de la Lenga Occitana (CLO) since 1996. Nowadays Occitan is used in the most modern musical and literary styles such as rock 'n roll, folk rock (Lou Dalfin), rap (Fabulous Trobadors), reggae (Massilia Sound System) and heavy metal, detective stories or science-fiction. It is represented on the internet. Association schools (Calandretas) teach children in Occitan.

The Occitan political movement for self-government has existed since the beginning of the 20th century and particularly since post-war years (Partit Occitan, Partit de la Nacion Occitana, Anaram Au Patac, Iniciativa Per Occitània, Paratge, etc.). The movement remains negligible in electoral and political terms. Nevertheless, Regional Elections in 2010 allowed the Partit Occitan to enter the Regional councils of Aquitaine, Auvergne, Midi-Pyrénées, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.

Major demonstrations in Carcassonne (2005 and 2009) and Béziers (2007) and the week-long Estivada festivals in Rodez (2006–2010) suggest that there is a revival of Occitan language and culture. However, in France, Occitan is still not recognized as an official language, as the status of French has been constitutionally protected since 1992, and Occitan activists want the French government to adopt Occitan as the second official language for seven regions representing the South of France.^{[citation needed]}

Culture

Further information: Languedoc-Roussillon#Culture

See also: Occitan cuisine

The Romantic music composer Déodat de Séverac was born in the region, and, following his schooling in Paris, he returned to the region to compose. He sought to incorporate the music indigenous to the area in his compositions.

Notable people from Occitania

Eleanor of Aquitaine Jean Anouilh Emmanuelle Béart Henry IV of France Joan Bodon Pierre Bayle François Bayrou Bertrand de Born Pierre Bourdieu Georges Brassens Francis Cabrel Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac Eric Cantona Paul Cézanne Jean-François Champollion Charles XIV John of Sweden (Jean Bernadotte) Daniel Cohn-Bendit Auguste Comte

Fernandel François Darlan Jean-Louis Debré Marcela Delpastre Lafayette Louis-Joseph de Montcalm Michel de Montaigne Gabriel Fauré Pierre de Fermat Valéry Giscard d'Estaing Daniel Goossens Jean Jaurès Yves Klein Robert Lafont Serge Lama Bernard Laporte François Mauriac Fleury Mesplet

Frédéric Mistral Nostradamus Georges Pompidou Claude Puel Richard I Ives Roqueta Max Roqueta Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu Déodat de Séverac Bernadette Soubirous Audrey Tautou Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Paul Valéry Jean Parisot de la Valette Simone Veil Bernard de Ventadour Mans de Breish

See also

• Baìo
• Occitan conjugation
• Occitan cross
• Occitan cuisine
• Vergonha

References

1. ^ Regional pronunciations: Occitània = [u(k)siˈtanjɔ, ukʃiˈtanjɔ, u(k)siˈtanja]. Note that the variant Occitania* = [utsitanˈi(j)ɔ] is considered incorrect, since it is influenced by French, according to Alibert's prescriptive grammar (p. viii) and to the prescriptions of the Occitan Language Council (p. 101).
2. ^ When speaking Occitan, Occitania can be easily referred to as lo país , i.e. 'the country'.
3. ^ Map of the Roman Empire, ca400 AD
4. ^ Map of the Visigothic Kingdom
5. ^ World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous People
6. ^ Jean-Pierre Juge (2001) Petit précis - Chronologie occitane - Histoire & civilisation, p. 14
7. ^ Joseph Anglade, Grammaire de l'ancien provençal ou ancienne langue d'oc, 1921, Part I, Chapter 1, p. 9: Le mot Langue d'Oc a d'abord désigné le pays où se parlait cette langue; c'était une expression géographique. Le pays de langue d'oc s'appelait en latin Occitania (formé sans doute sur Aquitania) ("The words Langue d'Oc first designated the country where the language was spoken: it was a geographical expression. The land of the langue d'oc was called Occitania in Latin (probably coined from Aquitania").
8. ^ Frederic Mistral, Lo Tresor dóu Felibrige (1878-1886), vol. II, p. 1171: "Les textes abondent qui montrent l'origine française ou ecclésiastique des expressions lingua occitana et Occitania. Le pape Innocent IV (1242-1254), un des premiers parle de Occitania dans ses lettres; les commissaires de Philippe le Bel qui rédigèrent l'arrêt sanè des coûtumes de Toulouse se déclarent Ad partes linguae occitanae pro reformatione patriae designati et stipulent que leur règlement est valable in tota lingua occitaniae."
9. ^ Robèrt LAFONT (1986) "La nominacion indirècta dels païses", Revue des langues romanes nº2, tome XC, pp. 161-171
10. ^ http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Occitan_language#Name
11. ^ Jean-Pierre JUGE (2001) Petit précis - Chronologie occitane - Histoire & civilisation, p. 19
12. ^ Frederic Mistral, Lou Tresor dóu Felibrige ou Dictionnaire provençal-français embrassant les divers dialectes de la langue d'oc moderne (1878–1886), vol. I, p. 1182: "Le poète Racine écrivait d'Uzès en 1662: «Nous appelons ici «la France» tout le pays qui est au-delà de la Loire. Celui-ci passe comme une province étrangère.»"
13. ^ Joseph Anglade, Grammaire de l'ancien provençal ou ancienne langue d'oc, 1921: La Langue d'Oc est parlée actuellement par douze ou quatorze millions de Français ("Occitan is now spoken by twelve or fourteen million French citizens").

External links

• occitania.fr
• The Council of the Occitan Language (Conselh de la Lenga Occitana)
• Occitanet - a guide to the language (English option)
• Troubadour & Early Occitan Literature
• Guide to online Occitan dictionaries
• Radio Occitania
• Informations webpage in occitan from Paris
• Occitan Football Association
• (English) (French) (Occitan) Dances and traditional music used in the County of Nice