Talk:Occitan language/Archive 1

Status of the language: language or languages?
I have removed from the article the statement that languages are differentiated on the basis of mutual intelligibility - this cannot be backed up!

We could list many dialects which are perfectly, or to a large extent, mutually intelligible (or to be more accurate, dialects which form unbroken continua of intelligibility) but which are divided for political reasons into dialects - and just as easily, many 'languages' which are actually a plethora of vastly diverse dialects. I put just a few examples in the article.

In addition, it's impossible to decide which languages are mutually intelligible and which aren't - this isn't a yes/no issue. Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to some extent. To a Portuguese person, Castilian (Spanish) is perfectly understandable, but to a Spaniard, Portuguese is only intelligible to a limited extent. Catalans and Portuguese understand each other suprisingly well, however. Add to this that none of these languages is totally unified, but each form patchworks of dialects - how can we decide which are 'mutually intelligible' and which aren't in this mess? (This is also why I don't think it's fair to say that intelligibility between Occitan dialects is higher than between Occitan and Catalan - which dialects of Catalan and Occitan do you mean? The intelligibility between Provençal and Gascon is fairly low, whereas the intelligibility between southern Lengadocian and northern Catalan is fairly high - though it would be easy to find examples to the contrary.)

Kieron a m 16:22, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

(edit: oops forgot to sign, sorry ^_^ )

We cannot define if spoken varieties are separated languages or mere dialects of the same language only because they are mutually intelligible. This is a sociolinguistic question, not a pure linguistic one. Various german or arabic dialects are barely intelligible to each other's speakers and are considered varieties of the same language. At the same time Norwegian, Swedish and Danish (or for that matter Portuguese and Galician or Spanish) are largely mutually intelligible but considered to be different languages.

According to this article, Occitan is an artificial construct with virtually no social base. In Provence, for instance, most of the speakers consider Provencal to be a language of its own, different from Languedocian, Gascon, Auvergnian and Limousin:

http://www.uhb.fr/alc/erellif/credilif/ValenceEnglish.pdf

Sergio Morales


 * Then we are in agreement ^_^ kieron 11:41, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Sabiai pas que la pagina occitana de Wikipedia existissia.Cresiai que la lenga occitana era desbrembada e me regausissi donc de la descobrir. Comencèri de ne redigir una(Lupus Aquitanus) mas me maini que, fin'finala, es pas gaire necessari d'o far e qu'aquesta pagina esperava sonque de se balhar un contengut. Soi uros, benastruc, d'aver descobert aqueste siti enciclopedic.

Se i a de mond que s'alegran a parlar e escriure la lenga nòstra, aquò m'agradarà que jamai pus d'escambiar amb els e elas, de parlar de tot en occitan, e d'aprene de contunh, e pas sonque d'occitan( d'articles d'antròpologia, de botanica, de chinés e que te sabi mai, mas en occitan...).

A leu donc, e al còp que ven sul Wikepedia occitan

Lop l'Aquitan Lupus Aquitanus(Lupus, Lop paire d'Euda ,duc e primièr prince d'Aquitania).Lupus demorarà un siti a basa d'occitan ma s'avodarà puslèu a l'Aquitania.

P.S Benastrugui los qu'an creat aqueste projècte d'enciclòpedia respectuosa de la diversitat. Aprene e difusir dins la lenga d'una part dels mieus aujèols m'agrada.

Per avança mercés al mèstre de la tèla de m'aver assabentat sus l'existencia de l'interfacia occitana de Tarquin.

A perpaus,voldriai volentièr contribuïr amb d'autres a la concepcion del Oiquipedia occitan, mas cossi far per capitar lo prètzfach d'obtener de polidas paginas sul siti, sabi pas trèop plan utilizar l'utis encara?

En vacancas fins al 21/08/2003

Occitan is an Ibero-Romance language, isn't it? I know French and Spanish and I hope I can contribute... It is not very difficult for me to understand the gist of the Occitan so I'll summarize: "I didn't know the Occitan Wikipedia page existed. I thought that the language had been dissolved, and I didn't expect to find one..... ....I want to contribute to the Occitan version of the site" (Sorry for my incompletion)


 * hi. I'm afraid nobody speaks occitan here. Could you write in english (or in french -- we can talk on the french wikipedia). is this about help setting up the Occitan Wikipedia? or does it say "if you can read this, go help with the occitan wikipedia"? -- Tarquin 21:03 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I wonder if that line at the end means "I'm on vacation till August 21, 2003." -- ESP 23:26 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I'm almost sure -- Error 03:29, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The following are translations of "Occitan" into several languages. In my understanding of interlanguage links, you only link to existing pages. It is not intended as a multilanguage dictionary. So I left only those links to existing pages with some information.

Occitaans الأوكسيتانية Oksitanca Правансальская oseetan oksitanski Occità okcitánština ocitan occitansk Οσιτανικά Okcitana Occitano Okzitaniera fa:فرانسوی oksitaani occitan Oksitaansk Ocatáinis occitano Okcitán occitano Occit Occitano オック語 Aquitana provansalų ocitāņu Окситански Occitaans provençalsk occitan Prowansalski Occitano Окситанский ocitánčine ocitanščina Oksitanisht oksitanski Ossita occitanska Kiositani Occitanu ภาษาออกซิตัน Oksitan tilida 歐西坦語 Isi-Osithani

-- Error

Why is this warning at the bottom of the page:

(The views presented on this site are contrary to the opinion of the vast majority of linguists.)

It does not say which views specifically are against common scholarly opinion. If no one can make it clearer then I'll remove it. Kricxjo 03:02, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ericd', I don't appreciate you moving the mention of Dante and then changing "Provencal" to "Occitan". According to virtually every critical apparatus on Purgatorio, the language which Dante puts in Arnaut's mouth is Provencal. Similarly, the language in which Arnaut composed his love poetry is specfically Provencal. By taking the mention of Dante out of Provencal and putting it here, you are contradicting centuries of Dantean study by people much more qualified in the matter than any of us. Kricxjo 14:25, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

About Dante I'm not sure to be right but see my comment on the talk page for Provencal. The use of Provencal for Langue d'Oc seems to be common in English. I'll try to have a look at some study of Dante in French. Ericd 20:04, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

languedocien, auvergnat, limousin, gascon and provençal are dialects of occitan and not languages. [Gnu_thomas]


 * Unfortunately, there is debate on that issue. Many English-language and Italian-language resources treat Provencal as separate from Occitan. Seeing as some dialects of Provencal are not mutually intelligible to speakers from, for example, Toulouse, that's IMHO valid. Kricxjo 14:49, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * for the IEO (institut d'estudis occitans) which can be considered as the "académie française" for the occitan, occitan is a set of dialects inter-intelligible. There are also errors on the specific dialects page. The dialect the closest of old occitan used by trobadors is the languedocien not the provençal. The limit of the limousin doesn't correspond to the limit of the adminstrative region, as reader can understand seeing the map. [Gnu_thomas]


 * About language versus dialects : This inter-intelligibillity thing is the typical exemple of a case where human sciences classifications have problem to deal with real life. Inter-intelligibillity is not a binary notion a large number or language are more or less inter-intelligible. For instance I'm a French speaker and can understand a few Italian or Spanish without having learned them....
 * Ericd 18:51, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The discussion of the Latin origins of Romance language names for "yes" seems to be incorrect; the Latin word from which "si" and similar Romance language words for "yes" is derived is "sic" (thus, so), not "si" (if, whether). Right?

-- Seth Schoen (not registered on Wikipedia)

Deleted sentence
"The word Occitan is modelled after the historical region of Occitania, which in turn is modelled after Aquitania, a former Roman administrative region."

This sentence contradicts those prior to it. It is my understading that "Occitania" is derived from "Occitan" and not the other way around. Also, the area some call Occitania is much larger than Auquitain. Nathan 02:33, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Romanian list
Note that Romanian branza is not from caseus (branza is considered to be a pre-Roman Dacian word). But Latin caseus does survive in Romanian as caş, which did evolve from Latin caseus. Romanian biserica is from Latin basilica. Latin ecclesia was not transmitted into the Eastern Romance languages. Both ecclesia (>ekklesia), and basilica (>basilike) entered Latin from Greek. Alexander 007 01:34, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Romanian equivalents in the chart are all correct as of now. Alexander 007 01:29, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

English words on chart
In case anybody was wondering, English plaza is borrowed from Spanish; English cheese is from Old English cese, from Germanic kasjus, which was an early borrowing from Latin caseus; English language was borrowed from Old French langage, which is from Latin lingua. The rest of the English words are unLatin. Alexander 007 00:52, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't sing be replaced with chant? Also, the note below the chart indicates that French has no equivalent to record -- yet battre un record (beat/set an athletic record, for example) is commonly said and is semantically related, no? --anon


 * The Romance words mean "sing", although the borrowed word "chant" is a more related cognate. Btw, it seems unclear if the word "jump" comes from Occitan, or if it has a different etymology...


 * I'd actually like to know the source giving the Occitan etymology of these words. For example, here are the etymologies the O.E.D. gives:


 * jump [A word of mod. Eng., known only from c1500; app. of onomatopic origin: cf. bump, etc. Words app. parallel are MHG. and dial. Ger. gumpen to jump, hop, Da. gumpe, Sw. dial. gumpa, Sw. guppa to move up and down, Icel. goppa to skip; but it does not appear how the 16th c. Eng. jump could be historically or phonetically related to these.]


 * rave [? a. OF. raver, app. a variant (of rare occurrence) of rêver to dream, be delirious, etc., of obscure origin: for conjectures, see Diez (s.v. rêve) and Körting (s.v. rabia).]


 * record [a. OF. record (recort, recor-s, etc.), f. recorder to RECORD. Cf. Sp. recuerdo, It. ricordo. The original stressing (rI'kO:d) is found in verse as late as the 19th c.]


 * The fact that "record" exists in Occitan and English but not in French does not seem interesting unless Occitan is the only language that kept it. But, as it is, both Spanish and Italian (and probably others) have a form of the word record, all from the Latin recordare. I'm going to take out this sentence, unless someone strongly objects. It would be interesting to list words (which I'm sure exist) that can be traced to Occitan. I will look into that. Lesgles 22:15, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Ligurian in the Var ?
Where is Ligurian spoken in the Var ? Ericd 00:19, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Roiasc, Tendasc and Brignasc are certainly Ligurian dialects and Mentonasc, a mixed dialect is mainly considerated a ligurian dialect outside of France. Some ligurian influences reaches even to the Nisard dialect. Maybe in Middle Age also Nisard dialect was more Ligurian than Provencal.Dante affirmed the border of the Lingua del Si, or better Italian, was the Var River.

https://wiki2.org/en/Mentonasc_dialect#/media/File:Languages_of_Alpes-Maritimes_Department,_France.svg


 * so Tendasc goes under the Occitan umbrella somewhere? Does it belong to one of these?
 * Auvergnat Gascon  Languedocien  Limousin  Provençal  Vivaro-Alpine ?
 * thanks, skakEL 18:24, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

24 000 Hz range
Somebody correct this please? Most humans can't go beyond 16 kHz, and less than 1% go beyond 20 kHz, and that's a physiology limitation. See ear Hearing (sense)elpincha 06:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

During the middle ages, there was a state where now exists catalonia. In this state, the official language was catalan. As well as in the kingdoms of mallorca and valencia. In fact, until 1714 spanish castillian wasn't an oficial language in catalonia. I supose that you are a bit confuse and you think that the crown of aragon was the same as the kingdom of aragon.

The ancient Crown of Aragon could be compared to some sort of federal state as well as most medieval kingdoms -all Iberic ancient kingdoms were of that kind. Nowadays there's a strong effort from some Catalan nationalists to base their political positions on a partial vision of Catalonia and Aragon history. There´s no sense in talking about official languages in Spain before 19th century and Castillian, also known as Spanish abroad, was already a known but minoritary language in Catalonia and Aragon from 13th century.

BTW there are no reasons but historical and political ones to say Catalan is not an Occitan variant since it´s closer to Provençal and Nord-Occitan than Gascon.


 * Catalan has different diphtongs, it hasn't got the phoneme /y/ and conversions from some Latin consonants to Catalan vowels have evolved differently. Those differences basically are enough to argument Catalan as separate from Occitan, besides the fact that a Catalan speaker has a very hard time understanding spoken Occitan (even Provençal) and vice versa...

Oïl languages
It has been proposed that Languages of Oïl be renamed and moved to Langues d'Oïl. Comments and votes on Talk:Languages of Oïl, please, if you're interested. Man vyi 09:16, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Important!
Many users do not realize (or frequently forget, such as I) that Wikipedia searchs are case sensitive. This creates confusion between OC and Oc. The redirect should link to OC, the disambiguation page, which I have edited to include this article.

Occitan and Catalan.
We must consider that what today is called standard Catalan phonology, is just the dialect from Barcelona, and the standard ortography is a modern invention designed more to stress the differences with other surrounding dialects for political reasons than to reflect the real use after philological facts. Claiming that Catalan is something different than Occitan, is the same as, if U.S. Govenrnment reforms completely the U.S. English ortography in order to make it look different, chooses a peculiar dialectal area to base the unified phonology in and promotes the most uncommon and non extended words, trying to erase the common ones from the normal speech and pretends that USA has a completely different language of its own. Why not choosing texts prior to the make up of this so-called Catalan and Occitan texts of the same time and compare them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.16.30.175 (talk) 14:49, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Good evening. As a native speaker of Catalan and as a speaker of Occitan, I'd like to know what linguists say that the Catalan and Occitan languages are the same. In the Spanish Wikipedia the same thing happened, and after discussion we decided to eliminate the assertion that some linguists think they are the same. When you read the same article in Occitan and then in Catalan, it's very easy to think they are the same, because the orthographies are very similar, but Occitan's pronunciation is the most distinctive of all the Romance languages, and it's completeley different from Catalan. Remember, brothers but not the same! KekoDActyluS 16:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Occitan and Catalan are clearly not the same, mainly due to how diphtongs and conversions from Latin consonants to Romance vowels have evolved differently - and most linguists support this...

Can someone cite evidence of the following claim, which is made on the page? "Modern Occitan is the closest relative of Catalan. The languages, as spoken in early medieval times, might be considered variant forms of the same language." To my knowledge, the truth of the first sentence is disputed -- linguists don't agree on whether Catalan is more closely related to French (and hence Occitan) or to Spanish. (Sorry, my reference for that is in German.) UKoch (talk) 13:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Occitan and Catalan are generally classified as members of the same linguistic subfamily, as shown in the chart included in the Romance languages article. Closeness to Spanish is less likely simply because the amount of words of Arabic origin in Spanish is much higher than in either Occitan or Catalan. --jofframes (talk) 20:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

does anyone have a photo of an Occitan street sign?
You know what would be perfect for this article is a photograph of some of the last vestiges of Occitan in southern French cities. I just got back from Toulouse a few weeks ago, and all I saw of Occitan (true to the article) was the occasional street sign.

Surely SOMEONE must have a photograph of a street sign in Toulouse, near La Capitole, where they post both the French and the Occitan street name?? That really would be a nice touch if anyone has one or knows where we can get one. btw the carrièra del taur is the street that goes from plaça de la capitola to plaça sant sermin, significant cos it is where the libreria occitania is. shall i mention this? is it relevant? Kieron a m 02:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Ask and you shall receive ^_^ Kieron a m 02:02, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * By all means!!

It is indeed a street sign in French and in Occitan. But note that the Occitan flag is on the French translation. Probably a good vignette of French state support for Occitan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.175.12.45 (talk) 19:38, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The Occitan flag is also the emblem of the Midi-Pyrénées region, of which Toulouse is the capital. I think that is the reason for its presence on Toulouse street signs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.16.193.183 (talk) 07:37, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Occitan and Catalan, again
I think all discussions of the similarities and differences between Occitan and Catalan should be moved to a separate article. One comes to Occitan language to see a quick summary, not a huge discussion involving overly specific details about a totally different language. Anon IP, you should be ashamed for trying to turn this into another Catalan article. CRCulver 11:56, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree.

I disagree. While there could be a specific section for it, you just cannot discuss Catalan and Occitan without addressing their similarities and dissimilarities. FilipeS (talk) 18:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Gallo-Romance or Ibero-Romance?
hi,

the infobox in the article says Gallo-Romance and the list in Gallo-Iberian languages says Ibero-Romance. one of them must be wrong but i have no idea which one. --ArinArin 11:34, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * it's a point of contention - gallo-romance, ibero-romance, or neither? i think wikipedia should avoid language-tree classifications altogether - at the end of the day, they are all more or less arbitrary... kieron 10:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Category:Catalan language is in both, as it's transitional between both. And Occitan is transitional between Catalan and other Gallo-Romance.  If there is truly a debate, I don't necessarily see a problem of classifying it as both at least for the sake of categorization. - Gilgamesh 17:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Requested Move (2006)

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

no move. --  tariq abjotu  (joturner) 01:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move (expired)

 * Occitan language → Occitan … Rationale: An article about a language should not have "language" in the title unless it is meant to disambiguate … Please share your opinion at Talk:Occitan language. — Dissident (Talk) 17:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Survey

 * Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with  ~


 * Strong oppose. Current name follows Naming conventions (languages) so it should not be moved. Vegaswikian 22:36, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose. I can't believe this is still an issue for some editors. Wikipedia standardized on "X language" years ago now. CRCulver 22:44, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per Crculver & Vegaswikian. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 23:47, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Strongly oppose - Occitan can refer to occitan regions, occitan peoples, etc., and there could well be articles on this in the future. Also agree with Crculver & Vegaswikian.kieron 14:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose Every language should be named "XXX language" unless there is some compelling reason (and I know of none.) -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 20:57, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Add any additional comments

Hm, I prefer Occitan language but that's not how I read the naming convention. There isn't a collision with Occitan people or whatnot in this case. --Dhartung | Talk 03:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * There could be an article "Occitan people", if one wanted to talk about the shared culture and history of the speakers of Occitan. FWIW, my Occitan textbook, L'occitan sans peine by Assimil, talks about occitans all the time. CRCulver 03:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Then why isn't Occitan a disambiguation page rather than a redirect? --Ptcamn 21:21, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Simply because those other articles haven't been written yet. The fact remains that 'Occitan' does not refer exclusively to a language (as does, for example, Hindi), but can be used to refer to a people, a region, a style of architecture, a literary tradition, etc. etc., and so the article 'Occitan' should be left clear so it might be used as a disambiguation page in the future.kieron 22:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Concerning the move
The only thing that could be considered a valid argument against a move to Occitan above is that there could be an article called Occitan people. However, I question the validity of such an article. Please show us acknowledged sources in English that actually refer to "Occitans" that aren't simply referring to the speakers of the language, for whom we never stard separate articles. I also doubt that all Occitan speakers in Spain, France and Italy consider their ethnicity to be "Occitan" rather than being nationals of the respective countries or belonging to some other minority.

The argument that "Occitan" as an adjective may refer to a lot of things is also irrelevant, since neither Occitan cuisine nor Occitan literature can be called just "Occitan". For a parallel see Latin, Latin alphabet, Latin literature, etc. The naming convention is very clear about this for a long time, I might add. The usage of a disambiguator is applicable only if there's a need for it.

Peter Isotalo 14:04, 16 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Could I get some responsens to this comment? All of the votes above are based on false premises, especially the ones citing the naming convention. The "language" in language article titles hasn't been considered mandatory for at least a year. And since Occitan people doesn't seem to be appearing any time soon, we shouldn't be using uncalled-for disambiguators. If no comments are forthcoming, I'm posting a request at Requested moves.
 * Peter Isotalo 10:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Support, as the move would be in accordance with Wikipedia's naming conventions. "Occitan" is a language. To the best of my ample knowledge, the Occitan language is the only thing on this world commonly referred to by "Occitan".Unoffensive text or character 12:52, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose, French and native scholarship uses the term "occitan" to refer to a speaker of the language. Even in English one could see the need for disambiguation between language and people. CRCulver 12:59, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * This is not a vote, so stop trying to turn it into one. If y'all start voting, it will be about taking sides rather than providing good arguments.
 * Culver, considering your claims, it's very odd that the Occitan and French Wikipedias don't seem to be bothered with keeping a separate article for the "Occitan people". They don't even have disambiguators. Why hasn't someone written this self-evident article here for that matter? And even if the term is used (apparantly sparingly) in French and Occitan, I think it's questionable to automatically assume that a) the term has the same meaning in English and b) that there's an Occitan people that exist as a reasonably well-defined ethnic group. Like I've pointed out before, we don't keep separate articles just for the speakers of a language. Now, you're the one making unsupported claims, so please back them up with a source that would be more generally applicable and neutral than a textbook in Occitan.
 * Peter Isotalo 19:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Personally, though an enthusiast for languages for the past 45 years, somewhat familiar with "languedoc" and "provençale" from past literary studies, and with Catalan from recent study of a sort, I had never heard of an "Occitan language" (or family of languages/dialects), and find it helpful to have the full expression in the title ... especially given that there is considerable linguistic (and political?) debate as to the nature and scope of that language. Had I simply seen the title "Occitan", I'd have likely passed it by, unaware that it was a languge at all. For those not in the field, the expression is not needlessly redundant. FutharkRed 05:42, 17 March 2007 (UTC)