For natives of France - I ask you to inform me about Provencal language.?

Question

I bought a CD of Provencal Xmas songs and really loved the sound of the language. It pleased me more than French. It sounded truly like a pan-Latin mediterranean idiom.

In France today - would one hear it spoken in Nice,Marseilles, or anywhere on the southern coast??? Where is ideal place to hear it spoken??? do speakers of Provencal ever speak it with each other in cities like Paris, etc. to keep their converse private???

Exactly what happened to Provencal language in South of France?? Note that in Spain, the Galician and Catalan tongues are alive and entrenched. So why did provencal fade away???
I feel this language has a beautiful sound to it , it's really Latin type sound, whereas standard French is a Gothic-nasal sound.

I really appreciate any relevant information about Provencal usage in France today - details are welcome.

merci bien.

Answer 1

Sorry - I'm not a native of France, but your question took me back about 40 years when I stayed with my Great Aunt in Nice and she introduced me to a friend of hers, who spoke Provencal. I agree with your comment about its sounding pan-Latin Mediterranean. I've given a link below that may lead you to some interesting pages.

I'm not saying it's the same language, but Catalan is pretty similar and, with that language, I have a familiarity, having done business in Barcelona over a number of years. If one has a reasonable grasp of French and Spanish, it's pretty easy to decipher Catalan (at least in the written form) once you take into account some common differences. The following quotation comes from the link I've given you and matches my own experience.

In fact, Occitan [=Provencal] is closer to Spanish than French. To be elliptic, one could say that Occitan is Spanish without final o's and with French u.

Apart from Monsieur Bigaro (because he had a big bright red nose . . .), I don't know any speakers of Provencal.

Answer 2

Hi! You can now learn Provencal, in France, but I don't think a lot of people do it. I don't know anyone who can speak Provencal (except my great-grandmother, but she's been dead for a while, now). You might be able to hear people speak in Provencal in the South East, maybe more in villages. I really can't help you on that one.

A lot of the dialects in France are not spoken anymore because French has become the official national language a while ago.

Answer 3

Hi

you can read all about the occitan family of languages here : http://www.omniglot.com/writing/occitan.htm


They say :

Occitan is a Romance language spoken mainly in southern France and also in Italy and Spain. There are perhaps 1.5 million people who speak Occitan in their daily lives, while 5 or 6 million people are able to speak the language. The majority of speakers are elderly and live in rural areas. There are six dialects of Occitan: Provençal, Gascon, Languedoc, Limousin, Alpine and Auvergne.

I live in Languedoc (Langue d'Oc), and we have occasional TV news programmes in Occitan. There are also Occitan poets and books for sale.

Older people in my village know some of the language, and many words are interspersed with everyday conversation.

Peter