Once Europe’s greatest literary vernacular, it is now spoken mainly by a passing generation. The language’s future rests on a younger one trying to keep it going
AT A school near the Pyrenees, snowy hills rising behind, children are learning to read. Their teacher speaks gently, urging them to copy her pronunciation. Her words have some of the feel of Catalan, the same yelled by protestors in their recent fight with the Spanish state. In fact, Valerie Vedere is French and her school is in Pau, a handsome town in the far southwest of the republic. She and her pupils speak Occitan, once the most popular literary language in Europe. Now, that heritage is mostly forgotten, and its survival in doubt.
Like French, Occitan developed from Vulgar Latin, but soon shifted away from its northern neighbour. While Parisians borrowed from Germanic invaders, Occitan speakers kept their ears towards the Mediterranean. The final “a” in many Occitan words speaks to its relationship with Spanish and Italian: Occitan “bona jornada” (have a nice day) is closer to Italian “buona giornata” than to French “bonne journée”. A tendency to drop final vowels, and pronounce the preceding consonant, resembles Catalan. Words like “gat” (cat) and “encantat” (pleased to meet you) could equally be used in Bordeaux or Barcelona.
Occitan reached its peak in the Middle Ages. From the 11th century, hundreds of troubadours (probably from the Occitan verb “trobar”, “to compose”) roamed southern France in search of patrons for their elegant verse. Their works were often deliciously sensual. One twelfth-century writer called love “a sickness that I find so wonderful that I prefer this evil to any other good!” This cultivated style had not been seen in the Mediterranean since classical times. “Troubadours were at the root of all the Romance poetry traditions,” explains Thomas Hinton, an Occitan specialist at the University of Exeter. Boccaccio and Dante admired their skill. By 1200, Occitan was spoken across a sweep of southern Europe, from Catalonia to Italy, and as far north as central France.
But as French kings expanded south, Occitan declined. A 13th-century crusade, launched by northern knights against southern heretics, destroyed many centres of Occitan culture. After the revolution of 1789, nationalist bureaucrats in Paris were determined to squash Occitan, just like other regional tongues, which they dismissed as vulgar patois. “This centralised, Jacobin system” has dominated French life ever since, says Benazet Dazeas, director of Lo Congrés, an Occitan language institute. “Many Frenchmen wanted one language, one state and one republic.”
Education, which became compulsory in the 19th century, was one way to get there. French teachers not only punished pupils for speaking Occitan, but encouraged them to denounce their classmates. A sense of “vergonha” (shame) has infected the language up to modern times. “I felt ashamed when my parents spoke Occitan in public,” remembers Ms Vedere. No wonder only about 2% of the French population now speaks Occitan, compared with 39% in 1860.
The situation is not completely dire. Like ikastolak in the Basque Country and diwan in Brittany, a system of 67 calandreta primary schools aims to rescue Occitan for a new generation. Immersion is key, stresses Ms Vedere. Until the age of six, every subject is taught completely in Occitan, and every poster on the wall is in the language. Older children study only three hours of French a week.
This is encouraging. Even some of the youngest children speak the language comfortably, though a few slipped into French when your correspondent visited Pau. One eager girl kept saying “strawberry” as French “fraise” not Occitan “hraga”, for instance. Older students made similar mistakes, but chatted fluently in Occitan for a whole lesson. Overall, 19% of students at the Pau calandreta will go to the nearby Occitan secondary school. 5.8% of local children now study the language, up from just 0.5% a decade ago.
Things are less rosy outside class. Ms Vedere and her colleagues estimate that only 2% of their students use Occitan at home. Though their children might be fluent, “we have parents who still do not really understand the language,” says Emilie Lagalaye, chairwoman of the Pau calandreta association. This is partly a political problem. Though it has softened in recent decades, the French state is still suspicious of Occitan (the fuss in Catalonia hardly helps). It refuses to ratify a 1992 Council of Europe charter defending minority languages. French law bars Occitan from courtrooms and censuses, for example. Apart from a few signposts, the language is invisible on the streets.
Regional unity would help, but it is lacking. Most academics consider Occitan a single tongue, but some activists disagree. They argue that the Occitan dialects—Gascon by the Atlantic, Auvergnat near the Upper Loire—are separate languages. Gascon, influenced by Basque, is especially distinctive. And while Provençal is the general academic name for medieval Occitan, today the speakers around Nice claim it as a distinct variety too. Occitan is wobbly enough without such splits, says Sèrgi Javaloyès, a distinguished Occitan writer. Gascon particularists “just want their place in the sun!” he scoffs. Geography is another headache. With its capital at Toulouse, “Occitanie” became a French administrative region in 2016. But speakers live across three others (Pau is in Nouvelle-Aquitaine). This makes collective action hard, says Charlene Claveau-Abbadie, a regional politician.
Trapped between an apathetic state and local squabbles, Occitan risks paddling along like rowers by a waterfall: never tumbling over the edge, but always fighting to survive. To thrive, Occitan needs to stop being “a species in the zoo” and widen its base in French society, Mr Hinton says. Ms Claveau-Abbadie does her best to help, promoting Occitan-language news reports on television and investing in Occitan radio. Joan-Luc Lagrave, a businessman and Occitan fan, uses humour to jostle his language into the mainstream. At his clothes shop in central Pau, people can buy boxer shorts with jokey Occitan slogans. One of the sauciest features a man in a beret shouting “mefia’t!”—watch out!
But without help, the future looks tough. UNESCO classes all the Occitan dialects as “definitely” or “severely” endangered, and most fluent speakers are elderly, dying faster than the calendreta system can replace them. “I am not very optimistic, to be honest,” says Mr Hinton. Not that activists in Pau ever lose hope. “The Occitan language is like someone with cancer,” says Jean-Brice Brana, another enthusiast. “If you fight against the illness, you are living. Fighting is to be alive.” A poetic idea, but Occitan needs more than modern troubadours now.