Thursday, September 24, 2015

Challenge 52 in 52: Occitan

I have wanted to learn Occitan since I read The Three Musketeers.
Because d'Artagnan is Occitan.
(BTW, Athos, Porthos and Aramis were also Occitans. I didn't know that before now. Athos is one of my first literary crushes *blush* It is quite a lot due to him I wanted to learn French in the first place...)

 Occitan, also known as lenga d'òc, is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, as well as Spain's Val d'Aran; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitania. It is also spoken in the linguistic enclave of Guardia Piemontese (Calabria, Italy). Some include Catalan in Occitan, as the distance between this language and some Occitan dialects (such as the Gascon language) is similar to the distance among different Occitan dialects. In fact, Catalan was considered a dialect of Occitan until the end of the 19th century and still today remains its closest relative.

Across history, the terms Limousin (Lemosin), Languedocien (Lengadocian), Gascon, and later Provençal (Provençal, Provençau or Prouvençau) have been used as synonyms for the whole of Occitan; nowadays, "Provençal" is understood mainly as the Occitan dialect spoken in Provence, in southeast France.

Unlike other Romance languages such as French or Spanish, there is no single written standard language called "Occitan", and Occitan has no official status in France, home to most of Occitania. Instead, there are competing norms for writing Occitan, some of which attempt to be pan-dialectal, whereas others are based on particular dialects. 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.

In particular, 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 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 (maison/casa "house", testa/cap "head", petit/pichon "small", achaptar/crompar "to buy", entendre/ausir "to hear", se taire/se calar "to be quiet", tombar/caire "to fall", p(l)us/mai "more", totjorn/sempre "always", etc.). Nonetheless, there is a significant amount of mutual intelligibility.

The long-term survival of Occitan is in grave doubt. According to 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.

Occitan at Omniglot




Thursday, September 17, 2015

Challenge 52 in 52: French

Well... French is French, nothing to say about that. Plenty of information about it all over the internet. BUT - here's another Romance language spoken in France, and in Britanny.

Gallo

Gallo is a regional language of eastern Brittany. It is today far less commonly spoken than was once the case, the standard form of French now predominating in this area. Gallo is classified as one of the langues d'oïl.

Gallo was originally spoken in the Marches of Neustria, an area now corresponding to the border lands between Brittany, Normandy, and Maine. Gallo was a shared spoken language among many of those who took part in the Norman conquest of England, most of whom originated in Upper (i.e. eastern) Brittany and Lower (i.e. western) Normandy, and thus had its part, together with the much bigger role played by the Norman language, in the development of the Anglo-Norman variety of French which would have such a strong influence on English.

Gallo continued as the everyday language of Upper Brittany, Maine, and some neighbouring portions of Normandy until the introduction of universal education across France, but is spoken today by only a small (and aging) minority of the population, having been almost entirely superseded by standard French.

As a langue d'oïl, Gallo forms part of a dialect continuum which includes Norman, Picard, and the Poitevin dialect among others. One of the features that distinguish it from Norman is the absence of Old Norse influence. There is some limited mutual intelligibility with adjacent varieties of the Norman language along the linguistic frontier and with Guernésiais and Jèrriais. However, as the dialect continuum shades towards Mayennais, there is a less clear isogloss. The clearest isogloss is that distinguishing Gallo from Breton, a Brittonic Celtic language traditionally spoken in the western territory of Brittany.

In the west, the vocabulary of Gallo has been influenced by contact with Breton, but remains overwhelmingly Latinate. The influence of Breton decreases eastwards across Gallo-speaking territory.


English
Gallo
Old French
French
afternoon
vêpré
vespree
après-midi (archaic: vêprée)
apple tree
pommieu
pomier
pommier
bee
avètt
aveille
abeille
cider
cit
cidre
cidre
chair
chaérr
chaiere
chaise
cheese
fórmaij
formage
fromage
exit
desort
sortie
sortie
to fall
cheir
cheoir
tomber (archaic: choir)
goat
biq
chievre, bique
chèvre (slang: bique)
him
li
lui, li
lui
house
ostèu
hostel
maison (hôtel)
kid
garsaille
same root as Old French gars
Same root as gars, garçon
lip
lip
levre
lèvre (or lippe)
maybe
vantiet
puet estre
peut-être
mouth
góll
goule, boche
bouche (gueule = mouth of an animal)
now
astour
a ceste heure
maintenant (à cette heure)
number
limerot
nombre
numéro
pear
peirr
peire
poire
school
escoll
escole
école
squirrel
chat-de-boéz (lit. "woods cat")
escurueil
écureuil
star
esteill
esteile, estoile
étoile
timetable
oryaer
horaire
horaire
to smoke
betunae
fumer
fumer (archaic: pétuner)
today
anoet
hui
aujourd'hui
to whistle
sublae
sibler, sifler
siffler
with
ô or côteu avek
o/od, avoec
avec

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Challenge 52 in 52: Italian

Italian, I discovered, was Latin with all the difficulty removed. Much as a skilled chef fillets the whole skeleton out of a fish, some friendly folks somewhere had lifted all that grammar (at least, most of it) out of Latin and called the remainder Italian!
There was no nominative-genitive-dative-accusative in Italian. Not a trace, except in a few pronouns which I knew I could easily take prisoner because we had the same thing in English (me is the accusative of I). Italian verbs did misbehave a little, but not to the psychedelic extent of Latin verbs. And Italian verbs were a lot easier to look at.

- Barry Farber; How to Learn Any Language

Italian is a Romance language.
It is the second-closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary, after Sardinian.
Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City and Istria (in Slovenia and Croatia) and used to have official status in Albania, Malta, and Monaco, all countries where it is still widely spoken, and in former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, regions where it plays a significant role in various sectors.
Italian is spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and by small minorities in areas such as Crimea, Corsica and Montenegro.
Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardised Italian and other regional languages.

The Italian language adopted by the state after the unification of Italy is based on Tuscan, which beforehand was a language spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society. Its development was also influenced by other Italian languages and by the Germanic languages of the post-Roman invaders. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive.


Thursday, September 3, 2015

Challenge 52 in 52: Monegasque

Monégasque is a variety of Ligurian, a Gallo-Italic language spoken in Monaco as well as nearby in Italy and France.

Ligurian is a Gallo-Italic language spoken in Liguria in Northern Italy, parts of the Mediterranean coastal zone of France, Monaco and in the villages of Carloforte and Calasetta in Sardinia. It is part of the Gallo-Italic and Western Romance dialect continuum. Although part of Gallo-Italic language, it exhibits several features of the Italo-romance group of central and southern Italy. The Zeneize (literally for Genoese), spoken in Genoa, the capital of Liguria, is the language's prestige dialect on which the standard is based.

Monegasque on Omniglot and Ligurian on Omniglot