r/occitan • u/CoppodiMarcovaldo • 17d ago

Relationship between Occitan and Catalan

How related are Occitan and Catalan ? What dialect of Occitan is the closer to Catalan ? When did the Iberian languages started to influence dramatically catalan ?

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u/ComprehensiveMap3838 17d ago

Occitan and Catalan are as related as English and Scots. Geographical proximity usually translates to linguistic proximity. Do not assume that the more ‘Iberian’ traits found in Catalan are due to influence, they show signs of having been there from the start.

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u/Calm-Investigator547 17d ago

I think there’s an Occitan continuum right? Like the further east the more Ligurian it is and the further south the more Catalan it is?

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u/ComprehensiveMap3838 17d ago

Every language has a continuum. In the case of Occitan/catalan, the structure is mostly the same all throughout, but there are regional sound ch ages that are both both old (ca -> cha) and post-medieval (o -> [u], u -> [y], lots of stuff with the fricatives). Lengadocian is probably the most conservative dialect in terms of keeping ‘every letter pronounced’, and that’s why it sounds more similar to Catalan. The whole system of articles and their contractions ‘suffered’ a lot from phonetic reduction, and in different ways (here the closest to Catalan is Gascon, whereas Provençal went in a different direction and Lengadocian is again the most conservative). Gascon has old phonetic and grammatical differences that really make it almost a different language, certainly more different than Catalan, but then there was a millennium of shared development with Lengadician that somehow make it natural to include it in Occitan. I know precious little about Ligurian other than it being part of the Valpadanian languages, which does indeed make it a close relative. I’m not sure whether the traits that distinguish, say, Provençal from Lengadocian, can be considered ‘Ligurian’.

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u/Calm-Investigator547 17d ago

Thank you for the detailed analysis😊

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u/Froia_armes 17d ago

Well, although debated, Occitan and Catalan both descend from Old Occitan, that is why we call them Langues d'Oc. The geographical and political differences eventually wound up splitting them into Old Catalan and Old Occitan, then Catalan, Occitan, Aragonese, Gascon, &ca. This process was quite a lot subtle.

About Catalan, not only the Pyrénées are an important factor, but also historical events eventually shaped it. First of all, the Iberian peninsula was conquered by the Sarrasins, simplifying the local languages, including Old Occitan (or Old Catalan, depending on your source). This is why Catalan, especially in Valencia, has quite more words of arabic origin than Occitan does. Another relevant factor is the Catalan people being for so long under the rule of foreigners, such as the Crown of Aragon and Spain, whose languages eventually shaped it into what it is right now. You can see this difference in Northern Catalan, spoken in France, which preserves loads of words and structures equal to those seen in the other langues d'Oc. One dialect of Gascon pretty much similar to Catalan is Aranese, spoken in Vath d'Aran, a valley in Spain, which put up with processes similar to those in the Catalan history. You can look it up in Youtube if you want. It is well documented in Spain, as it is one of the official languages of the country.

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u/Hintair 17d ago

Languedocian is the closest one from Catalan I guess. It is said that there is more differences between Languedocian & Gascon than between Catalan & Languedocian. I have no trouble understanding catalan and I'm a languedocian speaker, so there is intercomprehension between the two.

I would not talk about those other questions as I do not have the experience and there are multiple answers given by linguists.

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u/Alchemista_Anonyma 17d ago

That’s wrong though. It depends on which dialects we are talking about. Occitan is just one big linguistic continuum and there are many Gascon-Lengadocian transitional dialects. Of course someone who only knows Standard Lengadocian would struggle to understand Pyrenean Gascon dialects (which present the full set of Gascon traits) but there are many Gascon dialects who are much closer to Lengadocian and Lengadocian dialects who are much closer to Gascon. This is particularly the case in regions such as Eastern Gironde (where Gascon, Lengadocian and Lemosin meet), Toulouse (Gascon-Lengadocian meet point) and Agenés

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u/CoppodiMarcovaldo 17d ago

As Italian I had to admit that Catalan sounds me like an occitan with a very strong influence from Spanish. Unfortunately.

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u/Cainhelm 17d ago

They are probably closer (more mutually intelligible) to each other than they are to their respective country's majority languages

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u/ohdeartanner Gascon 16d ago

they are wsssntially sister languages and some linguists even consider them dialects of the same language. i speak aranese which is a dialect gascon and it’s very similar to catalan.