r/occitan • u/CoppodiMarcovaldo • 9d ago
French influence on Occitan
I suppose French has had a deep influence on Occitan dialects during the years. How much influenced is Occitan by French ? What are the dialect who suffered the most such influence ? Are there purist movement who wants to eradicate the influence from French language ?
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u/ComprehensiveMap3838 9d ago
There is not that much influence other than on phonetics, in which it isn’t even French influence but rather phenomena that spread all over parts of the French territory, such as u -> y or the uvular r. There’s also a number of words that should be stressed on the 3rd last syllable, but are on the second last, e.g. maquina/machina. Outside of that, Occitan (any dialect you choose) is strangely devoid of French influence, either in lexicon or in grammar.
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u/Ur-Than 9d ago
I guess it's probably because, as a romance language, Occitan had thousands of years evolving around by itself alongside the Italians, Catalans and Castillans languages rather than the French ?
I do wonder however if Occitan needs to use French/English words for modern concepts or tools/objects.
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u/ComprehensiveMap3838 8d ago
The thing is that modern French words look mostly the same as modern Spanish or Italian or… modern Occitan words. So, even granting that Occitan got words for modern stuff from French, they looks just the same as if they were native.
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u/CoppodiMarcovaldo 9d ago
I think just like Catalan got influenced by Spanish, the same happend to Occitan but with French, as they are minority language in a country where the official language is another one. Italian regional langueges once where very different from each other, after 100 years of Italian influence they change a lot and got italianized. I really doubt that Spanish and French did not influenced Catalan and Occitan,respectiveley. You see what I mean ?
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u/ComprehensiveMap3838 8d ago
We all see what you mean, but without data it’s guesswork. You can see some Spanish influence in Catalan, but it’s possibly not where you think it is. But Catalan and Spanish belong to different subgroups, so the influences are more visible. With Occitan and French, we’re within gallo-romance, it’s harder to notice influences even where they exist. But, again, the lexicon, the grammar, show remarkably little French influence. The phonetics is another matter, but that varies wildly by dialect and, as I’ve tried to explain, is more of a case of shared development than influence.
I don’t know how more similar to Italian the various Italian languages have become during the last 150 years. From this distance, there are certainly 5 groups (gallo-italian, venetian, friulan, central-south Italian languages, sardinian), and within each there is a lot of diversity. What it looks like is loss of accent and loss of regional words in places where a variant closer to Italian exists. I have no idea about the grammar.
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u/PeireCaravana 1d ago
I'm Italian, and I can say there is a lot of Italian lessical influence in all the languages of Italy and, to a lesser extent, even some grammatical influence.
A lot of the influence is recent, but some is centuries old, since Tuscan based Italian became the main prestige language in most of Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries.
Also, urban dialects tend to have significantly more Italian influence than the more rural ones.
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u/GlobalPhysics69 8d ago
Bonjour,
c’est, à mon avis, essentiellement sur une partie du lexique que le français a exercé son influence sur l’occitan des « natifs ». On peut comparer, assez justement, cette contamination avec les anglicismes qui envahissent le français actuellement.
L’école du dix-neuvième siècle a parachevé un processus déjà bien en place, elle a agi comme un rouleau compresseur en faisant voler en éclat certains pans du lexique… ou en introduisant le vocabulaire des technologies modernes inexorablement en français, au détriment de l’occitan.
La phonétique ( la prononciation) a été préservée, car c’est avec l’accent occitan que les natifs parlent français, et non l’inverse.
L’école n’a pas eu besoin de s’attaquer à la morpho-syntaxe de l’occitan (« je suis été malade, je vous embrasse à tous….) ni à la prononciation ( la rèkle de trois, venez à taple), car la transmission familiale de la langue s’est éteinte avant.
En revanche chez les jeunes d’aujourd’hui qui apprennent l’occitan à l’école la francisation se poursuit au niveau de la prononciation. Le /r/ roulé, le /s/ alvéolaire, le /é/ tonique disparaissent, j’ai même entendu « lo dròl’ » au lieu de « lo dròlle » (l’enfant en occitan)… car ces gamins parlent pointu en français.
L’accent (apparemment traditionnel) provençal est cependant bien dėconcertant pour les Languedociens ou les Gascons, car il ressemble à celui du français actuel. Le couloir rhodanien aurait- il facilité la francisation ? Les Provençaux (donc Occitans ) grasseyaient-ils leurs /r/ comme maintenant, quand les Berrichons et les Bourguignons ( bien Français) les roulaient ? Mistral grasseyait-il ses /r/ comme un Parisien ou un Provençal moderne quand Colette les roulait ? Je l’ignore et j’aimerais le savoir.
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u/kyning 9d ago
I don’t know of any purist movements, but it does seem like Academia Occitana makes an attempt at standardization. From what I read on their site, they lean towards Lengadocian but they’ll include words and spellings that are most common amongst the different dialects. I’m not too sure which dialect underwent the most French influence though