Hi, actual "Occitan" here, thanks for making this video about us ! And if you may, I've got some stuff to say about the perspective of the events you've presented in your video... The first is that we're not really a nation, I can understand that you'd use this term for the sake of simplicty for teaching which isn't a bad thing, but we're french and not less than anyone else in this country for any reason, sure, we can be proud of our culture and language, and we are pretty much are, but that doesn't have to interfere with our national identity as french. I'm saying this so that people may understand that we're not a totally separated people who 'seek to be freed from french oppression' or whatever (I'm not implying that's what you meant, but I just wanted to precise it considering it's a way that misinformed people could interpret it.). That also means that we're not really feeling 'Occitan' first. We're french, and we also have our regional identities which can also be pretty strong (Aquitanian/Gascon, Languedocien, Provençal...etc), it doesn't mean we have no pride in our culture, but personally I'd say Occitanian identity isn't really something that you have passively and that you think of telling people if they ask where you come from, but it's really something that is lived in action, through the language and culture which is really something I love about it ^^ The second is about the reasons of the 'decline' of Occitan. We're not an oppressed minority or something like that, the french government isn't tracking occitan speakers and shutting our culture down... We're not Xinjiang... The reality is that the only reason for supposed "decline" of occitan today is apathy. Basically, today no one is actually trying to kill regional languages and I'd even say that the tendency is rather towards encouraging their growth ! However, the reality is that even though everyone supports it, it doesn't mean much is done about it, most people just see it as vaguely good and not that useful if not useless for the most insensitive. Most people never learn occitan or regional languages in general (although that depends on the region). There is just no large enough citizen or political engagement to really carry an important revival, although I wouldn't be pessimistic about it... Let me explain, you said that Occitan was the language of the elderly but even that may not be entirely true anymore, at least in my family, the last generation who spoke occitan from their heritage is alreday dead since years ago, it was my great-grandparents who I didn't even know that my dad told me that they still knew Occitan, but that means we did hit the lowest point we could, occitan had disappeared from my family but I'm learning it on night class in university, which means it can only grow from there ! Continuing with my exemple, we could imagine that someday I'll have kids of my own and that if I'm good enough, I might teach them occitan and that it could re-develop from here ! That's why I believe even if it is considered endangered it's not going to dissapear anytime soon, because whatever the state of it there's always foing to be people who will wanna preserve their culture, especially since we're talking about a territory comprising a third of France ! Which means even in a terrible scenario where only 1 person out of a thousand knows Occitan there's still going to be 20 000 people who know it (honestly I didn't check the numbers but I guess it's about that). Hoping that it will be better than that, and, I can't know what will happen, but I really wanna do my part in it ! Well, I've pretty much told you everything I wanted to about this fascinating subject, hoping you'll be satisfied by my quite long rant from a guy who happens to have started to learn occitan a few moths ago, motiavted by proud in his origins and hope for the future ! De còr et d'òc ! Cara amiga ^^
Hey hey! There's definitely only so much I can say without actually having any first-hand accounts to work with, so I really really appreciate all the info you've given here! It's really cool to see that you're trying to stay in touch with your roots, it's something a lot more people ought to do! I hope there's enough resources out there for you to fully support that. :)
Hey I am Occitan, born in the Languedoc region around Tolosa. I never got to learn Occitan in school because very few high schools even have the option to learn occitan, and I can't find anything online to learn it. We really should make a collaborative Duolingo-like platform for minority languages because sadly cases like Occitan are present all around the world
It would be really cool to see something like that for smaller languages I mean Discord servers exist but a single person gathering and learning resources is much less efficient than a worldwide effort to promote minority languages and organize resources for such a project
@@jck956 Yeah, especially since I might be able to learn it given I'd just have to find an Occitan speaker willing to teach me or something, but someone living in New York for example probably has no way of learning it.
There exists something similar called Duostories, I myself contributed by making the courses for my minority native language (Asturian), I think they have Occitan too.
Duolingo USED to support such collaborative projects. At least later it got some of the smaller languages back after they got removed due to a change in business model. But many didn’t come back and more stopped being worked on. Stuff like Guarani, Haitian Creole, Xhosa used to be available. And lots of Indian and European languages got cut short after the community languages hatchery was shut down.
Adieu, actual actual Occitan here. This is such a great video explaining Occitania. I, an occitan, (the better ones, my mother town is Toulouse) is proud to have such rich culture which influenced the world. Adieu-siatz!
The Burgundians you mention early on in the video were never really an ethnic group or nation seperate from the mainline french unless youre refering to the old germanic burgundian culture that went extinct in the 6th century which is before the creation of france
« Et n’est pas chose estrange et nouvelle que ledict conte de Bourgogne ait seignourie souverainne… car le pays et nacion de Bourgongne a eu de grande ancienneté royaume qui contenoit et s’extendoit en long dès la rivière du Rhin, qu’est es parties d’Allemainne, jusques à Arles le Blanc, qui est es parties de la mer devers Marseilles… » (ADC, B262), cité par Richard J., « Les débats entre le roi de France », art. cité, p. 120. That being declared with the authority of Phillip the Good - Lord of the Burgundians - towards the Kingdom of France. The Burgundian States were declared distincts of the French Kingdom in 1471 following what he argue to be a breach to the treaty of Péronne signed three years earlier. So there’s a decent ambiguity in there. And that can perhaps be deduced when in the « Faits des Romains » written around 1213-14 the author make the precision : « messager borguegnon ou francois tot est un ».
How old is even the “mainline”? It would be very cool to learn how historians tell cultures apart when they just have peasants and not nobles or broad strokes using languages or religions
Correct, however the level of autonomy and the allegiances it had during the 14th and 15th centuries, I could imagine they could have become a nation state if things had turned out differently.
Hello, Québécois here, I absolutely enjoyed this!! There is a lot of language conflicts in my country, be it from misunderstanding of the pressure and influence one language might have over another or the language laws that can either be there to counter these pressures or as it was used in the past serve to assimilate a population (as what happened to French speaking populations outside of Québec, or to the aboriginal populations on this continent). To my knowledge, I do not have Occitan ancestors, my family came from the north of France 3-4 centuries ago, but that story tells a tale I understand and that is absolutely fascinating: Little dynamics of how "language management" is ultimately "culture management" and how it turned out elsewhere in the world. Thanks
21 days till election. Maybe you can overthrow Lukašenko with Russija being preoccupied further south. Also I dont get it. The Russijans tried to russify us latviešus too, Hruščov even sent in a 1/3 our populations worth of colonists, yet we fearcely rezist and bite. You can make us speak russijan (Ive not spoken it in 2 years and Im no the only one) but you cant make us not speak latviski.
As an Italian it’s pretty sad that you didn’t even mentioned us :/ In piedmont we have some Occitan speaking villages , with linguistic autonomy too . also , the Provençal troubadour greatly influenced the Italian language (via stil novo ) Great video btw
@@bromomento1 a mix of both , historically it has always been centralist but since the Italian state is really young the various cultures weren’t really affected by centralism , centralism still remains in Italy but after ww2 there is more of a compromise between centralism and federalism (and just last year a law was passed to make the regions more autonomous from the central government)
@@novogliadinome Nice, in your opinion the regional dialects are getting stronger or wearker? also if i could ask (am a researcher) how big is the animosity with the ex two sicilians italians?
And here i was as a german and thought only we (between france and germany) had so many dialects. Ha! France you made fun of us for that. Now its time for operation "dialect" bringing back all the french dialects! THEN THEY CAN SHUT THEIR SUPIRIORITY COMPLEX!
I have grown beyond upset with French as a language due to... It basically ruined English... I notice what is spoken on the net vs in person has diverged enough to be barely understood at times. I notice the accent where book is pronounced with ö like swedish, and a+ nasals often make the vowels round with enough to cause confusion. Like if wanting to say whale vs well. You better know the intonation or it is funny... The R is being slowly closer to spanish.
I wished would could remove French influence in English orthography to make it much closer to German, Swedish, or Norwegian. Also J should be used like ANY GERMANIC TONGUE.
@@glaswegianresistance In Germany and Italy they call regional languages "dialects". Most german "dialects" are absolutletly languages in their own right. It's quite an obsolete denomination but not completly incorrect.
You made some mistakes I want to point out as a Frenchman. The ordonnance of Villers-Cotterêts, in 1539, asked the people working for justice to write in « French maternel tongue ». This is difficult to translate but it doesn’t specify « the Parisian French » as the language, but it could another « French langage » (tourangeau, picard, Normand, bourguignon, comtois, orléanais…). This édit wasn’t done at all to aim at regional langages, but to replace Latin who was spoken by way too few people. And even if after this edit we saw a rise of French langage, it was only in judiciary official documents. In 1789, only 15% of French people spoke « Parisian » French as their native language. The last problem is that you speak of Occitan as an united langage… and it’s not. Like langue d’Oïl have many variants (comtois, bourguignon, gallo, etc) langue d’oc too is diverse : auvergnat, limousin, Roussillon, béarnais, etc.
I appreciate the clarification. I admit that when looking at history in broad strokes, I'm guilty of simplifying and grouping things into one. Next time my spotlight falls upon France, I'll do my best to clear that up. :)
En 1789 ça ne serait définitivement pas un Français Parisien, c’était le Français Royal, de la cour, depuis peu établi à Versailles. À Paris la diphtongue « oi » étaient prononcées [wa] contrairement au Français courtisan prononçant [wɛ].
Although they have different dialects, Occitan is one language as is Spanish with it's hundreds of dialects. I've been learning Occitan and yeah they're different but just as different as an Argentinian is to a Chilean.
Hey i'm from the alpes and learned occitan at school. Loved the fact that someone from a clearly inferior country such as england talks about occitan! Just some clarifications on some info that was skipped or missing since it's a subject even french people don't really know, i don't blame you. First off, the monarchy didn't want to kill occitan, it wanted to streamline the administration and allow more control from the king to the other regions, that's what villers cotterets did. The peasants were not discouraged talking their language by any mean, in fact the king prefered it that way as it made it harder for the people to unite against the king, since before the revolution, there has been many revolts, some date back to the "jacqueries" in the 100 years war. When we take that into account that also explain the measures took under the republic, it wasn't a cultural genocide for the sake of it, it was a way to strenghen revolutionary ideals and make them spread easier, with of course still a healthy dose of hate for the province which was considered under educated and developed by paris. only by the jules ferry period did occitan and regional languages started to really be opressed. But that didn't last forever. What killed occitan wasn't that though, it only need globalisation and medias. When there is national television, films that won't spend the budget to accomodate a minority of the country's language and you add the internet and startup era which promoted english as a must have 2nd language, then there is not much room left for regional languages anymore. It's not an india situation where a regional language is spoken by tens of millions of people, when the absolute numbers are small then it's hard to make a language live in the modern age. Anyway, great video, i hope people more people will find it and maybe some others could do a more detailed and accurate version!
The idea that Occitan is the language and culture of the "minority" while French is the "national" language (ironically, Occitan used to be more widespread than French in all of France) is by itself imperialist and cultural genocidal. Which is why the groups who push for Occitan the most are Occitan nationalists. Since the modern model of nation state doesn't accommodate for them, they don't want to be forever restrained to the status of "minority" in their own lands.
If this were the case, Occitan wouldn't be thriving in the parts of the nation that weren't occupied by France (like Val d'Aran, the ONLY place where it's still widely spoken), also, French wouldn't also be the main language of instruction and media in most of West Africa. Yeah, that's definitely a natural process! 🙃 Everyone knows that people living in Perpinyà definitely don't live literally next to Barcelona and so have a bigger insentive to speak Catalán! Everyone also knows that West Africa is literally next to Paris and so they really need to speak French! Definitely nothing to do with colonialism...
Television and movies could be totally made in the languages and cultures of ALL ethnic groups of France, not only of the one of the biggest group that resides around the capital, but the French supremacist and Occitan denialist ideology definitely prevented that.
@@gamermapper that's true, i left out the colonialism mindset but it was also part of what killed that. My point is that it wasn't made just out of sheer hate, it was a very cynical choice that was carried over by multiple regimes for very different reasons and all led to the sad state of regional languages in france today. I see it more like a way to achieve a bigger goal (it wasn't colateral damage though it was indeed intentional to destroy regional languages just a case of killing two birds with one stone), one that i don't like rather than cultural genocide. the end result is similar though and i agree with everything you said
Thanks for the video! From Brazil, I had a trip from Barcelona to Marseille and Occitane interested me a well! I hope the language keep its traditions!
Since 2010, there have been many efforts to push regional dialects back in schools. You can now learn Occitan in schools. And i'm almost certain the Occitan translation on street signs is not for tourism but was an act of political defiance permitted in the 1980s with the devolution of the French government and the regionalization effort to de-centralize France's political system. So it's not all grim, though I can reassure every one of you by stating that most French people see the disappearance of regional dialects as a disaster and all recent presidents from Mitterand to Macron have stated they would support conservation and preservation of said languages.
"You can now learn Occitan in schools" If you live right in the middle of a big city maybe, but I was born in the countryside not too far from Tolosa and I never even had the option to learn Occitan
Well politicians say a lot but do little. I speak a minority language from Spain that it's not official but on paper it is "supported" and "offered in schools". I've never had the option to learn it at my school and I don't know what they mean by "support". Anyway, it's good that they are making signs in Occitan, it's better than nothing.
They introduced some extremely small token measures to be able to claim that they still try to "save" the language, treated as a fossil for tourists and literally worse than foreign languages. There's literally nothing being done to stop the French linguistic and cultural hegemony. That's why in rural areas where Occitan might still be natively spoken, all the schools are still in French. But of course it's available in universities, for all the smart folks who are into linguistics!
Given godlike powers I would give Elzas to Germany and Crosica to Italy in exchange for Waloonia and the Chanel ilands. But I would not cut the country in half.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 Alsace according to the population is more French than German nowadays (especially after the trauma of WW2) and Corsica have been bought to the Italian kingdom, fare and square. The peoples of thoses 2 regions are important to the "French culture" more than you probably think of
I actually never knew Occitania existed, pretty sad that the culture and language is endangered of being extinct and I hope for the best for the occitanians. I do have an idea for an video, what if you do an video about Brittany? It has an Celtic culture. Just like Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man and Cornwall.
Moi je suis occitan (du Vigan) et nous sommes assez fiers de notre identité culturelle, en option il y a l'occitan et plus de LCA (langues et cultures de l'Antiquité) la langue est assez valorisée dans notre coin des Cévennes, et ça aurait été cool de mettre les sous titres en occitan
I did NOT expect to ever see an English video about my culture and language It's a very nice video, I could add some small details and corrections, but it's not that relevant in the grand scheme of things. What I will add is that our language can definitely be saved ! We make efforts to revitalise it and teach it to the new generations, as long as we keep going we can endure !
Great video! Unfortunately there's a small mistake: the picture you show with the inscription "Soyez propres, parlez français" (Be clean, speak french) comes from Aiguatèbia i Talau (Ayguatébia - Talau) which is a village in Northern Catalonia where the catalan language has been traditionally spoken, not occitan. Yes the Pyrénées - Orientales département is a part of the Occitanie administrative region but it's not culturally occitan (except for the Fènolheda).
Hello ! Good video and surprisingly good pronunciation ! I have a little comment, «Occitània» is not an actual thing, so much as a category of things; it is in fact much more regional in its nature - as an example, I, a provençal have had some difficulties talking to another «occitan» from Bordèu, and the dialects of lemosin and auvèrnhat may also be a bit challenging, however, I have had greater ease with communicating with some italians, particularly piedmontese - and on the other side, I can imagine that a gascon would have greater ease talking with a catalan. It is in fact a lingual continuum, the «missing link» between castilian, italian, and the oïl languages ! The bilingual signs are not just there for tourists, and people in my village get offended when one would pronounce the village's name as the french orthography would suggest, so I have the sense that the bilingual signs are as much there to remind ourselves about our own heritage and particularity. We are still around ! Perhaps not so much in the big cities, perhaps not thriving, but I have some optimism :3
Thank you!! I've gotten a few comments like this from a few folks, and I always really really appreciate it! It makes me genuinely really happy to know that a lot of what I said about the road signs and such was just me being overblown. I made this video from a place of perceived empathy and solidary with the state of the Occitan culture/cultural group. I admit that I certainly got a fair bit wrong, and certain bits were certainly embellished a little for the narrative, and it's really nice to see folks (like yourself) from the region engaging with the video and filling me and everybody else in on the topic! :3
In the words of Jaume Corbera Pou: The self-proclaimed country of the "human rights" will then ignore one of man's most fundamental rights, the right to be himself and speak the language of his nation.
I truly hope Occitan will be able to revive from the ashes. Such as Irish, now that people are capable to see or be aware that it exists and it it a unique part of France, it should revive. A beautiful area with a beautiful culture and language. 🙂↕️
As a native Irish speaker I must agree. when I was in school mo muinteor "teacher ' was a Christian Brother. He taught us that there were different dialects of French. Thirty years ago. Le langue d'Oc was the one he was most familiar with. When I finally got to Le sud and started hanging out and talking to locals the people from London could not grasp how I was able to converse freely although with a Dublin accent and pretty rough pronunciation. I just got back from le Midi today and it is true what you say it is becoming one wash of caighdean "standardised" French. Although French is a beautiful language it is its diversity that makes it alluring. anyway mes deux cent, mo dha phingin
@@AndrewMFAult south of france was gallos iberian territory i have part of my dna in wegene as french south so, my closest populations are spanish french swiss austrian north italians bulgarians romanians kosovars , we are the cisalpine gaLLOS
0:36 as a lorrainian i know that we only got annexed by the french in 1766. In the meantime we may or may not have help shutting down the burgundians...
1:29 That flag is not our flag, but the Catalan independence movement's, more specifically that one in Catalonia, and hence doesn't include other catalan territories like Valencia, Eastern Aragon, the Balearic Islands... Now, with that said, glory to our brother nation. At the beginning of the 1900s, some catalan intellectuals defended an idea they called the "lemosin language" which combined Catalan and Occitan. As long as there's will, occitanoromanity won't die.
Thank you!! You'd be surprised, actually! The algorithm's been really running with this video as of late, the view count's sextupled this last month alone :)
@@Embur Awesome to hear! The channel for sure deserves the recognition, I checked out a few other videos too, excellent work! I especially loved the Leeds vid!
as a Languedocian Occitan, I'm a tad surprised by the simplification of the video, but I guess it's necessary for speaking of the case of Occitania to most people, I would personally have go for the various regional differences between Occitan's dialects, like how Limousin's Occitan sound like us from Languedoc, but worse, and about the erasement of Occitan, I'd say it really started by 1880, and the Third Republic's oppressive laws and mesures, mainly of Jules Ferry, which aimed to destroy regionalism for the sake of a unified national France, ready to strike to Germany for revenge in the period, which eventually paid off in 1918... But it also killed regional diversity, Occitan is now almost extinct, and the reluctant "mesures" taken by the french government by principle won't save it. Basically, there was never really a national sentiment in Occitania, sure the people wanted to speak theirs languages, obviously, but separate from France ? It was not really worth it at the time, Occitania is mainly a rural area, and the french nationalism has overwhelmed the Occitan nationalism before it could even appears, in opposite to places like Corsica or Brittany. In conclusion, I would say the chances of an Occitan language coming back on the scene are low, really low, and Occitan is going to be reminded as one of the pillars of Medieval culture and romanticism, through notoriously the Troubadours, but it's only gonna be a pretty ashes from the past, which disappears especially with the Crusade against the Cathares around 1200, which made the region suffer 20 years of bloody conflict, and most importantly destroyed the Occitania's golden age, which losted it's autonomy from the crown in the same moment. I can recommend a notorious author who tried to promoted the occitan's language in his time, specifically the provencal branch, his native region since it's Frédéric Mistral, with his masterpiece of a poem called "Mirèio", The tragic story of a poor young girl getting on a journey through terrible conditions, to find back her dear lover, and it's amazingly well written, the only litterature piece writted in a "minority" language to receive a Nobel prize, in 1904, the next one of this kind of litterature "minority" piece being attributed in 1978, it deserved to be checked out no ? Phew, that was a way too long comment, I hope many who fall onto this comment check some of the stuff I ranted about, especially "Mirèio" because it's really a masterpiece of it's time. Merce per la lectura, e coma lo dise Frédéric Mistral, « Lou soulèu me fai canta ».
Great video! A note about Hebrew though, hebrew never went "extinct". It was practiced and learned and was in use continually since ancient times, but it was simply used mostly in religous contexts and it was frowned upon to use it for day to day speech. This changed in the early 20th century, but only in areas that would eventually become israel. It is still only a ceremonial language for many relugous jews outside of israel, qnd is only distantly familiar to non religious jews who aren't Israelis.
Well it was still extinct, extinct means there are no native speakers, but many extinct languages are still used in religious or technical contexts. Like Latin or Coptic.
Hmmm Ur vids are getting recommended to me, which means that its good quality content, which is true, good vid Based 🔥🔥 As french irl frog i find it sad how much culture wzs erased following the intense centralisation after the 17th century, i feel like a german approach would be better (language preservation), but also mandatory regional language courses or at least available in school would help and stopping the push for a single *_parisian_* french identity like today cuz french is constituated of multiples peoples and cultures (like germany, _"Multiculti"_ )
I'd heard of occitania before this, but this was a really good in depth explanation of it !! what happened 2 it's real tragic, glad that it's somehow survived into the 21st century !
Of note is that in the 3 musceteers the forth musceteer is from the south and seen as a bit of a hillbilly by those arround him and he does indeed in the original text speak french in a non northern way.
yeah in Northern Catalonia (Roussillon/Rosselló) and other places of France in schools kids were punished for speaking "patois" (with humiliation punishments) and even some schools haven't erased the marking on walls (to not forgot it i guess) saying stuff like "Soyez propres, parlez français".
Why does this remind me so much of "brain4breakfast" (god bless his soul) (Edit) Just saw the 2 year review video. I wish that more people were like you and took up his writing and editing style after his death. Since after all he was one of the best country/polandball creators of all time.
@@Twasforthevine bcs were the republicans who wanted to erased the autonomies of the kingdom and perpetrated the first sistematic genocide of the modern era, lovely.
It is also worth noting that the Albigensian Crusades, which took part in Occitania, that also severly impacted the culture and languages of the region in a negative way.
The whole "Arabic poetry brought in from Spain" thing is a lie designed to undermine accomplishment of Europeans by giving the credit to others. Plus, Occitan doesn't sound a thing like any type of Arabic.
Instead of Occitans leaving Occitania like before, we have the opposite now, because there's a lot of french people from other regions coming to live here, mostly because of Airbus I would guess. Also great video !
If that happened in Eastern Europe, especially with Russians coming in, nationalists would claim its ethnic cleansing and purposeful dilution of culture through demographics. But as we all know, if it's in Western Europe, it's fair game.
your video is great but i think the border of occitania near the atlantic coast is a bit more south, you may have taken the old borders before saintonge was "oïl-anized" a couple of centuries ago
Very similar to the Galicians in Spain. Great video, love to see people not normalizing historical truths like the cultural genocides done by the European Nation-states in their process to be the hegemonic power in the land they claimed for themselves ❤
You deserve so much more subscribers Also I don’t know if you intentionally used Pokémon XY OSTs because Kalos portrayed France but if that’s the case Well done
As someone who has Morisco roots, I really hope you cover how Muslims influenced local cultures in western europe or what they called (Al Andalus) ( Also to clarify that moriscos indeed are native iberians who converted to Islam , not Berbers nor Arabs) AND your videos are really unique you gained a sub+
@@Uhhhidkwhattochoose The ones who ruled were the arab minority not the ibarian muslism, that was the whole problem with the umayyads to begin with. And the Muslims only ruled parts of the peninsula, the emirate only endure like 2 centuries, taifas were mostly cucked by dudes like the cid.
Rhank you for talking about Langue d'Oc. However, Occitnia is not a nation and can't be conpared to basque or breton. Basque and breton are linguistic isolat (which mean that we are not able to link these langage to any other langage in the area). Basques and bretons feels basque and breton and some of them even want autonomy/independance. Occitania on its side is "just" a linguistic era were people used to talk the same langage (with strong local dialects) like the Lange d'Oïl era. It was always divided in distinct political space that you have described here (Duchy of Aquitaine, Toulouse county, etc.) that had their own agenda, etc. And as you say Occitania is a recent concept, I am pretty sure that no people in south of France felt more occitanian than aquitanian, tolosan, etc. or later french. Also to male sure that there is no confusion : the french republic didn't targetted specificaly occitan. The monarchy maintained the langage diversity as it keep the people divided and thus less likely to overthrow the regime. As a result the revolutionary work on the linguistic unification of France to make every citizen equal, which affected every regional langage and dialect. We can just pitty that they tried to tatalky eradicate these la gages instead of just making them secondary. And all we can do now is to try to revove the occitanian langage.
The French revolution didn't make everyone equal, they imposed the language and culture of one ethnic group onto others, pretending this is THE universal and neutral culture. Not sure they'd support it if Arabic was the one chosen to be the "national" language.
Occitania even has its own distinct Jewish regional group which is different from the mainstream Ashkenazim and Sephardim of France. The Jews of Provence and Languedoc. They spoke Occitan (Provençal) and had their own traditions. In the 14th century, they were forced to flee like all Jews in France, but they fled to Comtat Venaissin (a part of Provence not controlled by France yet but by the Pope). Which is why afterwards they were known as the Comtadins. So as such they're one of the oldest and most unique group of Jews.
It’s pretty sad how in all these “shattered Europe”, alt-history maps where supposedly every nation is free, Occitania is never shown, proving the success of the French government’s project. I feel very proud to be Spanish thanks to the fact that even after a harsh dictatorship, we were able to revitalize those languages that were endangered in the past. Not all of course, like asturleonese (the most relevant to me), but my point still stands.
I get that it's a shame that the language died however they are a part of France and they fought for that over a 1000 years for it to stay that way they are as french as the others and for the most part do not want independance (unlike the corsicans for example)
The only good thing about the Bri'ish and Fr*nch having this much of a rivalry is that they can point out every single thing the other did that was bad, and can point out every single thing that they did that was good, therefore keeping the history of both fully intact.
I suppose this is where I have to break the bad news to you that I’m generally quite the France apologist! I just like to make fun of the rivalry every now and then :)
@@Embur This isn't bad news, I actually think the hatred is quite dumb since the Brits were expelled from modern France. I am also 'Murican (from the U.S.), so I make fun of stereotypes that don't make anyone feel bad.
Friedrich Engels, the friend of Karl Marx, literally compared the "Provençal nation" (name used for all Occitan back then) to Poland under Russian occupation. Yet people pretend that the idea of the Occitans as a nation is something new and a rewriting of history lmao. Check out what he had to say lmao. He literally said that Occitània used to be more developed than France back then.
Amazing video, the cultural minorities of France are a very intresting topic, personally, I simpatize with the Bretons and Occitans and their languages. Also, the moment I heard Roundabout, instant like. How didn't I found your channel earlier?
Honestly this is france in all the regions it has ruled. Even Belgium, right after its independence, took over this policy and forced French on both Walloons and Flemings. The Walloons became homogenous french quickly because it's dialect was basically french with dutch/german syntaxis. The Flemings, as the cultural majority of the country and certainly the north, have successfully demanded recognition for their language and this has been turned from a struggle for recognition to a struggle for more autonomy since the 20th century. The seperatist movement however has gotten a very bad name especially among older generations as a far-right group, due to historical collaboration with the Germans of some Flemish nationalists with the invading Germans and because of some politicians still in politics who were petitioning for nuremberg laws around the 90's. Among the younger generation their seperatist party has become more popular, I wouldn't say it's necessarily due to them being racist but it is more likely due to estrangement with current political issues and the since that the north is financially holding up the South and Brussels.
Formerly French colonies in Africa all speak French, often even decades after independence they still believe that it should be the only official and written language and all their indigenous languages are inferior.
Jule ferry did durty on all région outside of paris, because they had their own dialect or langages, i find that sad At least corsican it still kicking, tough if they try to outlaw it, they will probably get blown up by the indépendantistes
Hi, actual "Occitan" here, thanks for making this video about us !
And if you may, I've got some stuff to say about the perspective of the events you've presented in your video...
The first is that we're not really a nation, I can understand that you'd use this term for the sake of simplicty for teaching which isn't a bad thing, but we're french and not less than anyone else in this country for any reason, sure, we can be proud of our culture and language, and we are pretty much are, but that doesn't have to interfere with our national identity as french. I'm saying this so that people may understand that we're not a totally separated people who 'seek to be freed from french oppression' or whatever (I'm not implying that's what you meant, but I just wanted to precise it considering it's a way that misinformed people could interpret it.). That also means that we're not really feeling 'Occitan' first. We're french, and we also have our regional identities which can also be pretty strong (Aquitanian/Gascon, Languedocien, Provençal...etc), it doesn't mean we have no pride in our culture, but personally I'd say Occitanian identity isn't really something that you have passively and that you think of telling people if they ask where you come from, but it's really something that is lived in action, through the language and culture which is really something I love about it ^^
The second is about the reasons of the 'decline' of Occitan.
We're not an oppressed minority or something like that, the french government isn't tracking occitan speakers and shutting our culture down... We're not Xinjiang...
The reality is that the only reason for supposed "decline" of occitan today is apathy.
Basically, today no one is actually trying to kill regional languages and I'd even say that the tendency is rather towards encouraging their growth ! However, the reality is that even though everyone supports it, it doesn't mean much is done about it, most people just see it as vaguely good and not that useful if not useless for the most insensitive. Most people never learn occitan or regional languages in general (although that depends on the region). There is just no large enough citizen or political engagement to really carry an important revival, although I wouldn't be pessimistic about it... Let me explain, you said that Occitan was the language of the elderly but even that may not be entirely true anymore, at least in my family, the last generation who spoke occitan from their heritage is alreday dead since years ago, it was my great-grandparents who I didn't even know that my dad told me that they still knew Occitan, but that means we did hit the lowest point we could, occitan had disappeared from my family but I'm learning it on night class in university, which means it can only grow from there ! Continuing with my exemple, we could imagine that someday I'll have kids of my own and that if I'm good enough, I might teach them occitan and that it could re-develop from here ! That's why I believe even if it is considered endangered it's not going to dissapear anytime soon, because whatever the state of it there's always foing to be people who will wanna preserve their culture, especially since we're talking about a territory comprising a third of France ! Which means even in a terrible scenario where only 1 person out of a thousand knows Occitan there's still going to be 20 000 people who know it (honestly I didn't check the numbers but I guess it's about that). Hoping that it will be better than that, and, I can't know what will happen, but I really wanna do my part in it !
Well, I've pretty much told you everything I wanted to about this fascinating subject, hoping you'll be satisfied by my quite long rant from a guy who happens to have started to learn occitan a few moths ago, motiavted by proud in his origins and hope for the future !
De còr et d'òc ! Cara amiga ^^
Hey hey! There's definitely only so much I can say without actually having any first-hand accounts to work with, so I really really appreciate all the info you've given here!
It's really cool to see that you're trying to stay in touch with your roots, it's something a lot more people ought to do! I hope there's enough resources out there for you to fully support that. :)
Uh oh, Parisian imperialist bot spotted… Occitania liura !!!! ❤💛👊
what no historical materialism does to a mf
@@glaswegianresistance Occitania Liura!
You have been brainwashed by the French occupator.
Occitania Liura.
apparently the french revolutionaries also made sure the people in french flanders didn't speak dutch anymore either
yeah and basically with anyone who didnt speak parisian french, so same with brezhoneg, arpitan, basque, elsassisch
there is no French Flanders...
just Chez Les Ch'tis
@ Google it, you not recognizing it doesn’t do anything
B-but… I thought le French Revolution was progressive and wholsomerino!
holy shit I love them even more now
Hey I am Occitan, born in the Languedoc region around Tolosa. I never got to learn Occitan in school because very few high schools even have the option to learn occitan, and I can't find anything online to learn it. We really should make a collaborative Duolingo-like platform for minority languages because sadly cases like Occitan are present all around the world
It would be really cool to see something like that for smaller languages
I mean Discord servers exist but a single person gathering and learning resources is much less efficient than a worldwide effort to promote minority languages and organize resources for such a project
@@jck956 Yeah, especially since I might be able to learn it given I'd just have to find an Occitan speaker willing to teach me or something, but someone living in New York for example probably has no way of learning it.
There exists something similar called Duostories, I myself contributed by making the courses for my minority native language (Asturian), I think they have Occitan too.
Duolingo USED to support such collaborative projects. At least later it got some of the smaller languages back after they got removed due to a change in business model. But many didn’t come back and more stopped being worked on.
Stuff like Guarani, Haitian Creole, Xhosa used to be available. And lots of Indian and European languages got cut short after the community languages hatchery was shut down.
Occitan was available to learn through catalan in Duolingo, it got erased
2:40 oh you left out the most strange of the latin languages:daco-romanian,more commonly known as romanian.
Theres also aromanian, and romansh, and corsican...
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714
Yes romance language are hell-a-lot
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 don't forget Istriot, Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian and Sardinian
Adieu, actual actual Occitan here. This is such a great video explaining Occitania. I, an occitan, (the better ones, my mother town is Toulouse) is proud to have such rich culture which influenced the world.
Adieu-siatz!
en español Adios its like good bye
Em português é Adeus. É lindo como Occitano é uma ponte entre as línguas românicas, todo mundo consegue entender um pouco dela
@@igorlopes7589 Entendí casi todo
Greetins from your brothers on the other side of the Pyrenees. Adéu-siau!❤
unjustifiably underrated
The Burgundians you mention early on in the video were never really an ethnic group or nation seperate from the mainline french unless youre refering to the old germanic burgundian culture that went extinct in the 6th century which is before the creation of france
« Et n’est pas chose estrange et nouvelle que ledict conte de Bourgogne ait seignourie souverainne… car le pays et nacion de Bourgongne a eu de grande ancienneté royaume qui contenoit et s’extendoit en long dès la rivière du Rhin, qu’est es parties d’Allemainne, jusques à Arles le Blanc, qui est es parties de la mer devers Marseilles… » (ADC, B262), cité par Richard J., « Les débats entre le roi de France », art. cité, p. 120.
That being declared with the authority of Phillip the Good - Lord of the Burgundians - towards the Kingdom of France. The Burgundian States were declared distincts of the French Kingdom in 1471 following what he argue to be a breach to the treaty of Péronne signed three years earlier.
So there’s a decent ambiguity in there. And that can perhaps be deduced when in the « Faits des Romains » written around 1213-14 the author make the precision : « messager borguegnon ou francois tot est un ».
How old is even the “mainline”? It would be very cool to learn how historians tell cultures apart when they just have peasants and not nobles or broad strokes using languages or religions
Correct, however the level of autonomy and the allegiances it had during the 14th and 15th centuries, I could imagine they could have become a nation state if things had turned out differently.
Franco-provencial where a seperate people tho.
They weren’t that different from the Parisians but they still had a dialect and culture
It’s literally so criminal that such a well-made video only received 800 viewers. You just got yourself a new subscriber
All i got to sing to that is: I saw the wolf, the fox and the hare. All three circling around the tree. They where circling around the sprouting bush.
Ai vista lop
Lo rainard, la lebre
This happened to my people. I’m Egyptian, and our Coptic language, culture and religion were all massacred by the Arabs.
So are you a Coptic speaker?
There is no end of history, any as long as you still draw breath any trend can be reversed.
@@emperorofgondar No, the language is dead, and there is huge backlash against even writing it anywhere.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 I wish… I hope we get our land back…
@frixxer87 Literally dead like next to no speakers? That actually sucks...their only crime was being there first
Hello, Québécois here, I absolutely enjoyed this!!
There is a lot of language conflicts in my country, be it from misunderstanding of the pressure and influence one language might have over another or the language laws that can either be there to counter these pressures or as it was used in the past serve to assimilate a population (as what happened to French speaking populations outside of Québec, or to the aboriginal populations on this continent). To my knowledge, I do not have Occitan ancestors, my family came from the north of France 3-4 centuries ago, but that story tells a tale I understand and that is absolutely fascinating: Little dynamics of how "language management" is ultimately "culture management" and how it turned out elsewhere in the world.
Thanks
Calling the south the "midi" is still common today.
Reminds me of my own language - Belarusian. Killed off by oppression and nearly forgotten by its own people...
i mean, yall got joinked by the Russians
do you speak it?
@veeeen Yes, I do.
@@NičyparIVprove it
21 days till election. Maybe you can overthrow Lukašenko with Russija being preoccupied further south.
Also I dont get it. The Russijans tried to russify us latviešus too, Hruščov even sent in a 1/3 our populations worth of colonists, yet we fearcely rezist and bite. You can make us speak russijan (Ive not spoken it in 2 years and Im no the only one) but you cant make us not speak latviski.
As an Italian it’s pretty sad that you didn’t even mentioned us :/
In piedmont we have some Occitan speaking villages , with linguistic autonomy too .
also , the Provençal troubadour greatly influenced the Italian language (via stil novo )
Great video btw
Provence isn't Occitania
its italia a centralist republic or a federal like one?
@hrafneldr9086 yes it kinda is , it’s like saying piedmont isn’t padania
@@bromomento1 a mix of both , historically it has always been centralist but since the Italian state is really young the various cultures weren’t really affected by centralism , centralism still remains in Italy but after ww2 there is more of a compromise between centralism and federalism (and just last year a law was passed to make the regions more autonomous from the central government)
@@novogliadinome Nice, in your opinion the regional dialects are getting stronger or wearker? also if i could ask (am a researcher) how big is the animosity with the ex two sicilians italians?
And here i was as a german and thought only we (between france and germany) had so many dialects. Ha! France you made fun of us for that. Now its time for operation "dialect" bringing back all the french dialects! THEN THEY CAN SHUT THEIR SUPIRIORITY COMPLEX!
its not a dialect its a language in its own right
it is not a dialect it is a language + literally all languages are composed by a lot of dialects
I have grown beyond upset with French as a language due to... It basically ruined English... I notice what is spoken on the net vs in person has diverged enough to be barely understood at times. I notice the accent where book is pronounced with ö like swedish, and a+ nasals often make the vowels round with enough to cause confusion. Like if wanting to say whale vs well. You better know the intonation or it is funny... The R is being slowly closer to spanish.
I wished would could remove French influence in English orthography to make it much closer to German, Swedish, or Norwegian. Also J should be used like ANY GERMANIC TONGUE.
@@glaswegianresistance In Germany and Italy they call regional languages "dialects". Most german "dialects" are absolutletly languages in their own right. It's quite an obsolete denomination but not completly incorrect.
Note : A country and a nation are not the same thing. There are nation-states, stateless nations (such as the Occitans) and multinational countries.
2:18 - 2:30
What a genius made this part! Gave me a hard chuckle
You’re channel gives me nostalgia
You made some mistakes I want to point out as a Frenchman.
The ordonnance of Villers-Cotterêts, in 1539, asked the people working for justice to write in « French maternel tongue ». This is difficult to translate but it doesn’t specify « the Parisian French » as the language, but it could another « French langage » (tourangeau, picard, Normand, bourguignon, comtois, orléanais…). This édit wasn’t done at all to aim at regional langages, but to replace Latin who was spoken by way too few people.
And even if after this edit we saw a rise of French langage, it was only in judiciary official documents. In 1789, only 15% of French people spoke « Parisian » French as their native language.
The last problem is that you speak of Occitan as an united langage… and it’s not. Like langue d’Oïl have many variants (comtois, bourguignon, gallo, etc) langue d’oc too is diverse : auvergnat, limousin, Roussillon, béarnais, etc.
I appreciate the clarification. I admit that when looking at history in broad strokes, I'm guilty of simplifying and grouping things into one.
Next time my spotlight falls upon France, I'll do my best to clear that up. :)
En 1789 ça ne serait définitivement pas un Français Parisien, c’était le Français Royal, de la cour, depuis peu établi à Versailles. À Paris la diphtongue « oi » étaient prononcées [wa] contrairement au Français courtisan prononçant [wɛ].
Although they have different dialects, Occitan is one language as is Spanish with it's hundreds of dialects. I've been learning Occitan and yeah they're different but just as different as an Argentinian is to a Chilean.
Well all languages have variants there are no completly "united" languages, French, even Parisian French, included.
French also used to have variations, its just like the state gob was in Paris
Hey i'm from the alpes and learned occitan at school. Loved the fact that someone from a clearly inferior country such as england talks about occitan! Just some clarifications on some info that was skipped or missing since it's a subject even french people don't really know, i don't blame you.
First off, the monarchy didn't want to kill occitan, it wanted to streamline the administration and allow more control from the king to the other regions, that's what villers cotterets did. The peasants were not discouraged talking their language by any mean, in fact the king prefered it that way as it made it harder for the people to unite against the king, since before the revolution, there has been many revolts, some date back to the "jacqueries" in the 100 years war.
When we take that into account that also explain the measures took under the republic, it wasn't a cultural genocide for the sake of it, it was a way to strenghen revolutionary ideals and make them spread easier, with of course still a healthy dose of hate for the province which was considered under educated and developed by paris. only by the jules ferry period did occitan and regional languages started to really be opressed. But that didn't last forever. What killed occitan wasn't that though, it only need globalisation and medias. When there is national television, films that won't spend the budget to accomodate a minority of the country's language and you add the internet and startup era which promoted english as a must have 2nd language, then there is not much room left for regional languages anymore. It's not an india situation where a regional language is spoken by tens of millions of people, when the absolute numbers are small then it's hard to make a language live in the modern age.
Anyway, great video, i hope people more people will find it and maybe some others could do a more detailed and accurate version!
The idea that Occitan is the language and culture of the "minority" while French is the "national" language (ironically, Occitan used to be more widespread than French in all of France) is by itself imperialist and cultural genocidal. Which is why the groups who push for Occitan the most are Occitan nationalists. Since the modern model of nation state doesn't accommodate for them, they don't want to be forever restrained to the status of "minority" in their own lands.
If this were the case, Occitan wouldn't be thriving in the parts of the nation that weren't occupied by France (like Val d'Aran, the ONLY place where it's still widely spoken), also, French wouldn't also be the main language of instruction and media in most of West Africa. Yeah, that's definitely a natural process! 🙃 Everyone knows that people living in Perpinyà definitely don't live literally next to Barcelona and so have a bigger insentive to speak Catalán! Everyone also knows that West Africa is literally next to Paris and so they really need to speak French! Definitely nothing to do with colonialism...
Television and movies could be totally made in the languages and cultures of ALL ethnic groups of France, not only of the one of the biggest group that resides around the capital, but the French supremacist and Occitan denialist ideology definitely prevented that.
@@gamermapper that's true, i left out the colonialism mindset but it was also part of what killed that. My point is that it wasn't made just out of sheer hate, it was a very cynical choice that was carried over by multiple regimes for very different reasons and all led to the sad state of regional languages in france today. I see it more like a way to achieve a bigger goal (it wasn't colateral damage though it was indeed intentional to destroy regional languages just a case of killing two birds with one stone), one that i don't like rather than cultural genocide. the end result is similar though and i agree with everything you said
Thanks for the video! From Brazil, I had a trip from Barcelona to Marseille and Occitane interested me a well! I hope the language keep its traditions!
Since 2010, there have been many efforts to push regional dialects back in schools. You can now learn Occitan in schools. And i'm almost certain the Occitan translation on street signs is not for tourism but was an act of political defiance permitted in the 1980s with the devolution of the French government and the regionalization effort to de-centralize France's political system. So it's not all grim, though I can reassure every one of you by stating that most French people see the disappearance of regional dialects as a disaster and all recent presidents from Mitterand to Macron have stated they would support conservation and preservation of said languages.
Where would be some great resources in learning about these decentralization efforts?
"You can now learn Occitan in schools" If you live right in the middle of a big city maybe, but I was born in the countryside not too far from Tolosa and I never even had the option to learn Occitan
Well politicians say a lot but do little. I speak a minority language from Spain that it's not official but on paper it is "supported" and "offered in schools". I've never had the option to learn it at my school and I don't know what they mean by "support". Anyway, it's good that they are making signs in Occitan, it's better than nothing.
They introduced some extremely small token measures to be able to claim that they still try to "save" the language, treated as a fossil for tourists and literally worse than foreign languages. There's literally nothing being done to stop the French linguistic and cultural hegemony. That's why in rural areas where Occitan might still be natively spoken, all the schools are still in French. But of course it's available in universities, for all the smart folks who are into linguistics!
Just FYI at 8:18 you show a picture of Ayguatébia, which is in Rosselló, where they spoke Catalan, and not Occitan.
France: tries to erase Occitania
Britian in hoi4: want
I love how people carve up France in different cultures, but never Occitania.
Exactly, as if it was all uniform.
Given godlike powers I would give Elzas to Germany and Crosica to Italy in exchange for Waloonia and the Chanel ilands. But I would not cut the country in half.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 Dare I say based ?
There was no Occitan nationalism until after ww2
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 Alsace according to the population is more French than German nowadays (especially after the trauma of WW2) and Corsica have been bought to the Italian kingdom, fare and square. The peoples of thoses 2 regions are important to the "French culture" more than you probably think of
4:10 YOOOOO CK2 MUSIC!
I actually never knew Occitania existed, pretty sad that the culture and language is endangered of being extinct and I hope for the best for the occitanians.
I do have an idea for an video, what if you do an video about Brittany? It has an Celtic culture. Just like Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man and Cornwall.
I have a short video on Britanny! th-cam.com/users/shorts_5L9JlmT0zg
@@Embur Oh, I didn't know that, thanks for showing me the video :D
Fortunatly the occitania culture merged with the french one.
The only thing we should pitty is the disparition of the langage.
Moi je suis occitan (du Vigan) et nous sommes assez fiers de notre identité culturelle, en option il y a l'occitan et plus de LCA (langues et cultures de l'Antiquité) la langue est assez valorisée dans notre coin des Cévennes, et ça aurait été cool de mettre les sous titres en occitan
i wish Occitan became the dominate french language then it would be more intelligible with spanish portuguese and italian
Excellently made video, as soon as I saw the Yes logo I immediately subscribed 🤣👍
I did NOT expect to ever see an English video about my culture and language
It's a very nice video, I could add some small details and corrections, but it's not that relevant in the grand scheme of things.
What I will add is that our language can definitely be saved ! We make efforts to revitalise it and teach it to the new generations, as long as we keep going we can endure !
I wish Occitan language was the base for standard french, I really like the way it sounds.
Doing the colonizers uno flip xd
It couldn't have been the base for the standard of a different language
Great video! Unfortunately there's a small mistake: the picture you show with the inscription "Soyez propres, parlez français" (Be clean, speak french) comes from Aiguatèbia i Talau (Ayguatébia - Talau) which is a village in Northern Catalonia where the catalan language has been traditionally spoken, not occitan. Yes the Pyrénées - Orientales département is a part of the Occitanie administrative region but it's not culturally occitan (except for the Fènolheda).
Ah, gotcha! Thanks for the clarification :)
Hello ! Good video and surprisingly good pronunciation ! I have a little comment, «Occitània» is not an actual thing, so much as a category of things; it is in fact much more regional in its nature - as an example, I, a provençal have had some difficulties talking to another «occitan» from Bordèu, and the dialects of lemosin and auvèrnhat may also be a bit challenging, however, I have had greater ease with communicating with some italians, particularly piedmontese - and on the other side, I can imagine that a gascon would have greater ease talking with a catalan. It is in fact a lingual continuum, the «missing link» between castilian, italian, and the oïl languages !
The bilingual signs are not just there for tourists, and people in my village get offended when one would pronounce the village's name as the french orthography would suggest, so I have the sense that the bilingual signs are as much there to remind ourselves about our own heritage and particularity. We are still around ! Perhaps not so much in the big cities, perhaps not thriving, but I have some optimism :3
Thank you!! I've gotten a few comments like this from a few folks, and I always really really appreciate it!
It makes me genuinely really happy to know that a lot of what I said about the road signs and such was just me being overblown. I made this video from a place of perceived empathy and solidary with the state of the Occitan culture/cultural group. I admit that I certainly got a fair bit wrong, and certain bits were certainly embellished a little for the narrative, and it's really nice to see folks (like yourself) from the region engaging with the video and filling me and everybody else in on the topic! :3
AQUELLAS MONTANASSSSSSSS
Here's an actual occitan, awesome video!!!!!
very underrated :)
In the words of Jaume Corbera Pou: The self-proclaimed country of the "human rights" will then ignore one of man's most fundamental rights, the right to be himself and speak the language of his nation.
Occitania ist simply more roman less frank southern part of France
you mean gaul?
@@bromomento1 gauls were integrated and eventually became roman
Occitània is actually Latino like Italy and Spain, they should develop a Latino identity and seek closer co-operation with them
Occitània Liura! Freedom for Occitania! The time has come.
aquitanians are related to iberians that are germanic maily germanic celts of bavaria
I truly hope Occitan will be able to revive from the ashes. Such as Irish, now that people are capable to see or be aware that it exists and it it a unique part of France, it should revive. A beautiful area with a beautiful culture and language. 🙂↕️
As a native Irish speaker I must agree. when I was in school mo muinteor "teacher ' was a Christian Brother. He taught us that there were different dialects of French. Thirty years ago. Le langue d'Oc was the one he was most familiar with. When I finally got to Le sud and started hanging out and talking to locals the people from London could not grasp how I was able to converse freely although with a Dublin accent and pretty rough pronunciation. I just got back from le Midi today and it is true what you say it is becoming one wash of caighdean "standardised" French. Although French is a beautiful language it is its diversity that makes it alluring. anyway mes deux cent, mo dha phingin
Much of my French ancestry comes from Occitania, Haute-Vienne and Limousin. Really love this video.
mine too , i'm iberian portuguese
sorry my DNA
@@danythrinbell1596 Yeah I have moderate traces of Italian and Southern Europe in my DNA despite not having an Italian ancestor.
@@AndrewMFAult south of france was gallos iberian territory i have part of my dna in wegene as french south so, my closest populations are spanish french swiss austrian north italians bulgarians romanians kosovars , we are the cisalpine gaLLOS
Nice channel bro
0:36 as a lorrainian i know that we only got annexed by the french in 1766. In the meantime we may or may not have help shutting down the burgundians...
1:29 That flag is not our flag, but the Catalan independence movement's, more specifically that one in Catalonia, and hence doesn't include other catalan territories like Valencia, Eastern Aragon, the Balearic Islands...
Now, with that said, glory to our brother nation.
At the beginning of the 1900s, some catalan intellectuals defended an idea they called the "lemosin language" which combined Catalan and Occitan.
As long as there's will, occitanoromanity won't die.
Recently i found this channel. It is a treasure.
why am I only finding this 2 years later ??? this is so good what?
Great video! shame it got abandoned by the algorythm
Thank you!!
You'd be surprised, actually! The algorithm's been really running with this video as of late, the view count's sextupled this last month alone :)
@@Embur Awesome to hear! The channel for sure deserves the recognition, I checked out a few other videos too, excellent work! I especially loved the Leeds vid!
2:17... i was... not prepared xD
As a Francophile, I'm completly behind the last bit of the video, it's truly a shame. Long Live France, & Long Live Occatania
Occitania , is the true Gallia latina , the north is franks ( german culture)
as a Languedocian Occitan, I'm a tad surprised by the simplification of the video, but I guess it's necessary for speaking of the case of Occitania to most people, I would personally have go for the various regional differences between Occitan's dialects, like how Limousin's Occitan sound like us from Languedoc, but worse, and about the erasement of Occitan, I'd say it really started by 1880, and the Third Republic's oppressive laws and mesures, mainly of Jules Ferry, which aimed to destroy regionalism for the sake of a unified national France, ready to strike to Germany for revenge in the period, which eventually paid off in 1918... But it also killed regional diversity, Occitan is now almost extinct, and the reluctant "mesures" taken by the french government by principle won't save it.
Basically, there was never really a national sentiment in Occitania, sure the people wanted to speak theirs languages, obviously, but separate from France ? It was not really worth it at the time, Occitania is mainly a rural area, and the french nationalism has overwhelmed the Occitan nationalism before it could even appears, in opposite to places like Corsica or Brittany.
In conclusion, I would say the chances of an Occitan language coming back on the scene are low, really low, and Occitan is going to be reminded as one of the pillars of Medieval culture and romanticism, through notoriously the Troubadours, but it's only gonna be a pretty ashes from the past, which disappears especially with the Crusade against the Cathares around 1200, which made the region suffer 20 years of bloody conflict, and most importantly destroyed the Occitania's golden age, which losted it's autonomy from the crown in the same moment.
I can recommend a notorious author who tried to promoted the occitan's language in his time, specifically the provencal branch, his native region since it's Frédéric Mistral, with his masterpiece of a poem called "Mirèio", The tragic story of a poor young girl getting on a journey through terrible conditions, to find back her dear lover, and it's amazingly well written, the only litterature piece writted in a "minority" language to receive a Nobel prize, in 1904, the next one of this kind of litterature "minority" piece being attributed in 1978, it deserved to be checked out no ?
Phew, that was a way too long comment, I hope many who fall onto this comment check some of the stuff I ranted about, especially "Mirèio" because it's really a masterpiece of it's time. Merce per la lectura, e coma lo dise Frédéric Mistral, « Lou soulèu me fai canta ».
2:34 you forgot Dacia
The Romans had already lost Dacia by then.
Yes but this is a language map
Great video!
A note about Hebrew though, hebrew never went "extinct".
It was practiced and learned and was in use continually since ancient times, but it was simply used mostly in religous contexts and it was frowned upon to use it for day to day speech.
This changed in the early 20th century, but only in areas that would eventually become israel.
It is still only a ceremonial language for many relugous jews outside of israel, qnd is only distantly familiar to non religious jews who aren't Israelis.
Well it was still extinct, extinct means there are no native speakers, but many extinct languages are still used in religious or technical contexts. Like Latin or Coptic.
Hmmm
Ur vids are getting recommended to me, which means that its good quality content, which is true, good vid
Based 🔥🔥
As french irl frog i find it sad how much culture wzs erased following the intense centralisation after the 17th century, i feel like a german approach would be better (language preservation), but also mandatory regional language courses or at least available in school would help and stopping the push for a single *_parisian_* french identity like today cuz french is constituated of multiples peoples and cultures (like germany, _"Multiculti"_ )
you deserve far more views
0:08 especially the military retreat.
We've tried our best but nobody is better than England for retreating.
*Visca Occitània Liura!* ✊
LA LIBERTAT
un dubte, el movimente independentista occità és gaire potent? vaig intentar buscar informació pero no vaig trovar casi que res
nationalists if nationalists (one land for one people) were right: 😭
did bro just find the background of the wet dry world in mario 64
I'd heard of occitania before this, but this was a really good in depth explanation of it !! what happened 2 it's real tragic, glad that it's somehow survived into the 21st century !
Of note is that in the 3 musceteers the forth musceteer is from the south and seen as a bit of a hillbilly by those arround him and he does indeed in the original text speak french in a non northern way.
All of them are from the south.
As a French, I didn’t know the French government did this, I hope their language would be restored
The French gov did the first genocide in modern history, just look out for the Vandee wars
yeah in Northern Catalonia (Roussillon/Rosselló) and other places of France in schools kids were punished for speaking "patois" (with humiliation punishments) and even some schools haven't erased the marking on walls (to not forgot it i guess) saying stuff like "Soyez propres, parlez français".
Hello, the "oïl" from langue d'oïl is pronounced exactly like "oil" (petrol) in English.
No, the final « l » in French were pronounced /ʎ/ until the XIXth century and the « ï » is fractured from the precedent « o ».
Now if there's a background music I wasn't expecting in a video about European minorized peoples is Kalos route music
I knew that somethig as occetania existee but never truly know what it was, thank you for this video
Why does this remind me so much of "brain4breakfast" (god bless his soul)
(Edit)
Just saw the 2 year review video. I wish that more people were like you and took up his writing and editing style after his death. Since after all he was one of the best country/polandball creators of all time.
Never existed and never will we are French, keep your splitting regions for the Uk, Spain and Germany
It will, the vandeans will get theyre revenge
@@bromomento1The vendéen are royalists not independantist you scrub
@@Twasforthevine bcs were the republicans who wanted to erased the autonomies of the kingdom and perpetrated the first sistematic genocide of the modern era, lovely.
That's what Russia always said about Ukraine and Belarus too
Yeah definitely. Occitans and Bretons are just French and they don't exist. Same as Comorians from Mayotte? And Polynesians from Tahiti? 😂
The only way I knew about occitania is by hoi4 peace deals
Make a video on Bavaria/franconia please
It is also worth noting that the Albigensian Crusades, which took part in Occitania, that also severly impacted the culture and languages of the region in a negative way.
Of course, the mezzogiorno got bumped and the king got direct crontrol in the kingdom
I am a hoi4 player. I remember
animated geopolitical videods with nintendo game music
i am in love!
This is peak, please make this but for Sorbia
The name Occitania sounds like something out of an anime
The whole "Arabic poetry brought in from Spain" thing is a lie designed to undermine accomplishment of Europeans by giving the credit to others. Plus, Occitan doesn't sound a thing like any type of Arabic.
Instead of Occitans leaving Occitania like before, we have the opposite now, because there's a lot of french people from other regions coming to live here, mostly because of Airbus I would guess. Also great video !
If that happened in Eastern Europe, especially with Russians coming in, nationalists would claim its ethnic cleansing and purposeful dilution of culture through demographics. But as we all know, if it's in Western Europe, it's fair game.
*cough* Aquitanie *cough*
your video is great but i think the border of occitania near the atlantic coast is a bit more south, you may have taken the old borders before saintonge was "oïl-anized" a couple of centuries ago
I'm surprised the albigensian crusade was not mentioned
Very similar to the Galicians in Spain. Great video, love to see people not normalizing historical truths like the cultural genocides done by the European Nation-states in their process to be the hegemonic power in the land they claimed for themselves ❤
You deserve so much more subscribers
Also I don’t know if you intentionally used Pokémon XY OSTs because Kalos portrayed France but if that’s the case
Well done
Completely skipped over the comment (sorry!!) but yes, that was entirely deliberate :3
As someone who has Morisco roots, I really hope you cover how Muslims influenced local cultures in western europe or what they called (Al Andalus)
( Also to clarify that moriscos indeed are native iberians who converted to Islam , not Berbers nor Arabs)
AND your videos are really unique you gained a sub+
Los marranos?
@bromomento1 the ones who ruled the Iberian peninsula for 8 centuries🙌
@@Uhhhidkwhattochoose The ones who ruled were the arab minority not the ibarian muslism, that was the whole problem with the umayyads to begin with. And the Muslims only ruled parts of the peninsula, the emirate only endure like 2 centuries, taifas were mostly cucked by dudes like the cid.
Rhank you for talking about Langue d'Oc.
However, Occitnia is not a nation and can't be conpared to basque or breton.
Basque and breton are linguistic isolat (which mean that we are not able to link these langage to any other langage in the area). Basques and bretons feels basque and breton and some of them even want autonomy/independance.
Occitania on its side is "just" a linguistic era were people used to talk the same langage (with strong local dialects) like the Lange d'Oïl era.
It was always divided in distinct political space that you have described here (Duchy of Aquitaine, Toulouse county, etc.) that had their own agenda, etc. And as you say Occitania is a recent concept, I am pretty sure that no people in south of France felt more occitanian than aquitanian, tolosan, etc. or later french.
Also to male sure that there is no confusion : the french republic didn't targetted specificaly occitan.
The monarchy maintained the langage diversity as it keep the people divided and thus less likely to overthrow the regime.
As a result the revolutionary work on the linguistic unification of France to make every citizen equal, which affected every regional langage and dialect. We can just pitty that they tried to tatalky eradicate these la gages instead of just making them secondary. And all we can do now is to try to revove the occitanian langage.
The French revolution didn't make everyone equal, they imposed the language and culture of one ethnic group onto others, pretending this is THE universal and neutral culture. Not sure they'd support it if Arabic was the one chosen to be the "national" language.
Breton is not a linguistic isolat
@@ElGrochon Oh my bad
@@ParlonsAstronomieEt au passage, le basque et le breton sont hautement dialectalisés, tout comme l'occitan
0:39 Corsica ?
Occitania even has its own distinct Jewish regional group which is different from the mainstream Ashkenazim and Sephardim of France. The Jews of Provence and Languedoc. They spoke Occitan (Provençal) and had their own traditions. In the 14th century, they were forced to flee like all Jews in France, but they fled to Comtat Venaissin (a part of Provence not controlled by France yet but by the Pope). Which is why afterwards they were known as the Comtadins. So as such they're one of the oldest and most unique group of Jews.
Funny you say that, I made a TH-cam short about the language they spoke years ago!
It’s pretty sad how in all these “shattered Europe”, alt-history maps where supposedly every nation is free, Occitania is never shown, proving the success of the French government’s project. I feel very proud to be Spanish thanks to the fact that even after a harsh dictatorship, we were able to revitalize those languages that were endangered in the past. Not all of course, like asturleonese (the most relevant to me), but my point still stands.
Algun dia volveran las cortes y los reinos unidos de Hispania
ERMMMMM is that a YES reference???
Your answer is right there in the comment ;)
Don't forget about Alsace lorraine ! Elsass Frei !
I get that it's a shame that the language died however they are a part of France and they fought for that over a 1000 years for it to stay that way they are as french as the others and for the most part do not want independance (unlike the corsicans for example)
Reeducation worked wonders, Corsica Was buyed like seven or so years before Napoleon was born
3:02 eh, it's not really so simple
Now let’s talk about Wales 🏴 😊
The only good thing about the Bri'ish and Fr*nch having this much of a rivalry is that they can point out every single thing the other did that was bad, and can point out every single thing that they did that was good, therefore keeping the history of both fully intact.
I suppose this is where I have to break the bad news to you that I’m generally quite the France apologist! I just like to make fun of the rivalry every now and then :)
@@Embur This isn't bad news, I actually think the hatred is quite dumb since the Brits were expelled from modern France. I am also 'Murican (from the U.S.), so I make fun of stereotypes that don't make anyone feel bad.
Friedrich Engels, the friend of Karl Marx, literally compared the "Provençal nation" (name used for all Occitan back then) to Poland under Russian occupation. Yet people pretend that the idea of the Occitans as a nation is something new and a rewriting of history lmao. Check out what he had to say lmao. He literally said that Occitània used to be more developed than France back then.
Occitania never existed as a country like Poland was before Russian occupation.
How do I say viva la occiantia?
Occitania liura is common in graffitis etc (Free Occitania)
Viva Occitània, but as pointed out, Occitània liura is more common
Òsca Occitània! That's common too
Amazing video, the cultural minorities of France are a very intresting topic, personally, I simpatize with the Bretons and Occitans and their languages. Also, the moment I heard Roundabout, instant like. How didn't I found your channel earlier?
Honestly this is france in all the regions it has ruled. Even Belgium, right after its independence, took over this policy and forced French on both Walloons and Flemings. The Walloons became homogenous french quickly because it's dialect was basically french with dutch/german syntaxis. The Flemings, as the cultural majority of the country and certainly the north, have successfully demanded recognition for their language and this has been turned from a struggle for recognition to a struggle for more autonomy since the 20th century. The seperatist movement however has gotten a very bad name especially among older generations as a far-right group, due to historical collaboration with the Germans of some Flemish nationalists with the invading Germans and because of some politicians still in politics who were petitioning for nuremberg laws around the 90's. Among the younger generation their seperatist party has become more popular, I wouldn't say it's necessarily due to them being racist but it is more likely due to estrangement with current political issues and the since that the north is financially holding up the South and Brussels.
imperialist bot spotted
Formerly French colonies in Africa all speak French, often even decades after independence they still believe that it should be the only official and written language and all their indigenous languages are inferior.
Occitan are not a nation but they are a people and a culture that haven't really had a single state to call a nation.
Jule ferry did durty on all région outside of paris, because they had their own dialect or langages, i find that sad
At least corsican it still kicking, tough if they try to outlaw it, they will probably get blown up by the indépendantistes
There isn't an Occitan people. That's is our language group. I'm a Limousin.
Great video, from an actual Occitan, we realy don’t identify ourselves has a nation for a small correction in your speech