One woman made a point to sit to my left and in soft whispers translated the conversation into French for me. It is a region that has drawn humans to it for some , years.
I learned that Occitan was once the lingua franca of the south of France, and is best known as the language in which the troubadours sang. However, outside of official business and written documents such as marriage, death and birth certificates , much of daily life continued to be conducted far away from officialdom, and Occitan remained the language of the home, field and family.
Graham Robb, in his historical geography, The Discovery of France , noted that despite three centuries of efforts to make standardised French the language of all of France, in in the south of the country more than half the population remained non-French speaking.
But a little more than years ago at the turn of the 20th Century, the central government launched an aggressive campaign to extinguish any language that was not the standardised French. Occitan was forbidden to be taught in schools, and any children who used their mother tongue were punished, a practice that infused deep shame in many people.
Many older adults in the Dordogne still tell stories about being humiliated in school for speaking Occitan. The Dordogne region is rich with rivers that have deeply carved the soft and gold-toned limestone into caves and cliffs, fertile valleys and hilltop plateaus. It is an agricultural and herding region where traditional small-scale farming and animal-rearing practices persist. While official documents and government business were conducted in French from that point, Occitan continued to be spoken in homes and villages throughout southern France.
In the early 20th century, however, the French government launched a campaign to standardize language across the country, and as a result, Occitan was not permitted to be taught in schools.
Today, while Occitan has been an official language alongside Catalan since , it is still very much at risk in France. There may be as many as , speakers who consider this Romance language their mother tongue. The majority of native speakers, however, are part of the older generation who often refuse to speak Occitan with visitors because of centuries of shame and suppression.
The Occitan language has six recognized dialects:. As a Latin language, spoken Occitan does have sounds that are familiar to English speakers with one notable exception.
Occitan pronunciation includes a sound borrowed from French—the [y]. In addition to the main areas of Europe in which Occitan is spoken, there are vestiges of the language in scattered communities of immigrants in Germany, the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Mexico. Most speakers of Occitan also speak Spanish , French, or other languages of the region in which they reside.
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The best part? Gradually, however, French began to take hold, mostly because of the massive power and wealth of the French court which spoke French.
After the French Revolution, there were considerable attempts to have everyone speak the same language and local dialects lost support. Today, maybe 40 primary and secondary schools in France teach the language and the differences in the alphabet can be seen here.
It is believed that as many as 1. On the other hand, many new people are learning the language due to efforts to preserve the heritage and you can even study it at Oxford University.
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To allow us to provide a better and more tailored experience please click "OK". The region of Languedoc-Roussillon has taken a leading role in supporting the language. In it set up a language service together with the University of Montpellier to help set and maintain teaching standards. The Partit Occitan was established in in Toulouse to protect the Occitan language and identity and to campaign on regional issues such as employment and the environment.
The European Union, through the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, has provided funding for the creation of an electronic dictionary of Occitan in the Languedoc-Roussillon region, for teacher and school events, and for the assistance of the private sector Calendretas, Occitan-language nursery and primary schools.
The use of Occitan in family and social settings seems to be in continual decline, but its presence in literature, language courses and teaching materials, on radio, the internet and in cultural events is increasing. No official documents are published in Occitan and it cannot be used in law courts. It is used informally by some local administrations in contacts with Occitan-speakers. There are some public signs in Occitan. Occitan is used in some bilingual state schools as a medium of instruction at pre-primary and primary level.
The language is also taught, although rarely, as a subject in schools where French is the only language of instruction. The 67 calendretas are private nursery and primary schools which are bilingual in French and Occitan.
At state secondary level Occitan is offered as an optional subject. At university level, Occitan is used as a teaching medium in studies of Occitan language and literature. The language is also taught as a subject at university. Demonstrators were calling for the French government to enact the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and start officially recognising minority languages, such as Occitan.
A further issue appears to be a difference of opinion among activists concerning the language itself. While academics generally hold that Occitan is a single language, some activists feel that dialects such as Gascon along the Atlantic coast and Auvergnat near the Upper Loire should be recognized as separate languages.
Despite this worrying global situation, we reaffirm our commitment to safeguarding the rights of minority and indigenous communities and implementing indivisible human rights for all.
Sign up to Minority rights Group International's newsletter to stay up to date with the latest news and publications. Since August, MRG has been assisting Afghan minority activists and staff from our partner organizations as their lives and their work came under threat with the return of the Taliban.
We need your help. For the last three years, we at MRG have run projects promoting freedom of religion and belief across Asia. In Afghanistan we have fostered strong partnerships with amazing local organizations representing ethnic and religious minorities.
They were doing outstanding work, educating minority community members about their rights, collecting evidence of discrimination and human rights abuses, and carrying out advocacy. Not all have been able to flee. Many had no option but to go into hiding.
Some did not have a valid passport. Activists can no longer carry out the work they had embarked on. They can no longer draw a salary, which means they cannot feed their families. With a season of failed crops and a cold winter ahead, the future is bleak for too many. We refuse to leave Afghanistan behind. We are asking you today to stand by us as we stand by them. We will also use your donations to support our Afghan partners to pay their staff until they can regroup and make new plans, to use their networks to gather and send out information when it is safe to do so, and to seek passports and travel options for those who are most vulnerable and who have no option but to flee to safety.
Azadeh worked for a global organization offering family planning services. Standing for everything the Taliban systematically reject, Azadeh had no option but to flee to Pakistan. MRG is working with our partners in Pakistan to support many brave Afghans who have escaped Afghanistan because of their humanitarian or human rights work or their faith. They are now in various secure locations established by our local partners on the ground in Pakistan.
Although they are safer in Pakistan than Afghanistan, Hazara Shia and other religious minorities are also persecuted there. We need your help, to support those who put their lives on the line for basic human rights principles we all believe in: equality, mutual respect, and freedom of belief and expression. The situation on the ground changes daily as more people arrive and some leave. Aluminium mining in Baphlimali, India, has caused environment devastation and has wrecked the lifestyle of thousands of Adivasis.
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