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 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

apparently the french revolutionaries also made sure the people in french flanders didn't speak dutch anymore either

This happened to my people. I’m Egyptian, and our Coptic language, culture and religion were all massacred by the Arabs.

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.

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!

Calling the south the "midi" is still common today.

Note : A country and a nation are not the same thing. There are nation-states, stateless nations (such as the Occitans) and multinational countries.

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

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

Reminds me of my own language - Belarusian. Killed off by oppression and nearly forgotten by its own people...

The Villars-Cotteret decree did not prohibit the use of dialects in everyday life, but it did impose the use of French in administrative documents... It was only after the so-called French Revolution that speaking a dialect was considered a crime. We must not mix everything up...

2:40 oh you left out the most strange of the latin languages:daco-romanian,more commonly known as romanian.

Occitan's fall from grace in the Early Modern Era was precipitated mainly by two prior events: the Albingensian Crusade and the Hundred Years' War. The Cathars spoke it, as did the English Crown's loyalists in Aquitaine.

3:02 eh, it's not really so simple

Thank you so much for this video. It's essential.

I’m not going to comment to them directly, but someone saying “I’m French, there’s no Occitan identity counter to that, there’s no linguistic repression, but jeez I wonder why it’s isn’t useful to use in day to day life & hasn’t been spoken in generations” & it’s like my guy: your experience perfectly encapsulates the point of this video . There was a nascent Occitan nation developing, the French government saw this as a looming threat, so they decided to take action to thwart it. This individual’s perspective was the successful result of nearly 500 years of policy making designed to effectuate that view . There is a world where French & Occitan could’ve gone hand & hand with one another as brothers within a single country, but unfortunately the former strangled the latter at birth. French Catalonia was still Catalan speaking until it all but went extinct over the course of the 1800s. I’m very glad that south of the border Spain’s attempt to do the same to Catalan was not successful & that the language has rebounded (but this too is fleeting as more data comes in that the youth are discarding it). As others have pointed out Flemish was stamped out of French Flanders within a century too, and it’s not looking good for Breton or Alsatian German either (also pour one out for Francoprovençal, it’ll be extinct within our lifetime). What can be done to counter this? In short: implement the immersion & language of instruction model currently seen in Wales. I’m not sure how to end this, but man I mourn what has been lost, the potential for that that could’ve been. The fact that until relatively recently France ranked as having significantly worse minority linguistic rights than Iran, the People’s Republic of China, & Russia is not something to be proud of. I’ve said my piece.

It’s literally so criminal that such a well-made video only received 800 viewers. You just got yourself a new subscriber

cough Aquitanie cough

As a Provençal born next to Marseille, our local language the "Prouvencau" which is a "patois" of the langue d'oc, is practically completely dead today... Some high school propose Provençal courses in the Provence region to learn the old language, but nobody can talk in Provençal today, even the old people because of the politique of forbiden local dialect in school. It's very sad, the names of the cities and village and streets are written in French and Provençal to keep this heritage alive but this it all we've got today.. If you want to here the Provençal language, you can listen the traditional song "La Coupo Santo"