tony1164

Is Spanish spoken quite a bit as you appoach the south of France, or is it mostly Provencal spoken there?

Christina

Which part of France are you talking about, exactly, and where are you approaching from? I myself have never heard Spanish spoken in SOuthern France (except by a few Spanish tourists), but I've never heard actual Provencal dialect spoken, either. I have certainly heard Provencal accents, as some words are pronounced differently than in Paris, for example. But I've only heard standard French spoken as a matter of course in public, although there are certainly various ethnic groups and immigrants living all over and they may speak their own language in their areas or among themselves.

rex

I think there are some isolated pockets of (predominantly) Catalan speakers near Perpignan, but I bet that, in each such "pocket", French is spoken and understood at the 99% proficiency level also.

I've never heard anyone refer to any such similar occurrence of speakers of (Castellano) Spanish (or even Euskera) around Biarritz.

I can't imagine hearing Spanish spoken "on the street" in Provence.

Best wishes,

Rex

StCirq

No, Spanish isn't spoken anywhere in the south of France. If you get out to very rural areas anywhere in the south of France, though, you may hear Occitan or Provençal or Basque or Catalan (which are full-fledged languages, not dialects)spoken, depending on where in the south of France you are.

But Provençal isn't "mostly" spoken anywhere, even in Provence. I've only heard it at festivals and very rarely among really elderly people.

tony1164

It was just a general question. Thank You

blackduff

I live in the French Catalan area, almost to the border. My village is Catalan, my mayor is Catalan, and most of the people are Catalan. Yet, the language heard the most is French. There are some Spanish speaking people but they're usually born in Spain, even though they live in across the border.

I used to have a coffee in the morning and there was a large group of men who talked together. The language changed from French to Spanish to Catalan and back. This is often within a whole sentence. I couldn't understand the Catalan but since I knew the other languages, I could participate.

I still speak Spanish with a few other people daily. These people also speak French too.

It's fun having various languages.

Blackduff

Christina

interesting--some references say Provencal is a dialect, one of several dialects of Occitan, actually. I've also seen those two used to mean the same thing (Occitan and Provencal). I wouldn't recognize either one, probably.

I did a little research on this as I'm interested in languages and found that Occitan is used in some primary schools in those southern departments, although it's not common in secondary schools at all. It is taught in some secondary schools and universities. In the press, some newspapers include one page in Occitan per week (e.g. La Marseillaise) or an article in Occitan. There are twenty or so publications which use Occitan and which appear from twice to six times a year. The public authorities of Languedoc-Roussillon and of Midi-Pyrénées provide some financial aid for these publications.

No public radio stations broadcast in Occitan, and there are very few private radio stations in Occitan. The broadcasts on Radio Païs in Gascony are an exception. Occitan is only used in a few weekly TV programs on France 3 in its Midi-Pyrénées-Languedoc and Provence-Méditerranée regions. Private TV stations do not include Occitan programs except in very limited individual transmissions.

Only a small proportion of parents speak Occitan to their children, while in rural areas Occitan-speaking been dying out since the 1950s.

I didn't realize it was also spoken in Italy some, but this article said it was (Italy, France and the Aran Valley in Spain).