Occitano-Romance Languages

Occitano-Romance Languages

The Occitano-Romance (Catalan: llengües occitanoromàniques, Occitan: lengas occitanoromanicas) branch of Romance languages encompasses the dialects pertaining to the Occitan and the Catalan languages situated in France (Occitania, Northern Catalonia), Spain (Catalonia, Valencian Community, Balearic Islands, La Franja, Carche), Andorra, Monaco, parts of Italy (Occitan Valleys, Alghero, Guardia Piemontese), and historically in the County of Tripoli and the possessions of the Crown of Aragon. The existence of this group of languages is discussed both in linguistic and political basis.

According to some linguists both Occitan and Catalan should be considered Gallo-Romance languages. Other linguists concur as regarding Occitan but consider Catalan to be part of the Ibero-Romance languages.

The issue at debate is as political as it is linguistic, since the division on Gallo-Romance and Ibero-Romance languages stems from the current nation-states of France and Spain, and thus is based more on territorial criteria than historic and linguistic criteria. One of the main proponents of the unity of the languages of the Iberian peninsula was Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal, while from long time ago others like Wilhelm Meyer-Lubke (Das Katalanische, Heidelberg, 1925) have supported the kinship of Occitan and Catalan.

During the Middle Ages, for five centuries (8th to 13th) of political and social convergence of these territories, there was no clear distinction or separation between the Occitan and the Catalan. For instance, the Provençal troubadour, Albertet de Sestaró, says: "Monks, tell me which according to your knowledge are better: the French or the Catalans? and here I shall put Gascony, Provence, Limousin, Auvergne and Viennois while there shall be the land of the two kings." In Marseille, a typical Provençal song is called 'Catalan song'. (M. Milà i Fontanals, De los Trobadores en España, p. 487)