Provençal language

“ These tiresome, empty tirades had at least the spice of being uttered in the strangest and most amusing kind of language, in which an old-school stilted French, the French of books of rhetoric, was mixed with the oddest provincialisms. Aunt Portal detested the Provençal tongue, that dialect so admirable in color and sonorousness, which only the peasants and people talk, which contains an echo of Latin vibrating across the deep blue sea. She belonged to the burgher class of Provence who translate pécaïré by péchère (sinner) and fancy they talk correctly. ”

“ The voice of the troubadours was silent, the Provençal was abandoned and sank into a mere dialect, and after a brilliant existence of three centuries (950-1250) , its productions were ranked among those of the dead languages. The high reputation of the Provençal poets, and the rapid decline of their language, are two phenomena equally striking in the history of human culture. This literature, which gave models to other nations, yet among its crowds of agreeable poems did not produce a single masterpiece destined to immortality, was entirely the offspring of the age, and not of individuals. ”

“ It does not possess the rough gravity of the Spanish, and has too few of the i's and e's that soften the sonority of the Italian. I may venture to say it is too expressive, too full of onomatopœia. Imagine a language, in which to say, "He bursts out laughing," one must use the word s'escacalasso! There are too many on's and oun's and too much ts and dz in the pronunciation. So that the Provençal language, in spite of everything, keeps a certain patois vulgarity. It forces the poet, so to say, to perpetual song-making. ”

“ A glance at the modern history of language will make this clearer. There could never be any doubt that the so-called Romance languages, Italian, Wallachian, Provençal, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, were closely related to each other. Everybody could [pg 171] see that they were all derived from Latin. But one of the most distinguished French scholars, Raynouard, who has done more for the history of the Romance languages and literature than any one else, maintained that Provençal only was the daughter of Latin; whereas French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese were the daughters of Provençal. ”

“ The breaking of ę, ǫ, under certain conditions, into diphthongs is not common to the whole territory, and the resulting forms show local differences: mĕum > męu mięu, fŏcum > fǫc fuǫc fuęc füc. Breaking is least common in the southwest.
[10] II. PHONOLOGY.
14. Inasmuch as Provençal, like the other Romance languages, grew out of the Latin commonly spoken under the Roman Empire, we must take this latter language as our starting-point. The transformation was so gradual and continuous that we cannot assign any date at which speech ceases to be Latin and begins to be Provençal ”

“ The Provençal movement, the Welsh, the Czech, have all, I think, been attempting, when we examine them to the heart, to restore what is called a more picturesque way of life, that is to say, a way of life in which the common man has some share in imaginative art. That this is the decisive element in the attempt to revive and to preserve the Irish language I am very certain. ”

“ Thus for example, the Latin perishes as a living language, but a chief part of the words that composed it live on in the four daughter languages, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese; or the six, if we count the Provençal and Wallachian; not a few in our own. Still in their own proper being languages perish and pass away; there are dead records of what they were in books; not living men who speak them any more. ”

“ PROVENÇAL LITERATURE. Provençal literature is much more easily defined than the language in which it is expressed. Starting in the 11th and 12th centuries in several centres it thence gradually spread out, first over the greater portion, though not the whole of southern France, and then into the north of Italy and Spain. It never felt the influence of the neighbouring literatures. At the time of its highest development (12th century) the art of composing in the vulgar tongue did not exist, or was only beginning to exist, to the south of the Alps and the Pyrenees. ”

“ The first of the Latin nations to acquire a cultivated vernacular literature was the Provencal. Many reasons, singly insufficient, but cumulatively of great force, may be adduced for this unquestionable priority. The language, which may be roughly but accurately described as a connecting link between French and Italian, as its Catalan and Valencian congeners form one between French and Spanish, is better adapted for poetical composition than French ”

“ They were both well understood in the South; and Jasmin's recitations were received with as much enthusiasm at Nimes, Aries, and Marseilles, as at Toulouse, Agen, and Bordeaux.
Mezzofanti, a very Tower of Babel in dialects and languages, said of the Provencal, that it was the only patois of the Middle Ages, with its numerous derivations from the Greek, the Arabic, and the Latin, which has survived the various revolutions of language. The others have been altered and modified. They have suffered from the caprices of victory or of fortune. ”

“ Some scholars, following the example of Dante, still actually use the term langue d'oc in opposition to langue d'oui; but these names have the inconvenience that they take such a secondary fact as the form of the affirmative particle as an essential character. Moreover, it can hardly help to distinguish the other Romanic languages, as langue de si would cause a confusion between Italian and Spanish. Provencal, without being entirely satisfactory, since in principle it applies solely to the language of Provence, is, notwithstanding, the least objectionable name that can be adopted. ”

“ But insistence is laid upon the fact that the transformation of a dialect into a language is a process that usually has required centuries. The transformation of the original Latin language into the modern Latin languages, so called, which include Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Provencal, Romance, Roumanian, etc., illustrates the slowness of the process. ”

“ I have confined myself to the old literary language, believing that to be of the greatest importance to a student of Romance Philology or of Comparative Literature, and fearing lest an enumeration of modern forms, in addition to the ancient, might prove too bewildering. I should add that neither my own knowledge nor the material at my disposal is [iv] adequate to a satisfactory presentation of the living idioms of southern France. These dialects have, however, been investigated for the light they throw on the geographical distribution of phonetic variations ”

“ If a common language has once established itself in a large area, it is rare for another common language to arise for a portion only of that area. Thus a 406 Provençal common language would be an impossibility in the face of the powerful French which has spread over the greater part of France. Again, a common language can hardly arise for any large area whose single parts have already some common language which suffices for their needs. ”

“ Thus, in France, the Langue d'Oïl superseded the richer and more melodious Provençal; in Spain the Castilian predominated; while for several centuries it has been the steady tendency of the High-German to become the language of letters and of the upper classes among the various Teutonic races. Since the Bible-translation of Luther, this central dialect has not only become the medium in which poet and philosopher, historian and critic address the nation, but it may be said to have entirely superseded the Northern and Southern forms. ”

“ Quand aguét ton aecaba, uno grosso famino arribet dins aqueou päis et, leou, si veguét reduech à la derniero misèro.
Practically speaking, although in the central parts of France the northern and southern dialects melt each into the other, the Loire may be considered as a line of demarcation between two languages; the term language being employed because, in the Middle Ages, whatever may be their real difference, the northern tongue and the southern tongue were dealt with not as separate dialects, but as distinct languages—the southern being called Provençal, the northern Norman-French. ”

“ Provençal also, though of a character rather Transalpine (like that of Dauphiné) than native, are the dialects of the Vaudois population above Pinerolo (v. Morosi, Arch. glott. xi. 309-416) , and their colonies of Guardia in Calabria (ib. xi. 381-393) and of Neu-Hengstett and Pinache-Serres in Württemberg (ib. xi. 393-398) . The Vaudois literary language, in which is written the Nobla Leyczon, has, however, no direct connexion with any of the spoken dialects; it is a literary language, and is connected with literary Provençal, the language of the troubadours ”

“ The genius of the several writers is buried in the difficulty and unfamiliarity of the old languages, even where it has not been destroyed and lost in other ways. But still the spirit of Provençal lyric and of old French romance can be proved to be, at the very lowest estimate, the beginning of modern civilization, as distinct from the earlier Middle Ages. ”

“ Slowly and gradually the Romanic languages, especially those of France, came to occupy part of the ground formerly occupied by Latin, but even after the middle ages had passed away the parent tongue retained no small portions of its original empire. Consequently Romanic literature's in general (and this is especially true of Provençal, as it does not extend beyond the medieval period) afford only an incomplete representation of the intellectual development of each country. ”

“ In the diphthongs ue, uo (luec, fuoc) , [5] opinions disagree as to which vowel originally bore the stress; subsequent changes seem to indicate that in the 12th and 13th centuries the practice varied in the different dialects. Old Provençal must have had in some words a peculiar type of r, which was sufficiently palatal in its articulation to call for an i-glide before it (esclairar) ; we do not know precisely how it was formed; in most regions it probably was assimilated to the more usual r as early as the 12th century. ”

“ This was the epoch when Latin had about ceased to be a living tongue, and from its corpse, so to speak, had arisen a multitude of dialects all over the Roman world, among them the Romance or Provençal, the Langue d'Oc, in which poems and legends were now written. ”

“ Of course the movement is caused by the local pride of the Provençaux, and it can hardly be expected to arouse the enthusiasm of the Bretons, the Normans, or the native sons of the Aube. In fact, there are certain detractors of the work of the Félibres who profess regrets that the French tongue should be thus polluted. The aspersion, however, has no effect on the true Provençal, for to him his native land and its tongue are first and foremost. ”

“ In this respect Provençal is quite anomalous among Romance languages. In some regions of the Alps, at Nice, at Montpellier, at Le Velay, in Haute-Auvergne, in Roussillon, and in Catalonia the Latin final a is preserved, as in Italian and Spanish.
The noun has but one form for the singular and plural. The distinction of plural and singular depends upon the article, or upon the demonstrative or possessive adjective accompanying the noun. In liaison adjectives take s as a plural sign. So that, for the ear, the Provençal and French languages are quite alike in regard to this matter. ”

“ It was then that many of those poets went to spend their last days in the north of Spain and Italy, where Provençal poetry had for more than one generation been highly esteemed. Following their example, other poets who were not natives of the south of France began to compose in Provençal, and this fashion continued till, about the middle of the 13th century, they gradually abandoned the foreign tongue in northern Italy, and somewhat later in Catalonia, and took to singing the same airs in the local dialects. ”

“ This led to the establishment of an entire passive inflection made up of the perfect participle and the parts of the verb ĕsse; and the old passive forms were gradually abandoned, leaving no trace (save the perfect participle and possibly the gerundive) in the Romance languages. So the passive is constructed in Provençal as in French: ẹs amatz, ęra amatz, fọ amatz, será amatz, etc.; the participle regularly agrees with the subject in gender and number. Latin deponent verbs became active: mŏri > morir, sĕqui > seguir. ”

“ And, in the second place, the structure and spirit of the two tongues almost forbade imitation of the one in the other. It was Northern, not Southern, French that helped to make English proper out of Anglo-Saxon; and the gap between Northern French and Southern French themselves was far wider than between Provençal and the Peninsular tongues. To which things, if any one pleases, he may add the difference of the spirit of the two races; but this is always vague and uncertain ground, and is best avoided when we can tread on the firm land of history and literature proper. ”

“ A few words have been furnished by Provençal (abeille, cadenas) , and several have been adopted from other dialects into the French of Paris (esquiver Norman or Picard for the Paris-French eschiver) . German has contributed a few (blocus = blochūs; choucroute = sūrkrūt) ; and recently a considerable number have been imported from England (drain, confortable, flirter) . In Old French, new words are freely formed by derivation, and to a less extent by composition; in Modern French, borrowing from Latin or other foreign languages is the more usual course. ”