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57-572: Doubs ( / d uː / , doo ; French: [du] ; Arpitan : Dubs ) is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in Eastern France. Named after the river Doubs , it had a population of 543,974 in 2019. Its prefecture is Besançon and subprefectures are Montbéliard and Pontarlier . As early as the 13th century, inhabitants of the northern two-thirds of Doubs spoke Franc-Comtois ,

114-593: A dialect of the langues d'oïl . Residents of the southern third of Doubs spoke a dialect of the Arpitan language . Both languages co-existed with French, the official language of law and commerce, and continued to be spoken frequently in rural areas into the 20th century. They are both still spoken today but not on a daily basis. Doubs was important as a portal to Switzerland through the pass at Cluse de Pontarlier. Many famous people, including Mirabeau , Toussaint Louverture and Heinrich von Kleist , were imprisoned in

171-494: A much more conservative estimate of speakers in Aosta Valley at 40,000, with 20,000 using the language on a daily basis. In 2018, other linguistic academics estimated the number of speakers of Franco-provençal in Aosta Valley to be between 21,000 and 70,000, depending on whether one would choose the number of speakers designating Franco-provençal as their native language, or whether one included all those declaring they knew

228-509: A neighbouring area, known in English as Burgundy ( French : Bourgogne ). Other areas also had historical or political claims to such names, especially (Meune, 2007). Some contemporary speakers and writers prefer the name Arpitan because it underscores the independence of the language and does not imply a union to any other established linguistic group. "Arpitan" is derived from an indigenous word meaning "alpine" ("mountain highlands"). It

285-520: A regional law passed by the government in Aosta requires educators to promote knowledge of Franco-Provençal language and culture in the school curriculum. Several cultural groups, libraries, and theatre companies are fostering a sense of ethnic pride with their active use of the Valdôtain dialect as well (EUROPA, 2005). Paradoxically, the same federal laws do not grant the language the same protection in

342-533: A single Gallo-Romance language (French) dominates much of the geographic region (including the formerly-non-Romance areas of France) and has also spread overseas. At its broadest, the area also encompasses Southern France; Catalonia , the Valencian Community , and the Balearic islands in eastern Spain ; Andorra ; and much of Northern Italy . The Gallo-Romance languages are generally considered

399-432: A type of language that brings together, along with some characteristics which are its own, characteristics partly in common with French, and partly in common with Provençal, and are not caused by a late confluence of diverse elements, but on the contrary, attests to its own historical independence, little different from those by which the principal neo-Latin [Romance] languages distinguish themselves from one another. Although

456-598: Is "probable" that the language will be "on the road to extinction" in this region in ten years. In 2005, the European Commission wrote that an approximate 68,000 people spoke the language in the Aosta Valley region of Italy, according to reports compiled after the 2003 linguistic survey conducted by the Fondation Chanoux. In 2010, anthropologist and ethnologist Christiane Dunoyer proposed

513-587: Is also spoken in the Alpine valleys around Turin and in two isolated towns ( Faeto and Celle di San Vito ) in Apulia . In France, it is one of the three Gallo-Romance language families of the country (alongside the langues d'oïl and the langues d'oc ). Though it is a regional language of France , its use in the country is marginal. Still, organizations are attempting to preserve it through cultural events, education, scholarly research, and publishing. Although

570-530: Is currently most spoken in Aosta Valley, with Valdôtain having the greatest population of active daily speakers. A 2001 survey of 7,250 people by the Fondation Émile Chanoux revealed that 15% of all Aosta Valley residents claimed Franco-Provençal as their mother tongue, a substantial reduction to the figures reported on the Italian census 20 years earlier (and used in the 2001 European Commission report). At

627-530: Is dominated by the Jura mountains , which rise east of Besançon . The most populous commune is Besançon , the prefecture. As of 2019, there are 5 communes with more than 10,000 inhabitants: The inhabitants of the department are called Doubiens . Population development since 1791: The President of the Departmental Council is Christine Bouquin ( LR ). The Doubs department is at the same time

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684-408: Is no single official standard that covers Franco-Provençal as a whole. The orthographies in use include the following: The table below compares a few words in each writing system, with French and English for reference. (Sources: Esprit Valdôtain (download 7 March 2007), C.C.S. Conflans (1995), and Stich (2003). Gallo-Romance languages Old Gallo-Romance was one of the two languages in which

741-504: Is now based in Fribourg. In 2010 SIL adopted the name "Arpitan" as the primary name of the language in ISO 639-3 , with "Francoprovençal" as an additional name form. Native speakers call this language patouès (patois) or nosta moda ("our way [of speaking]"). Some Savoyard speakers call their language sarde . This is a colloquial term used because their ancestors were subjects of

798-857: Is separate from but closely related to neighbouring Romance dialects (the langues d'oïl and the langues d'oc , in France, as well as Rhaeto-Romance in Switzerland and Italy). Even with all its distinct dialects counted together, the number of Franco-Provençal speakers has been declining significantly and steadily. According to UNESCO , Franco-Provençal was already in 1995 a "potentially endangered language" in Italy and an " endangered language " in Switzerland and France. Ethnologue classifies it as "nearly extinct". The designation Franco-Provençal (Franco-Provençal: francoprovençâl ; French : francoprovençal ; Italian : francoprovenzale ) dates to

855-716: Is the same as for French nouns; however, there are many exceptions. A few examples follow: lo trabalh (masc.) la besogne (fem.), le travail (masc.), le labeur (masc.) Verbs in Group 1a end in -ar ( côsar , "to speak"; chantar , "to sing"); Group 1b end in -ier ( mengier , "to eat"); Groups 2a & 2b end in -ir ( finir , "to finish"; venir , "to come"), Group 3a end in -êr ( dêvêr , "to owe"), and Group 3b end in -re ( vendre , "to sell"). The consonants and vowel sounds in Franco-Provençal: There

912-615: The langues d'oc group ( Provençal ) and gave Franco-Provençal its name. Ascoli (1878, p. 61) described the language in these terms in his defining essay on the subject: Chiamo franco-provenzale un tipo idiomatico, il quale insieme riunisce, con alcuni caratteri specifici, più altri caratteri, che parte son comuni al francese, parte lo sono al provenzale, e non proviene già da una confluenza di elementi diversi, ma bensì attesta sua propria indipendenza istorica, non guari dissimili da quella per cui fra di loro si distinguono gli altri principali tipi neo-latini. I call Franco-Provençal

969-525: The Château de Joux . Doubs is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from part of the former province of Franche-Comté . The prefecture (capital) is Besançon . In 1793, the republic of Mandeure was annexed by France and incorporated into the department. This district was passed between various territories and departments in

1026-583: The Kingdom of Sardinia ruled by the House of Savoy until Savoie and Haute-Savoie were annexed by France in 1860. The language is called gaga in France's Forez region and appears in the titles of dictionaries and other regional publications. Gaga (and the adjective gagasse ) comes from a local name for the residents of Saint-Étienne , popularized by Auguste Callet's story " La légende des Gagats " published in 1866. The historical linguistic domain of

1083-484: The Linguasphere Observatory (Dalby, 1999/2000, p. 402) follows: A philological classification for Franco-Provençal published by Ruhlen (1987, pp. 325–326) is as follows: Franco-Provençal emerged as a Gallo-Romance variety of Latin . The linguistic region comprises east-central France, western portions of Switzerland, and the Aosta Valley of Italy with the adjacent alpine valleys of

1140-678: The Oaths of Strasbourg were written in 842 AD. The Gallo-Romance group includes: Other language families often included in Gallo-Romance: In the view of some linguists ( Pierre Bec , Andreas Schorta , Heinrich Schmid , Geoffrey Hull ), Rhaeto-Romance and Gallo-Italic form a single linguistic unity named "Rhaeto-Cisalpine" or "Padanian", which includes also the Venetian and Istriot languages, whose Italianate features are deemed to be superficial and secondary in nature. How far

1197-578: The Piedmont . This area covers territories once occupied by pre-Roman Celts , including the Allobroges , Sequani , Helvetii , Ceutrones , and Salassi . By the fifth century, the region was controlled by the Burgundians . Federico Krutwig has also suggested a Basque substrate in the toponyms of the easternmost Valdôtain dialect . Franco-Provençal is first attested in manuscripts from

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1254-537: The Province of Turin because there Franco-Provençal speakers make up less than 15% of the population. Lack of jobs has resulted in their migration from the Piedmont's alpine valleys, and contributed to the language's decline. Switzerland does not recognize Romand (not be confused with Romansh ) as one of its official languages . Speakers live in western cantons where Swiss French predominates; they converse in

1311-498: The " languages of France ", but its constitution bars it from ratifying the 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) that would guarantee certain rights to Franco-Provencal. This language has almost no political support in France and it is associated with generally low social status. This situation affects most regional languages that comprise the linguistic wealth of France. Speakers of regional languages are aging and live in mostly rural areas. Franco-Provençal

1368-514: The 12th century, possibly diverging from the langues d'oïl as early as the eighth–ninth centuries (Bec, 1971). However, Franco-Provençal is consistently typified by a strict, myopic comparison to French, and so is characterized as "conservative". Thus, commentators such as Désormaux consider "medieval" the terms for many nouns and verbs, including pâta "rag", bayâ "to give", moussâ "to lie down", all of which are conservative only relative to French. As an example, Désormaux, writing on this point in

1425-449: The 19th century. In the late 20th century, it was proposed that the language be referred to under the neologism Arpitan (Franco-Provençal: arpetan ; Italian : arpitano ), and its areal as Arpitania . The use of both neologisms remains very limited, with most academics using the traditional form (often written without the hyphen: Francoprovençal ), while language speakers refer to it almost exclusively as patois or under

1482-430: The Aosta Valley special powers to make its own decisions about certain matters. This resulted in growth in the region's economy and the population increased from 1951 to 1991, improving long-term prospects. Residents were encouraged to stay in the region and they worked to continue long-held traditions. The language was explicitly protected by a 1991 Italian presidential decree and a national law passed in 1999. Further,

1539-529: The Cigliàje variety of this dialect in Brantford , Ontario . At its peak, the language was used daily by several hundred people. As of 2012 this community has dwindled to fewer than 50 daily speakers across three generations. In rural areas of the cantons of Valais and Fribourg in Switzerland, various dialects are spoken as a second language by about 7,000 residents (figures for Switzerland: Lewis, 2009). In

1596-484: The Franco-Provençal language are: The Aosta Valley is the only region of the Franco-Provençal area where this language is still widely spoken as native by all age ranges of the population. Since 1948 several events have combined to stabilize the language ( Valdôtain dialect ) in this region. The constitution of Italy was amended to change the status of the former province to an autonomous region. This gives

1653-552: The Gallo-Italian languages rivalling each other for the most extreme phonological changes compared with more conservative languages. For example, French sain, saint, sein, ceint, seing meaning "healthy, holy, breast, (he) girds, signature" (Latin sānum , sanctum , sinum , cingit , signum ) are all pronounced /sɛ̃/ . In other ways, however, the Gallo-Romance languages are conservative. The older stages of many of

1710-537: The Gallo-Romance languages spread varies a great deal depending on which languages are included in the group. Those included in its narrowest definition (the langues d'oïl and Arpitan) were historically spoken in the northern half of France , including parts of Flanders , Alsace and part of Lorraine ; the Wallonia region of Belgium ; the Channel Islands ; parts of Switzerland; and Northern Italy. Today,

1767-436: The adjacent province of Turin were estimated to be the home of another 22,000 speakers. Regis estimated the number of speakers in Piedmont in 2019 to be around 15,000. The Faetar and Cigliàje dialect was thought to be spoken by 1,400 people in an isolated pocket of the province of Foggia , in the southern Italian Apulia region. Beginning in 1951, strong emigration from the town of Celle Di San Vito to Canada established

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1824-759: The case system the best, and languages at the periphery (near languages that had long before lost the case system except for pronouns) lost it early. For example, the case system was preserved in Old Occitan until around the 13th century but had already been lost in Old Catalan although there were very few other differences between them. The Occitan group is known for an innovatory /ɡ/ ending on many subjunctive and preterite verbs and an unusual development of [ð] (Latin intervocalic -d-), which, in many varieties, merged with [dz] (from intervocalic palatalised -c- and -ty-). The following tables show two examples of

1881-434: The culturally prestigious French. Franco-Provençal is an extremely fragmented language, with scores of highly peculiar local variations that never merged over time. The range of dialect diversity is far greater than that found in the langue d'oïl and Occitan regions. Comprehension of one dialect by speakers of another is often difficult. Nowhere is it spoken in a "pure form" and there is not a "standard reference language" that

1938-508: The development of vernacular writing in a given area was forced by the almost total inability of Romance speakers to understand Classical Latin, which was still the vehicle of writing and culture. Gallo-Romance languages are usually characterised by the loss of all unstressed final vowels other than /-a/ (most significantly, final /-o/ and /-e/ were lost). However, when the loss of a final vowel would result in an impossible final cluster (e.g. /tr/ ), an epenthetic vowel appears in place of

1995-659: The dialects mainly as a second language. The use in agrarian daily life is rapidly disappearing. However, in a few isolated places the decline is considerably less steep. This is most notably the case for the Evolène dialect. Franco-Provençal has had a precipitous decline in France. The official language of the French Republic has been designated as French (article 2 of the Constitution of France ). The French government officially recognizes Franco-Provençal as one of

2052-527: The ensuing administrative reorganisations and wars, but was restored to Doubs in 1816 when the former principality of Montbéliard was also added to the department. However, the commune of Le Cerneux-Péquignot was annexed by the Canton of Neuchâtel under the terms of the 1814 Treaty of Paris , and since remained Swiss territory. Between the defeat of France at the Battle of Waterloo and November 1818, Doubs

2109-559: The foreword of his Savoyard dialect dictionary, states: The antiquated character of the Savoyard patois is striking. One can note it not only in phonetics and morphology, but also in the vocabulary, where one finds numerous words and directions that clearly disappeared from French. Franco-Provençal failed to garner the cultural prestige of its three more widely spoken neighbors: French, Occitan, and Italian. Communities where speakers lived were generally isolated from each other because of

2166-567: The greenest and the most industrialized in France. It is the birthplace of the automotive manufacturer Peugeot . The castle of Joux and Besançon are important tourist destinations. Arpitan language Italy Switzerland Franco-Provençal (also Francoprovençal , Patois or Arpitan ) is a language within the Gallo-Romance family, originally spoken in east-central France , western Switzerland and northwestern Italy . Franco-Provençal has several distinct dialects and

2223-868: The language loss by generation was 90%, made up of: "the proportion of fathers who did not usually speak to their 5-year-old children in the language that their own father usually spoke in to them at the same age". This was a greater loss than undergone by any other language in France, a loss called "critical". The report estimated that fewer than 15,000 speakers in France were handing down some knowledge of Franco-Provençal to their children (figures for France: Héran, Filhon, & Deprez, 2002; figure 1, 1-C, p. 2). Note: The overview in this section follows Martin (2005), with all Franco-Provençal examples written in accordance with Orthographe de référence B (see "Orthography" section, below). Franco-Provençal has grammar similar to that of other Romance languages. In general, inflection by grammatical gender (masculine and feminine)

2280-404: The language, irrespective of native language considerations. That same year, academic Riccardo Regis calculated that there were 50,000 Franco-provençal speakers in Aosta Valley. The 2009 edition of ethnologue.com (Lewis, 2009) reported that there were 70,000 Franco-Provençal speakers in Italy. However, these figures are derived from the 1971 census. Outside of Aosta Valley, the alpine valleys of

2337-464: The languages are famous for preserving a two-case system, consisting of nominative and oblique cases, which was fully marked on nouns, adjectives and determiners; was inherited almost directly from the Latin nominative and accusative cases; and preserved a number of different declensional classes and irregular forms. In the opposite of the normal pattern, the languages closest to the oïl epicentre preserve

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2394-566: The lost vowel, usually /e/ . Generally, the same changes also occurred in final syllables closed by a consonant. Franco-Provençal , however, generally preserves the original final vowel after a syllable-final cluster, such as quattuor "four" > quatro (compare French quatre ). Furthermore, loss of /e/ in a final syllable was early enough in Primitive Old French that the Classical Latin third-person singular /t/

2451-422: The modern generic label used to identify the language may indicate. This explains why speakers use local terms to name it, such as Bressan, Forèzien, or Valdôtain, or simply patouès ("patois"). Only in recent years have speakers who are not specialists in linguistics become conscious of the language's collective identity. The language region was first recognized in the 19th century during advances in research into

2508-571: The most innovative (least conservative) among the Romance languages. Northern France, the medieval area of the langue d'oïl from which modern French developed, was the epicentre. Characteristic Gallo-Romance features generally developed the earliest, appear in their most extreme manifestation in the langue d'oïl and gradually spread out from there along riverways and roads. The earliest vernacular Romance writing occurred in Northern France, as

2565-564: The mountains. In addition, the internal boundaries of the entire speech area were divided by wars and religious conflicts. France, Switzerland, the Franche-Comté (part of the Spanish Monarchy ), and the duchy, later kingdom, ruled by the House of Savoy politically divided the region. The strongest possibility for any dialect of Franco-Provençal to establish itself as a major language died when an edict , dated 6 January 1539,

2622-767: The name Franco-Provençal appears misleading, it continues to be used in most scholarly journals for the sake of continuity. Suppression of the hyphen between the two parts of the language name in French ( francoprovençal ) was generally adopted following a conference at the University of Neuchâtel in 1969; however, most English-language journals continue to use the traditional spelling. The name Romand has been in use regionally in Switzerland at least since 1424, when notaries in Fribourg were directed to write their minutes in both German and Rommant . It continues to appear in

2679-717: The name Franco-Provençal suggests it is a bridge dialect between French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan , it is a separate Gallo-Romance language that transitions into the Oïl languages Burgundian and Frainc-Comtou to the northwest, into Romansh to the east, into the Gallo-Italic Piemontese to the southeast, and finally into the Vivaro-Alpine dialect of Occitan to the southwest. The philological classification for Franco-Provençal published by

2736-561: The names of its distinct dialects ( Savoyard , Lyonnais , Gaga in Saint-Étienne , etc.). Formerly spoken throughout the Duchy of Savoy , Franco-Provençal is nowadays (as of 2016) spoken mainly in the Aosta Valley as a native language by all age ranges. All remaining areas of the Franco-Provençal language region show practice limited to higher age ranges, except for Evolène and other rural areas of French-speaking Switzerland . It

2793-402: The names of many Swiss cultural organizations today. The term "Romand" is also used by some professional linguists who feel that the compound word "Franco-Provençal" is "inappropriate". A proposal in the 1960s to call the language Burgundian (French: "burgondien" ) did not take hold, mainly because of the potential for confusion with an Oïl language known as Burgundian , which is spoken in

2850-438: The nature and structure of human speech. Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1829–1907), a pioneering linguist , analyzed the unique phonetic and structural characteristics of numerous spoken dialects . In an article written about 1873 and published later, he offered a solution to existing disagreements about dialect frontiers and proposed a new linguistic region. He placed it between the langues d'oïl group of languages ( Franco ) and

2907-454: The other cantons of Romandie where Franco-Provençal dialects used to be spoken, they are now all but extinct. Until the mid-19th century, Franco-Provençal dialects were the most widely spoken language in their domain in France. Today, regional vernaculars are limited to a small number of speakers in secluded towns. A 2002 report by the INED ( Institut national d'études démographiques ) states that

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2964-492: The time, 55.77% of residents said they knew Franco-provençal and 50.53% said they knew French, Franco-provençal and Italian. This opened a discussion about the concept of mother tongue when concerning a dialect. The Aosta Valley was confirmed as the only area where Franco-provençal is actively spoken in the early 21st century. A report published by Laval University in Quebec City , which analyzed this data, reports that it

3021-413: Was confirmed in the parliament of the Duchy of Savoy on 4 March 1540 (the duchy was partially occupied by France since 1538). The edict explicitly replaced Latin (and by implication, any other language) with French as the language of law and the courts (Grillet, 1807, p. 65). The name Franco-Provençal ( franco-provenzale ) is due to Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1878), chosen because the dialect group

3078-544: Was included in the area occupied by Austrian troops. Victor Hugo , Gustave Courbet , Armand Peugeot , Auguste and Louis Lumière and Frank Darabont are among the famous people born in Doubs. Doubs is part of the current region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and is surrounded by the French departments of Jura , Haute-Saône , and Territoire de Belfort , and the Swiss cantons of Vaud , Neuchâtel , and Jura . The department

3135-459: Was often preserved: venit "he comes" > /ˈvɛːnet/ (Romance vowel changes) > /ˈvjɛnet/ (diphthongization) > /ˈvjɛned/ (lenition) > /ˈvjɛnd/ (Gallo-Romance final vowel loss) > /ˈvjɛnt/ (final devoicing). Elsewhere, final vowel loss occurred later, or unprotected /t/ was lost earlier (perhaps under Italian influence). Other than southern Occitano-Romance, the Gallo-Romance languages are quite innovative, with French and some of

3192-554: Was popularized in the 1980s by Mouvement Harpitanya , a political organization in the Aosta Valley . In the 1990s, the term lost its particular political context. The Aliance Culturèla Arpitana (Arpitan Cultural Alliance) is advancing the cause for the name "Arpitan" through the Internet, publishing efforts, and other activities. The organization was founded in 2004 by Stéphanie Lathion and Alban Lavy in Lausanne , Switzerland, and

3249-402: Was seen as intermediate between French and Provençal . Franco-Provençal dialects were widely spoken in their speech areas until the 20th century. As French political power expanded and the "single-national-language" doctrine was spread through French-only education, Franco-Provençal speakers abandoned their language, which had numerous spoken variations and no standard orthography , in favor of

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