Old Occitan ( Modern Occitan : occitan ancian , Catalan : occità antic ), also called Old Provençal , was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages , as attested in writings dating from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries. Old Occitan generally includes Early and Old Occitan. Middle Occitan is sometimes included in Old Occitan, sometimes in Modern Occitan. As the term occitanus appeared around the year 1300, Old Occitan is referred to as "Romance" (Occitan: romans ) or "Provençal" (Occitan: proensals ) in medieval texts.
6-640: Among the earliest records of Occitan are the Tomida femina , the Boecis and the Cançó de Santa Fe . Old Occitan, the language used by the troubadours , was the first Romance language with a literary corpus and had an enormous influence on the development of lyric poetry in other European languages. The interpunct was a feature of its orthography and survives today in Catalan and Gascon . The official language of
12-488: Is written upside down. Line 14 is missing, but has been supplied by the editors on the basis of the pattern of the final three lines. It has been edited and translated into English by William Doremus Paden and Frances Freeman Paden : The meaning of the poetic charm, a " talking cure ", is uncertain. Possibly it is intended as a cure for an edema . The swollen woman of line 1 and the swollen child of line 3 may both be patients, or perhaps only one of them. The charm transfers
18-795: The basic sound system can be summarised as follows: Notes: Old Occitan is a non-standardised language regarding its spelling, meaning that different graphemic signs can represent one sound and vice versa. For example: Some notable characteristics of Old Occitan: Bela Domna·l vostre cors gens E·lh vostre bel olh m'an conquis, E·l doutz esgartz e lo clars vis, E·l vostre bels essenhamens, Que, can be m'en pren esmansa, De beutat no·us trob egansa: La genser etz c'om posc'e·l mon chauzir, O no·i vei clar dels olhs ab que·us remir. O pretty lady, all your grace and eyes of beauty conquered me, sweet glance and brightness of your face and all your nature has to tell so if I make an appraisal I find no one like in beauty: most pleasing to be found in all
24-569: The sovereign principality of the Viscounty of Béarn was the local vernacular Bearnès dialect of Old Occitan. It was the spoken language of law courts and of business and it was the written language of customary law. Although vernacular languages were increasingly preferred to Latin in western Europe in the late Middle Ages, the status of Occitan in Béarn was unusual because its use was required by law: "lawyers will draft their petitions and pleas in
30-443: The vernacular language of the present country, both in speech and in writing". Old Catalan and Old Occitan diverged between the 11th and the 14th centuries. Catalan never underwent the shift from /u/ to /y/ or the shift from /o/ to /u/ (except in unstressed syllables in some dialects) and so had diverged phonologically before those changes affected Old Occitan. Old Occitan changed and evolved somewhat during its history, but
36-487: The world or else the eyes I see you with have dimmed. Tomida femina Tomida femina ( Occitan: [tuˈmiðɔ ˈfeminɔ] , Catalan: [tuˈmiðə ˈfɛminə] ; "A swollen woman") is the earliest surviving poem in Occitan , a sixteen-line charm probably for the use of midwives . It is preserved in the left and bottom margins of a Latin legal treatise in a ninth- or tenth-century manuscript, where it
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