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55-531: La Balme ( French pronunciation: [la balm] ; Arpitan : La Borma ) is a commune of the Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France . This Savoie geographical article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Arpitan language Italy Switzerland Franco-Provençal (also Francoprovençal , Patois or Arpitan )

110-494: 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

165-509: 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

220-454: A recent survey. On the other hand, the same survey showed Piedmontese is still spoken by over half the population, alongside Italian. Authoritative sources confirm this result, putting the figure between 2 million and 3 million speakers out of a population of 4.2 million people. Efforts to make it one of the official languages of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics were unsuccessful. Piedmontese

275-520: 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

330-432: 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

385-598: 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

440-610: 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 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,

495-587: 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

550-700: Is considered a dialect rather than a separate language by the Italian central government. Due to the Italian diaspora Piedmontese has spread in the Argentinian Pampas , where many immigrants from Piedmont settled. The Piedmontese language is also spoken in some states of Brazil, along with the Venetian language . The first documents in the Piedmontese language were written in the 12th century,

605-475: 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

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660-423: Is divided into three major groups The variants can be detected in the variation of the accent and variation of words. It is sometimes difficult to understand a person that speaks a different Piedmontese from the one you are used to, as the words or accents are not the same. The Eastern Piedmontese group is more phonologically evolved than its western counterpart. The words that in the west end with jt, jd or t in

715-466: 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). Piedmontese language It has some support from the Piedmont regional government but

770-504: 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

825-591: Is pronounced separately, /ˈya/ . Some of the characteristics of the Piedmontese language are: Piedmontese has a number of varieties that may vary from its basic koiné to quite a large extent. Variation includes not only departures from the literary grammar, but also a wide variety in dictionary entries, as different regions maintain words of Frankish or Lombard origin, as well as differences in native Romance terminology. Words imported from various languages are also present, while more recent imports tend to come from France and from Italian. A variety of Piedmontese

880-464: Is shared partially (in the case of the infinitive time) also by most of the western dialects, including the Turin one, that is the most spoken dialect of western piedmontese (and also of the whole piedmontese language). A morphological variation that sharply divides east and west is the indicative imperfect conjugation of irregular verbs. In the east, the suffix ava/iva is used, while in the west asìa/isìa

935-716: 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

990-417: Is used. The groups are also distinguished by differing conjugation of the present simple of the irregular verbs: dé , andé , sté (to give, to go, to stay). /v/ is realized as labio-velar [ w ] between /a/ and /u/ and as [ w ] or [ f ] when in word-final position. Allophones of / a / are [ ɑ, ɒ ] in stressed syllables and as [ɐ] when in unstressed position and at end of the word. Piedmontese

1045-430: Is written with a modified Latin alphabet. The letters, along with their IPA equivalent, are shown in the table below. Certain digraphs are used to regularly represent specific sounds as shown below. All other combinations of letters are pronounced as written. Grave accent marks stress (except for o which is marked by an acute to distinguish it from ò ) and breaks diphthongs, so ua and uà are /wa/ , but ùa

1100-615: 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

1155-586: The sermones subalpini  [ it ] , when it was extremely close to Occitan , dating from the 12th century, a document devoted to the education of the Knights Templar stationed in Piedmont. During the Renaissance, the oldest Piedmontese literary work of secular character, are the works of Zan Zòrs Alion, poet of the duchy of Montferrat, the most famous work being the opera Jocunda. In

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1210-583: 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

1265-484: 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

1320-523: 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

1375-481: 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

1430-498: 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

1485-514: 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

1540-593: The 1500s and 1600s, there were several pastoral comedies with parts in Piedmontese. In the Baroque period, El Cont Piolèt , a comedy by Giovan Battista Tan-na d'Entraive was published. Literary Piedmontese developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it did not gain literary esteem comparable to that of French or Italian, other languages used in Piedmont. Nevertheless, literature in Piedmontese has never ceased to be produced: it includes poetry , theatre pieces, novels , and scientific work. The first documents in

1595-449: 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

1650-430: 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,

1705-529: 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

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1760-484: 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

1815-436: The Piedmontese language were written in the 12th century, the sermones subalpini , when it was extremely close to Occitan . In 2004, Piedmontese was recognised as Piedmont's regional language by the regional parliament, although the Italian government has not yet recognised it as such. In theory, it is now supposed to be taught to children in school, but this is happening only to a limited extent. The last decade has seen

1870-436: 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

1925-434: 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

1980-659: 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

2035-435: The east end with [dʒ] e/o [tʃ] for example the westerns [lajt] , [tyjt] , and [vɛj] (milk, all and old) in the east are [lɑtʃ] , [tytʃ] and [vɛdʒ] . A typical eastern features is [i] as allophone of [e] : in word end, at the end of infinitive time of the verb, like in to read and to be ( western [leze] , [ese] vs . eastern [lezi] , [esi] ) and at words feminine plural gender . Although this development

2090-559: 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

2145-868: 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)

2200-456: 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

2255-422: 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

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2310-564: 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,

2365-767: 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

2420-717: 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

2475-561: 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

2530-402: 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

2585-438: 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

2640-452: 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

2695-454: 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

2750-405: The publication of learning materials for schoolchildren, as well as general-public magazines. Courses for people already outside the education system have also been developed. In spite of these advances, the current state of Piedmontese is quite grave, as over the last 150 years the number of people with a written active knowledge of the language has shrunk to about 2% of native speakers, according to

2805-492: 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

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2860-671: Was Judeo-Piedmontese , a dialect spoken by the Piedmontese Jews until the Second World War , when most were killed during the Holocaust . Some survivors knew the language but as of 2015, the language had gone extinct. It had many loanwards from Provencal , Spanish and Hebrew . It kept many conservative features that Piedmontese abandoned over time. The language never became as large in terms of words as larger Jewish languages like Yiddish , and it never developed

2915-413: 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

2970-554: 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

3025-402: 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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