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65-495: At a secondary school in Saint-Étienne, Mathilde Tessier, a moody 17-year-old with a reputation for truancy, arrives late for her philosophy lesson and is not admitted to class. Shortly afterwards, her teacher, François Hainaut, spots her at a bus stop where the young girl has collapsed. At her request, he drives her home. Later that day, he returns to check up on Mathilde and speak with her parents. She explains that her mother

130-560: A 17-year-old is impossible, worries about the unavoidable scandal that would ruin his career, and backs down. The two lovers separate. Mathilde, however, grows jealous of Catherine, first sending her threatening messages then arranging to have the bay windows of her bookshop smashed. Desperate to find a solution, Catherine delivers an ultimatum to François, demanding he choose between her and Mathilde. Alarmed by her violence, François drags Mathilde from his class into an empty room to forcibly question her. But he soon calms down and, caught up in

195-399: A day at school, François arrives at her house to warn of her inevitable expulsion. The warning is flipped in favour of seduction and they end up sleeping together. His wife, Catherine, soon realises that her husband is courting one of his own pupils. Over the following weeks, Mathilde makes considerable progress at school in all subjects, and her exclusion is no longer an issue. During Easter,

260-426: A further two months. Later that evening, François meets with Mathilde at her house where she explains she lost interest in schooling. He assists her with math homework but leaves in a huff when she furtively receives a classmate her own age. Aware of François's jealousy, Mathilde makes overt advances by calling him at home to say goodnight, touching his hand during classes and other seductive measures. When she misses

325-494: 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

390-509: 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

455-520: 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

520-465: A small apartment near his school with an unobstructed view of his classroom. Living as a recluse, she spent her days observing him. The coroner's report suggested she had wasted away from yearning. Standing at the ocean's verge, François recalls Mathilde's last words written on the wall of her apartment: "The ocean, François, there is the ocean." The phrase references the last words of her mother's suicide note in which she described herself as "merging with

585-432: 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

650-416: Is Saint-Étienne-Châteaucreux station , which offers high-speed services to Paris and Lyon ( Saint-Étienne–Lyon railway ), as well as connects to several regional lines. There are four other railway stations in Saint-Étienne (Bellevue, Carnot, La Terrasse and Le Clapier) with local services. Saint-Étienne is also notable for its tramway ( Saint-Étienne tramway ) – which uniquely with Lille, it kept throughout

715-598: 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

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780-773: Is a city and the prefecture of the Loire département , in eastern-central France, in the Massif Central , 60 km (37 mi) southwest of Lyon , in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region . Saint-Étienne is the thirteenth most populated commune in France and the second most populated commune in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Its metropolis ( métropole ), Saint-Étienne Métropole , is the second most populous regional metropolis after Lyon . The commune

845-482: Is also at the heart of a vast metropolitan area with 406,868 inhabitants (2020), the eighteenth largest in France by population, comprising 105 communes. Its inhabitants are known as Stéphanois (masculine) and Stéphanoises (feminine). Long known as the French city of the "weapon, cycle and ribbon" and a major coal mining centre, Saint-Étienne is currently engaged in a vast urban renewal program aimed at leading

910-587: 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

975-602: Is based in the city and frame manufacturers Motobécane and Vitus are also based here. The city often hosts a stage of the Tour de France . Saint-Étienne resident Thierry Gueorgiou is a world champion in orienteering . The local rugby union team is CA Saint-Étienne Loire Sud Rugby . The nearest airport is Saint-Étienne–Bouthéon Airport which is located in Andrézieux-Bouthéon , 12 km (7.46 mi) north-northwest of Saint-Étienne. The main railway station

1040-530: 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

1105-463: Is hospitalized for attempted suicide and that her father lives in Paris. Over dinner, François urges Mathilde to attend classes from now on. The next day, Mathilde excels in her philosophy class, explaining with clarity and rigour Freud’s theory of the unconscious to her fellow students. Impressed, Hainaut intervenes on her behalf at a disciplinary committee meeting, allowing her to stay at the school for

1170-631: Is known for its football club AS Saint-Étienne , which has won the Ligue 1 title ten times. Named after Saint Stephen , the city first appears in the historical record in the Middle Ages as Saint-Étienne de Furan (after the River Furan , a tributary of the Loire ). In the 13th century, it was a small borough around the church dedicated to Saint Stephen. On the upper reaches of the Furan, near

1235-504: 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

1300-804: 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

1365-511: Is temperate at the weather station due to its low altitude, but Saint-Étienne itself is much higher, above 530 m (1,739 ft) in the centre, as well as even above 700 m (2,297 ft) in the southern parts of the city. Saint-Étienne is very close from a warm-summer humid continental climate ( Köppen : Dfb ); it is generally one of the snowiest cities in France, with an average of 85 cm (2.79 ft) of snow accumulation per year. The city's football club AS Saint-Étienne has won

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1430-716: 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

1495-615: 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

1560-583: 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

1625-412: The Ligue 1 title a joint-record ten times, achieving most of their success in the 1970s. The British indie-dance band Saint Etienne named themselves after the club. Saint-Étienne has many sports stadiums, the largest being Stade Geoffroy-Guichard used for football and Stade Henri-Lux for athletics. St. Étienne was the capital of the French bicycle industry. The bicycle wheel manufacturer Mavic

1690-484: 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

1755-578: 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

1820-537: 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

1885-558: The Way of St. James , the Abbey of Valbenoîte had been founded by the Cistercians in 1222. In the late 15th century, it was a fortified village defended by walls built around the original nucleus. From the 16th century, Saint-Étienne developed an arms manufacturing industry and became a market town. It was this which accounted for the town's importance, although it also became a centre for

1950-498: 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

2015-514: 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

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2080-449: 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

2145-504: The 20th century – and its trolleybus system ( Saint-Étienne trolleybus system ) – which is one of only three such systems currently operating in France. Bus and tram transport is regulated and provided by the Société de Transports de l'Agglomération Stéphanoise (STAS), a public transport executive organisation. The bicycle sharing system Vélivert with 280 short term renting bicycles has been available since June 2010. Saint-Étienne

2210-430: 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,

2275-529: 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

2340-484: 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

2405-436: 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

2470-604: The area) devoted mainly to perform Massenet's operas. In 2000, the city was named one of the French Towns and Lands of Art and History . On 22 November 2010, it was nominated as "City of Design" as part of UNESCO 's Creative Cities Network . Saint-Étienne has four museums: Saint-Étienne has 38 Monuments historiques , 6 buildings labeled Architecture contemporaine remarquable (Remarkable Contemporary Architecture), 2 sites classés (Classified sites) and 5 sites patrimoniaux remarquables (Remarkable heritage sites). The climate

2535-434: 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

2600-659: 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

2665-473: The early 20th century. In 1998, Saint-Étienne set up a design biennale , the largest of its kind in France. It lasts around two weeks. A landmark in the history of the importance ascribed to design in Saint-Étienne was the inauguration of La Cité du design on the site of the former arms factory in 2009. The city also launched the Massenet Festivals , (the composer Jules Massenet hailed from

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2730-490: The filming of Noce Blanche . Brisseau had asked Paradis, who was a minor, to masturbate in front of him and his companion. Subsequently, Paradis demanded the constant presence of her mother on set for the rest of the production. This article related to a French film of the 1980s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Saint-%C3%89tienne Saint-Étienne ( French pronunciation: [sɛ̃t‿etjɛn] ; Franco-Provençal : Sant-Etiève )

2795-559: 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

2860-868: 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)

2925-404: 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

2990-637: The lovers plan a two-week holiday together when Mathilde learns of her mother's second suicide attempt. She scraps their plans to spend time in hospital caring for her mother. Before leaving, she confesses to François that her two older brothers are drug dealers who live abroad. Destitute when they left and a substance abuser herself, she reveals how she survived as a prostitute for three years before quitting of her own accord. Abandoned by Catherine, François clings to his telephone conversations with Mathilde, with whom he has now fallen deeply in love. When she asks him to divorce his wife, he realises that his affair with

3055-468: The manufacture of ribbons and passementerie starting in the 17th century. Later, it became a mining centre of the Loire coal mining basin . The Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) was completed in 1830. In the first half of the 19th century, it was only a chief town of an arrondissement in the département of the Loire , with a population of 33,064 in 1832. The concentration of industry prompted these numbers to rise rapidly to 110,000 by about 1880. It

3120-422: 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

3185-437: The moment, the two share a passionate kiss. A group of students happen to see them through a window having sex. Later, François is fired and Mathilde is expelled from school. After Catherine decides to divorce François, he moves to Dunkirk to resume teaching. A year later, he receives a phone call from the police informing him that Mathilde is dead. When he comes to identify the body, the police inform him that Mathilde had rented

3250-564: 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,

3315-714: 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

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3380-717: 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

3445-561: 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

3510-402: 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

3575-438: 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

3640-436: The ocean". Shot primarily in Saint-Étienne , Noce Blanche marked the acting debut of the 16-year-old Vanessa Paradis . According to the photographer Pierre Terrasson , Brisseau made Paradis rehearse 14 hours a day: "She often cried. It was morally difficult [for her]." During the investigation that preceded the 2005 sexual-harassment trial of Jean-Claude Brisseau , Paradis' mother reported an incident that occurred during

3705-454: 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

3770-418: The table and graph below refer to the commune of Saint-Étienne proper, in its geography at the given years. The commune of Saint-Étienne absorbed the former communes of Beaubrun, Montaud, Outre-Furent and Valbenoîte in 1855, ceded Planfoy in 1863, merged with the exclave Saint-Victor-sur-Loire and with Terrenoire in 1969 and Rochetaillée in 1973. Saint-Étienne became a popular stop for automobile travelers in

3835-492: 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

3900-547: The transition from the industrial city inherited from the 19th century to the "design capital" of the 21st century. This approach was recognised with the entry of Saint-Étienne into the UNESCO Creative Cities network in 2010. The city is currently undergoing renewal, with the installation of the Châteaucreux business district, the ‘Steel’ retail complex and the manufacturing creative district. The city

3965-413: 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

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4030-554: 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

4095-402: 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

4160-494: Was the birthplace of: It was also the place where Andrei Kivilev died. Saint-Étienne is twinned with: Franco-Proven%C3%A7al 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

4225-459: Was this growing importance of Saint-Étienne that led to its being made seat of the prefecture and the departmental administration on 25 July 1855, when it became the chief town in the département and seat of the prefect, replacing Montbrison , which was reduced to the status of chief town of an arrondissement . Saint-Étienne absorbed the commune of Valbenoîte and several other neighbouring localities on 31 March 1855. The population data in

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