HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Meridional French (french: français méridional), also referred to as Francitan, is a regional variant of the
French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in N ...
. It is widely spoken in
Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fra ...
,
Avignon Avignon (, ; ; oc, Avinhon, label= Provençal or , ; la, Avenio) is the prefecture of the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of Southeastern France. Located on the left bank of the river Rhône, the commune had ...
and
Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and fr ...
and is influenced by the
Occitan language Occitan (; oc, occitan, link=no ), also known as ''lenga d'òc'' (; french: langue d'oc) by its native speakers, and sometimes also referred to as ''Provençal'', is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valle ...
. There are speakers of Meridional French in all generations, but the accent is most marked among the elderly, who often speak Occitan as their
first language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother to ...
.


Characteristics

The phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of Occitan have all influenced Meridional French, but the phonological effects are perhaps the most salient by producing the characteristic accent, which is used by speakers of Meridional French. Those effects include the following: * The loss of phonemic nasal vowels, which are replaced by an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant * the frequent realisation of the final atonal vowels of
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
, which are lost by speakers of other varieties of French, as
schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
* the presence of lexical stress on the penultimate syllable of many words, in contrast to the phrase-final stress of Standard French Meridional French is also subject to a phonological law known as the Law of Position in which mid-vowels are subject to allophonic variation based on the shape of their syllables; they are realised as mid-open in closed syllables (those ending in a consonant) and as mid-close in open syllables (those ending in a vowel). The phenomenon has been shown to be somewhat more complex, however, by Durand (1995), Eychenne (2006), and Chabot (2008). The principle is strictly adhered to by speakers of Meridional French, in contrast to those of other varieties of French.


Phonology

* Lexical (or word-based)
stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
is used, unlike the prosodic stress of Standard French. * Nasal vowels have not changed but are still pronounced as in traditional Parisian French or with a nasal consonant after the vowel: ''enfant'' , ''pain'' , ''timbre'' , ''bon'' and ''brun'' . * The " ''e'' caduc" is always pronounced by older speakers, even at the end of words. For example, ''cerise'' (cherry) is pronounced , ''tête'' (head) is pronounced , and it is sometimes pronounced even if there is no ''e''; ''ciel'' (sky) . * merge with , the resulting phonemes being pronounced open-mid in stressed syllables (unless word-final, where they are close-mid) and close-mid in unstressed syllables (except before /ʁC/ clusters, where they are open-mid). As a result, both ''notre'' and ''nôtre'' are pronounced as and both ''jeune'' and ''jeûne'' are as .


Vocabulary

A number of words are peculiar to Meridional French. For example, ''péguer'' (Occitan ''pegar''), "to be sticky" (Standard French ''poisser''), ''chocolatine'' (Southwest), "
pain au chocolat Pain au chocolat (, literally "chocolate bread"), also known as chocolatine () in the south-west part of France and in Canada, or couque au chocolat in Belgium, is a type of Viennoiserie pastry consisting of a cuboid-shaped piece of yeast- l ...
", ''cagade'' (Occitan ''cagat'') or ''flûte'' (a larger baguette), known as a ''pain parisien'' (Parisian loaf) in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
. Some phrases are used with meanings that differ from those of Standard French. For example, ''s'il faut'', literally meaning "if necessary", is used to mean "perhaps", which would be rendered in Standard French as ''peut-être''. That is a
calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
of the Occitan ''se cal''.


Internal variation

Many sub-varieties of Meridional French exist, with distinctive features. Diatopic variation accounts for the differences between the French varieties spoken in the various areas of Southern France. Phonetics and vocabulary often change from one region to another. For instance, the lexis used in the variety of French spoken in Toulouse, described by , differs substantially from the variety spoken in Bayonne, described by . Diastratic variation is also extant in Meridional French. The
sociolect In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language (non-standard dialect, restricted register) or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, an age group, or other social group. Sociolects involve both passive acquisiti ...
s spoken by the Jews of
Gascony Gascony (; french: Gascogne ; oc, Gasconha ; eu, Gaskoinia) was a province of the southwestern Kingdom of France that succeeded the Duchy of Gascony (602–1453). From the 17th century until the French Revolution (1789–1799), it was part ...
, whose large set of special vocabulary used only within the group has been linguistically described by , is one of the most distinctive sub-dialects of Meridional French.


References

* * * *. *. *. {{Gallo-Romance languages and dialects Macaronic forms of French Occitan language French language in France