Gascon language

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Gaskognisch (gascon)

Spoken in

France , Spain
speaker approx. 500,000
Linguistic
classification

Indo-European languages

Italian languages
Romance languages
Gallo-Roman languages
  • Gaskognisch
Official status
Official language in Catalonia ( Spain ) (in fact primarily in the Val d'Aran )
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

oc (Occitan)

ISO 639 -2

oci (Occitan)

ISO 639-3

oci (Occitan)

The Gascon language is a Gallo-Roman language that is spoken in the historical province of Gascogne in south-west France and in the Aranese variety in Val d'Aran in north-west Spanish Catalonia . Only Aranese has official status in Catalonia.

Name and classification

The name Gaskognisch (gascognisch and French gascon ) has the same etymological origin as the name of its neighboring language, Basque (gascognisch basc, French basque, Spanish vasco ).

Map of the languages ​​and dialects of France

It is controversial whether Gaskognisch is a separate language or a dialect of Occitan . A majority of linguists is of the opinion that Gaskognisch is part of the Occitan language area; a minority is of the opinion that it is a separate language.

In any case, Gaskognic has phonetic, syntactic and lexical features that distinguish it from the other Occitan dialects. This is partly explained by the existence of an aquitanic substrate . The Aquitanian , which in Gascony was spoken of Romanization was used according to current knowledge closely with the Basque. In later times, the Basque as an astrate could have strengthened this substrate effect.

distribution

The traditional distribution area of the Gascon is roughly from the main ridge of the Pyrenees in the south (opposite the Catalan and Aragonese ), the course of the river Garonne and Gironde in the east and north-east (opposite the Languedokischen and the Langues d'oïl belonging Poitevin Saintongeais ) and the The Atlantic Ocean ( Bay of Biscay ) is limited to the west, while there is no clear natural boundary to the Basque in the southwest.

The distribution area of ​​the Gaskognischen

Gascon is spoken in the following French departments :

In Spain today only the Val d'Aran in Catalonia is gas-cognitive. In the Middle Ages, some of the coastal cities of the province of Gipuzkoa ( Donostia-San Sebastián , Hondarribia , Pasaia ) were bilingual in Gascon and Basque, which today are bilingual in Spanish and Basque.

The current number of Gaskognischen speakers on French territory is estimated at a good 500,000, although the proportion of speakers in the total population varies greatly. It is highest in the rural areas of the Pyrenees (35% in the Hautes-Pyrénées department ) and lowest in the larger cities (3% in the city of Bordeaux [Gaskognisch Bordèu ]), where Gaskognisch has been largely replaced by French .

According to the 2001 language census, Aranese is understood by 6,712 people (88.88% of the population) and spoken by 4,700 people (62.24%) in the Val d'Aran. 4,413 (58.44%) can read it and 2,016 (26.69%) can write it.

Dialects

Isoglosses that delimit or intersect the area of ​​Gaskognischen; southwest and south of the numbered isoglosses are the areas of distribution of the following linguistic features:
1 -Ll-> -r-, -ll-> -th ( anhèra < AGNELLA ; anhèth < AGNELLUM )
2 f> h ( haria < FARINA )
3 r-> arr- ( arren < REM )
4th –N-> 0 ( lua < LUNA )
5 -Nd-> -n- ( tóner < TONDERE )
6th praube < PAUPERUM (with metathesis)
7th syntactic type que vieni (enunciative with que )
8th syntactic type quan lo men hilh sia gran (with subjunctive in the subordinate clause)
9 specific article m. eth < ILLUM , f. era < ILLA
10 lexical type maishèra meaning 'cheek'
11 lexical type tós meaning ' water for animals'

The Gaskognische is divided into numerous dialects. While there is general agreement about the delimitation of Gaskognic from the outside world, it is difficult to combine the Gaskognic dialect groups into a limited number of dialect groups, since the inner Gascon isoglosses rarely run parallel to one another. In addition, dialectal forms of language on French territory are traditionally usually simply referred to as patois by the speakers , so that there are no commonly used traditional names for such dialect groups.

As sub-dialects of Gaskognischen, Bearnesisch (béarnais) in Béarn , where due to the centuries-long political independence, which was connected with the official use of the native language, an independent language awareness exists, and Landesisch (Landais) in the department of Landes . From today's sociolinguistic point of view, Aranese (aranais) has a special position in the Val d'Aran in Catalonia , as it is the only variety of Gasconic that has a generally recognized codification at the local level and is used as the official language; on the linguistic structural level, however, it differs little from the neighboring Gaskognischen varieties on the French side of the state border.

Characteristics

The most striking characteristics that simultaneously separate Gascon from the other Occitan dialects are phonetic and syntactic.

  • Latin f- initially becomes h in Gaskognischen (as in Spanish) : femina , woman '> hemna
  • Latin -LL will in Gascon end of the word -th and vowels to - r -: castellum , small castle, Schloss'> Casteth , illa , those '> era, the' certain feminine product in some dialects Gascon
  • Latin intervowel - n - omitted: luna , moon '> lua
  • " Enunciative ": Most Gascon dialects usually introduce the predicate with one of several particles. The most common of these particles is que , which is used in normal sentences: Que sabi 'I know'.

See on this topic also: Characteristics of Aranese

literature

  • Pierre Bec: La langue occitane . 6th corr. Edition PUF, Paris 1995. ISBN 2-13-039639-9 .
  • Aitor Carrera: Gramatica aranesa . Pagès ed., Lleida 2007.
  • Robert Darrigrand: Initiation au gascon . 4th, revised. u. corr. Ed. Per noste, Orthez 1984, ISBN 978-2868660718
  • Bernard Moreux: Béarnais and Gascon today: language behavior and perception . In: Philippe Blanchet u. a. (Ed.): The Sociolinguistics of Southern “Occitan” France Revisited . Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2004 (= International Journal of the Sociology of Language , No. 169), pp. 25-62.
  • Gerhard Rohlfs : Le gascon. Études de philologie pyrénéenne . 3rd ext. Edition Niemeyer [u. a.], Tübingen 1977. (Supplements to the magazine for Romance philology; 85)
  • Maurice Romieu, André Bianchi: Gramatica de l'occitan gascon contemporanèu . Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, Pessac 2005, ISBN 978-2867813474

See also

Web links

Commons : Gas cognitive language  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Bernard Moreux: Béarnais and Gascon today: language behavior and perception , in: The sociolinguistics of Southern "Occitan" France, revisited . Ed. by Philippe Blanchet et al. Berlin [u. a.]: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004 (International journal of the sociology of language; 169), pp. 25-62.
  2. Archived copy ( memento of the original from April 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aranes.org
  3. ^ Source for the course of the isoglosses is Gerhard Rohlfs: Le gascon. Études de philologie pyrénéenne . 3rd ext. Edition Niemeyer [u. a.], Tübingen 1977, Carte I in the appendix. The map there is based on data from the Atlas linguistique de France .