Loís Combas

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Loís Combas (French also Louis Combes , born May 30, 1925 in Bédarieux (occit .: Bedarius); † September 22nd 2006 in Ceignac (occit .: Cenhac) near Rodez , Languedoc ) was a French, Catholic priest, university professor, author and linguists. He became known under his scientific pseudonym Joan de Cantalausa , under which he published all of his publications. His specialty was Occitan Studies. Combas was an ardent supporter and advocate of the Occitan language and culture, to which he wanted to restore their due importance and dignity. He published numerous of his own works and translations of literary texts in Occitan language. He translated the New Testament Gospels and the Old Testament Book of Job directly from their respective original languages ​​into the Occitan language. He also translated Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book , George Orwell's Animal Farm, and a few Asterix episodes into Occitan. His most important work is the first edition of “Diccionari General Occitan”, published in 2002, the first monolingual dictionary in Occitan.

life and work

Combas was born on May 30, 1925 in Bédarieux, Hérault (Occitan .: Erau). When he was four years old, his parents moved to Montfranc , Aveyron department (Occitan: Avairon), where the family on their mother's side came from and ran a small farm. When Combas was 13 years old, his father passed away. After graduating from primary school, Combas became a boarder at Belmont's Pichon Seminary. During the holidays, Combas helped his mother and brother work on the farm. These modest youth and the years of war that followed hardship determined his personality for a lifetime.

In October 1943 he entered the Catholic seminary in Rodez. Later did his military service in Germany. On his return in 1947, he became a secretary in the Montfranc municipal administration. In 1949 he returned to the seminary in Rodez. He was ordained a priest in Rodez Cathedral on June 29, 1951. He was appointed boarding school teacher at the Pichon Seminary in Rodez. This was followed by study visits to England, where he obtained a licentiate in classical philology and in Toulouse (occit .: Tolosa), where he obtained a licentiate in English philology. This was followed by a stay at the English high school in Chichester as a French teacher. He was then appointed head of the Catholic Church in New York . Here he made the acquaintance of important personalities from politics and culture such as the Russian Andre Gromyko (at that time the representative of Russia at the United Nations), the French politician Maurice Couve de Murville , the German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand , the American actress Doris Day , the civil rights activist Martin Luther King and the French chanson singer Edith Piaf .

Returning to Rodez, Comba's greatest intellectual adventure began in the early 1970s, his staunch advocacy of Occitan language and culture. At the age of 45 he devoted himself with great enthusiasm to the study and dissemination of the Occitan language. He became professor of Occitan at the high schools in Rodez. He edited and designed educational language textbooks and dictionaries for Occitan, including the “Diccionari Illustrat”. Numerous literary translations into the Occitan language follow such as the translation of the New Testament Gospels directly from ancient Greek under the title “La Bona Novèla”, the jungle book by Rudyard Kipling, the Old Testament Song of Songs, the “Letters from my Mill” by Alphonse Daudet , “ The Old Man and the Sea "by Ernest Hemingway , the novella" Regain "(Harvest) by Jean Giono ," Of Mice and Men "by John Steinbeck and some transmissions of Asterix stories. In 1979 he founded the l'associació Cultura d'Òc. with the aim of spreading the Occitan language.

Combas is the author of a great work in the humanities and linguistics that contains around thirty titles written in Occitan. From 1983 he worked tirelessly for six years on a book published in 1989 entitled "A las raices de la lenga nòstra", a study of the Occitan language spoken from 480 to 1080. In 2002 he published the "Diccionari General Occitan", which he worked on for 30 years. This work contains around 100,000 entries with 200,000 definitions on 1022 pages. Combas has integrated the vocabulary of the older Occitan dictionaries by Frédéric Mistral and Loís Alibèrt into this dictionary, adding new words and neologisms. The majority of the registered lemmas come from the Occitan expression from Languedoc. Combas has also documented words from other dialects of Occitan here. In 2005 he published "Tèxtes per l'an 3000 e al delà" and in 2006 his last work "Lenga viva".

Loís Combas died on September 22, 2006 in Ceignac, not far from Rodez, at the age of 81. He will remain known above all in the Occitan south of France as the one who worked tirelessly for the Occitan language and culture as well as for the Occitan nation.

Appreciation

Combas was scientifically not recognized by everyone as a loner with extremely profound knowledge in several disciplines. In his resolute and cosmopolitan style of doing linguistics, he recalls the two great Catalan linguists Miquel Batllori and Joan Coromines . He was characterized by an almost indefatigable ability to work. As a polyglot linguist, he mastered numerous languages: Occitan, Catalan, Aramaic, Ancient Greek, Latin, English, German, French as well as Spanish and Russian. In addition, he had an excellent knowledge of Anglo-Saxon culture.

Awards and honors

On May 13, 2003, the "Center d'Agermanament Occitano-Català", the CAOC, (Center for the Occitan-Catalan Partnership) in Barcelona honored him for his scientific achievements with a dinner and an honorary reception.

Works by Loís Combas (aka Joan de Cantalausa)

  • Diccionari General Occitan, a partir dels parlars lengadocians, Edicion segonda corregida, melhorada e augmentada per Cantalausa, de març 2002 entrò a genièr de 2006, Verlag Edicions Cultura d'Oc, ISBN 2-912293-04-9 ( PDF; 7.1 MB )
  • Diccionari General Occitan, a partir dels parlars lengadocians, 2nd corrected edition March 2006, Verlag Cultura d'Òc, ISBN 2-912293-04-9
  • Diccionari fondamental occitan illustrat, 2nd edition 1979, CREO publisher, 341 pages
  • Un Còp èra: Racontes de Montfranc: Contes de Pertot, illustrated by Geneviève Joly, 3rd edition 1981, Center Régional d'Estudis Occitans, 96 pages
  • Tèxtes per l'an 3000 e al delà: contes, racontes, novèlas, poèmas, cançons, Nadalets, 2005, Verlag Cultura d'Òc, ISBN 978-2-912293-06-0 , 196 pages
  • Le gallo-roman parlé du VIIIe siècle: le gallo-roman écrit du Xe siècle: glossaire historique et étymologique, 2nd edition 1997, Publisher Culture d'Oc, 200 pages
  • Poëma lunar, illustrated by Dominique Foa, 1975, IEO publisher, 31 pages
  • Tèrra d'òc: comptinas, cançons, poësia: iniciacion a l'occitan en musica pel primièr cicle, segonda compresa, Toulouse 1978, Center régional d'estudis occitans, 108 pages
  • with David Julien: Liturgia d'òc: messa cantarèla, maridatge, enterrament, baptejalhas, velhada de Nadal, dimenge del Rampalm, resurreccion; illustrated by Geneviève Joly, Toulouse 1978, Center régional d'études occitanes publisher, 42 pages
  • Lenga d'òc: comptinas, cançons, contes, poesia: iniciacion a l'occitan (primièr cicle, segondas), illustrated by David Julien, Gérard Truilhé, Geneviève Joly, 1989, Verlag Cultura d'Òc
  • Sus la dralhas de la vida (autobiography), 2000, Cultura d'Òc publisher
  • with Sèrgi Gairal and Iveta Balard, Lenga viva, 12000 frasas amb illustracions e activitats pedagogicas, 2006, Verlag Cultura d'Òc, ISBN 978-2-912293-10-7 , 318 pages
  • with Geneviève Joly; Marie-Odile Dumeaux; Christian Andrieu: Vida privada d'unes animals, 2006, Cultura d'Òc publisher

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The article is based on the corresponding articles in the Occitan, Catalan and French Wikipedia. The name Lois Combas is in the Occitan form, the places where he lived and worked are shown with the respective French place names; the corresponding Occitan place names are added in brackets when they first appear.
  2. ↑ The following biography is based on the biographical information of Carles Pons, to which the Occitan Wikipedia refers. The original work by Carles Pons was not available to the author. The obituary by Carles Pons of Loís Combas in French mentioned in the literature list gives this biographical information in abbreviated form.
  3. ↑ Okzitan. WP: "Après lo Certificate"
  4. ↑ Okzitan. WP: "Seminari de Sant Pèire a Rodés"
  5. ↑ To the roots of our language
  6. ↑ Search input field on the right side of the screen; Enter the first letter of the search term; Confirm the entry with the "Cercar" button.
personal data
SURNAME Combas, Loís
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cantalausa, Joan de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French linguist and translator
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Bédarieux
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 2006
Place of death Ceignac