Introduction and questions about Occitan
Yo, linguists!
I thought I would introduce myself. I have been a member of the group, and have occasionally commented, but this is my first original post.
I am nearing 60, and officially stopped learning languages in 1965 when I left school with French, German and Spanish A-levels. Nowadays I can read simple books in French (particularly if they are translations of English books I have loved!), I am trying to get into a German historical novel and can cope with much Spanish by just assuming that it’s the same word. And I can order a room, a meal and an extra pillow in these and Italian and Greek.
Anyway, since I have been retired from work have been playing around with a series of books set in mediaeval Europe. The main characters will be travelling, and will be polyglot, though one is a young man born in Gascony to an absentee English father and a French mother (so should speak French and Occitan); his mentor is Northern French, but has spent time in Rousillon and also speaks Occitan. They are musicians, and this has also given them some grounding in Italian, Flemish (or any other language that seems necessary.)
But I am interested in the history of Occitania - and whether the Occitanian dialects including the Provençal language will have survived long after the Albigensian Crusade. My thoughts about this are probably based on areas on the British Isles where English/Norman colonists made English the only real language to do business in, if your business was with the law, the land-owners, the power brokers and even the businessmen. Even those who had the original Celtic tongue would have needed English to prosper, and only in isolated peasant communities could the original tongue survive much unaltered in the mouths of monoglot peasants - like Montaillou did in Cathar country.
This will have an effect on my story - will they be speaking to the lords and masters in French or Provençal, and how much damage was inflicted on the original language group holding power after the Crusade. I find the actual change over of power after an ‘invasion’ like that full of contradictions and exceptions to the simple “and the English (or French) invaded and dominated the previous inhabitants” and after a few years of bickering conflict we settle down to believe that the French are now in charge. I realize that this is a history question, although my interest in language does mainly concentrate on the light it sheds on history by its distribution and development. If it isn’t the right forum, could someone redirect me, or perhaps recommend a book.
Because I am writing in English (with all my characters speaking English to represent whatever language they are speaking) place names are given in the form they are now known in English. So Avignon, not its Provençal name. But for artistic reasons I want to name a few properties (fictional, but situated just to the west of the Rhone at Avignon) with Occitan names. And I haven’t been able to find the right words for all of them
Heron’s Bridge - Pons d’Héron would work for me, but when I was in the Langued’oc recently no one could say whether there was a different word for ‘heron’. I am sure there must have been - the birds have been there for thousands of years. Catalan, which I believe is related, is said to have ‘bernat pescaire’.
Frog Farm - this should or could be Mas Rana (all sorts of properties are called Mas this and that, and I preferred Rana to Granhòta).
Thank you for your help (and apologies if the lj-cut doesn't work - I've never tried to use it before).