OCCITAN

The Occitan language covers 33 departments of France, south of a line drawn from the river Gironde to the Alps. Occitan, like French "Oil", comes from popular Latin after the fall of the Roman empire in the 5th Century.

The barbarian invasions influenced the different dialects and when the Francs, a Germanic people, settled especially to the north of the Loire, they accentuated the cleavage between the language of "Oïl" and the language of "Oc" in the south.

Occitan was the language of the troubadours in Europe during the Middle Ages. Their poetry made the Langue d'Oc a language of culture and has influenced French literature. The trouvères, their equivalents in the Langue d'Oil, copied them. Languedocien, the occitan dialect, including Gruissan, is the dialect nearest to the language of the troubadours.

In the 13th century, the crusade againgst the Albigois (Cathares) and then the annexation of Languedoc by the kingdom of France, halted the development of the Occitan culture. But the language has given a number of Occitan words to French, such as amour, muscat, flamant, jaloux, escargot, rôder.