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| Meridional French | |
|---|---|
| français méridional | |
| Native to | Occitania |
| Ethnicity | Occitans |
Early forms | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Meridional French (French:français méridional;Occitan:francés meridional), also referred to asFrancitan (aportmanteau offrançais andoccitan), is the regional variant of theFrench language spoken in the area ofMarseille,Avignon andToulouse. It is influenced by theOccitan language.
There are speakers of Meridional French in all generations, but the accent is most marked among the elderly, who often speak Occitan as theirfirst language.
The phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon ofOccitan 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:
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.
A number of words are peculiar to Meridional French. For example,péguer (Occitanpegar), "to be sticky" (Standard Frenchpoisser),chocolatine (Southwest), "pain au chocolat",cagade (Occitancagada) orflûte (a larger baguette), known as apain parisien (Parisian loaf) inParis.
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 aspeut-être. That[further explanation needed] is acalque of the Occitanse cal.
Many sub-varieties of Meridional French exist, with distinctive features.
Examples ofdiatopic variation include lexical differences between the French spoken in Toulouse, as described bySéguy (1950), and that spoken in Bayonne, described byLambert (1928).
Diastratic variation is also extant in Meridional French. Thesociolects spoken by the Jews ofGascony, whose large set of special vocabulary used only within the group has been linguistically described byNahon (2018), is one of the most distinctive sub-dialects of Meridional French.
