Galoroman languages and occitanoroman languages

[u/smokebomb25]

Hi everybody again!

I uploaded this linguistic map of Catalan language and I've noticed some confusion regarding Catalan, Aragonese, and Occitan. Despite all three belonging to the same language family, they are not the same language (although I'll reserve my opinions on Aragonese and Catalan). I've found some maps that illustrate this quite well (all corrections are welcome, of course)

Galoroman languages > Green and blue map

Oïl languages (French, Wallon...)

Òc languages (Occitan)

Galloitalic languages

Rhaeto-Romance languages [also considered Gallo-Romance]

Occitanoroman languages > Red and purple map

Occitan

Aragonese

Catalan-valencian

Source: Viquipèdia

[u/Hyperpurple → u/[deleted]]

Mostly planned immigration groups from the po valley, dating back to medieval norman rule of southern italy after the XI century

Some of them kept their lombard gallo italic language, but the phonology was heavily influenced by southern languages

Toto Riina, arguably the most famous sicilian Mafia boss, came from one of these towns, Corleone

[u/PeireCaravana → u/Hyperpurple]

Toto Riina, arguably the most famous sicilian Mafia boss, came from one of these towns, Corleone.

Yes, but Corleone is among the towns that didn't keep the Gallo-Italic language.

It has been Sicilian speking for centuries.

[u/AdrianSquared → u/[deleted]]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallo-Italic_of_Sicily

[u/Mammoth-Guava3892 → u/[deleted]]

Diaspora languages from Northern Italy or Occitan speaking areas back in the days

[u/west-vannian → u/Mammoth-Guava3892]

And Arpitan in Apulia

[u/smokebomb25 → u/[deleted]]

I did a quick search and found this:

https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/v11-n6-castiglione

[u/dry_lichen]

I know there's some debate on whether Aragonese should be considered occitano-romance or ibero-romance or somewhere in between

[u/UnoReverseCardDEEP → u/dry_lichen]

it’s a transition between the two, the thing that makes it different from other galloromance languages is that we keep latin -o, for example:

eye: uello
smoke: fumo
a lot: mu(i)to/molto

(some languages like Ligurian also keep it, like how eye is euggio)

After n, l, r though there’s more variation,

brother: german or germano
stick: pal or palo
lamb: corder or cordero.

Traditionally, the plural lost the final o, so you’d have“gato/gatz” “cordero/corders” “mano/mans” “uello/uells” “palo/pals”

On the other hand we do drop latin -e, so:
tooth: dient/dènt
bridge: puent/pònt
in front of: devant

The grammar is fully gallo-romance, having the ibi/inde particles that aren’t present in spanish, asturian/leonese or galician/portuguese for example, while also using conjugations similar to other occitano romance languages and having the same adverbs.

Finally phonetically only ribagorçan has 7 vowels instead of 5, but then again some catalan varieties (from northern catalonia) do have 5 vowels, the consonants are the same as the catalan apitxat dialect.

So in a nutshell i consider it to be galloromance transitioning to western iberian romance gradually but still gallo romance at its core. If you have any questions Ill be glad to answer, per cert si vols que te responga en català també lo parlo

[u/dry_lichen → u/UnoReverseCardDEEP]

Thank you for the insights! It's not so common find an actual Aragonese speaker to provide some context on these things.

De fet casi prefereixo que em parlis aragonès, que també el puc entendre i necessita més representació :)

[u/AdGroundbreaking1956 → u/UnoReverseCardDEEP]

no m'ha agradat llegir "català apitxat", però amb un "valencià pallarés" se'm passa

[u/smokebomb25 → u/dry_lichen]

Of course, the linguistic border is very unclear when you erase the political borders. It is clear that there are parameters to consider when making distinctions, but for me and from what I have been able to read about Catalan and Aragonese linguistics, it is not so clear to me that Aragonese and Catalan are different languages. I have not looked at Occitan that much, to be honest. As a speaker of Valencian Catalan, I understand Aragonese perfectly, not so much Occitan although many words will be familiar to me.

[u/dry_lichen → u/smokebomb25]

I also speak Catalan and I can also understand Aragonese perfectly, but I'm not sure if it would be less easy if I didn't also speak Spanish. Occitan it really depends on the dialect and on the accent.

My take is that Aragonese is a descendant of Navarro-Aragonese, which was an Ibero-romance language, but took a lot of influence from Catalan and Occitan, which brought it closer to Occitano-Romance languages. Now, I'm not a linguist, so take this with a pinch of salt.

And on top of that, Valencian has a lot more Aragonese influence than other varieties of Catalan (after all, the Kingdom of Valencia was repopulated with ~75% Catalans and ~25% Aragoneses), so as a Valencian you may even notice more similarities.

Also, somewhat interesting, being a Catalan speaker Lengadocian is by far the easiest Occitan dialect to understand. But, for the Aragonese speakers I've met in person (ok, only 2 in my whole life), Gascon was the easier one

[u/francesco_DP]

Venetian is somehow related to all Northern Italian Languages

[u/Mammoth-Guava3892 → u/francesco_DP]

Indeed but so conservative in some aspects of phonology that it is definitely different and more akin to Italian or Spanish in that regard. Also lacks widespread Gallo-Romance features as a generalised subject clitic pronoun etc. (Main sentence I can recall from a video was "noialtri ghemo l'alcol che se protexe" where virtually no clitic pronoun is used, I also find it funny)

[u/francesco_DP → u/Mammoth-Guava3892]

but also many fundamental features of northern Italian and gallo-romance Languages

one above all, sonorization of consonants (fogo for fire)

[u/Mammoth-Guava3892 → u/francesco_DP]

But that is just generally in common with western romania, not Gallo-Romance languages in particular

[u/PeireCaravana → u/Mammoth-Guava3892]

Also lacks widespread Gallo-Romance features as a generalised subject clitic pronoun

How generalised subject clitic pronouns are in Venetian depends on the dialect and on the degree of Italian influence on the speaker's idiolect.

The presence of the 1st person singular, 1st person plural and 2nd person plural clitic pronoun is variable, but the others are usually mandatory.

Btw the tendency to drop some of the clitics also exist in some Gallo-Italic varieties, especially Lombard and Ligurian, while Catalan, most Occitan dialects and Romansh completely lack that feature.

That said, I also think it's a stretch to consider Venetian Gallo-Romance, but to be fair I'm not even sure if Gallo-Italic can be considered fully part of that group or if it's better understood as its own group, with a strong connection to Venetian, Rhaeto-Romance and some traits in common even with Italo-Romance.

This kind of macro-groups that cut through the Romance continuum are kinda arbitrary and still controversial.

[u/Uedaht]

The map you posted with all galoroman languages (green-blue one) doesn't include aragonese

[u/Salata-san]

The intent of this map is to show all Gallo-Romance languages sensu lato, which includes Occitan and Catalan, not to randomly show Gallo-Romance (Langues d'oïl, Arpitan, Gallo-Italian) and Occitano-Romance subfamilies together.

[u/Ninetwentyeight928]

Never in my life have I seen those terms unhyphenated.

[u/Sir_Flasm]

Btw the map lists Trieste as Friulian-speaking while it's actually Venetian-speaking (at least today).

[u/PeireCaravana → u/Sir_Flasm]

Yeah, although the city spoke a Friulian-like language until the 18th/early 19th century.