Occitan | Office de tourisme du Haut-Lignon – Découvrez des activités pleine nature et des hébergements insolites pour vos vacances en Haute-Loire.

Excerpt from a poem by Jean-François Meiller de Montregard :

L’arbre s’es despolhat de son felhatge vèrd,
Lo païsan a pres sa casaca d’ivèrn,
Lo jorn, o veiètz ben, n’a pas mai d’una braça,
E dins lo fons dau ceal lo solelh s’embarassa.

The tree has shed its green foliage,
The peasant has put on his winter coat,
The day, as you can see, has no more than a fathom,
And in the depths of the sky the sun embarrasses itself.

Occitan, a living language that tells our story

The Tence coat of arms tells us more!

The coat of arms reflects the village’s rich history. The coat of arms is composed of three merlettes, a reproduction of the coat of arms of the prior of Tence, Jean de Naturelli, from 1519 to 1527. A fir branch embraces the motto, indicating the wealth of the land.

Right-hand side: The coat of arms of the town of Tence features the Occitan cross, the coat of arms of the County of Toulouse
to which Tence belonged until the French Revolution. This is the cross of Languedoc!

A branch of oak borders the shield, symbolizing the loyalty and strength of its inhabitants.
The whole is surmounted by the ramparts, a reminder that the town was fortified and enclosed within its walls from the ^14th to the ^18th century.

The motto: “ALTA SICUS MONTES CORDA” (“Choirs as high as the mountains”)

Dancing is part of the dialect

A living language

The Occitan language is divided into dialects, and despite this diversity, Occitan speakers understand each other without much difficulty.
There are 6 dialects, divided into two groups:

South Occitan includes Gascon, Languedocien and Provençal.
North Occitan includes Limousin, Auvergnat and Vivaro-Alpin, the dialect we speak here.

Vivaro-Alpin is spoken from the Loire to the Po, i.e. from Velay to the Cuneo region in Italy, via the northern Vivarais, the southern Dauphiné and the southern Alps.

Listen to the melody of the words in this FM43 radio recording and guess the recipe!

Paraulas de tèrras occitanas

Trif. Genre : Blues.

Names that speak volumes...

Street and village names

Occitan can be found everywhere in toponymy : street names, family names and the spelling of localities are representative of the language’s influence.

In Tence, rue Cuoq refers to the cook, maître-queux, and the Occitan spelling -lh pronounced [y] can be found in the place names Crouzilhac and Gardailhac.
In Chenereilles, the Betz locality means birch, while Maméa is a contraction of mas and mean: the farm and the boundary.
At Mas-de-Tence, the Malatray stream is difficult to access, and on the way to Château de Montivert, you pass through the hamlet of Les Ruches, which comes from the Occitan ruchas meaning “bark”, as there used to be a tanning mill there where bark was ground for tanning hides.

A little vocabulary...

Just a few of the words you’ll hear in French conversations sparse with patois, if you listen carefully:

You'll often hear...

Lou faïard: the beech that populates our forests

Lou rachou is the buzzard or bird of prey often seen in our landscapes.

You can say: Quò vaï? for Everything’s fine!

Nearly every farm has its own bachàs: a drinking trough or basin.

When you’ve had a bit too much to drink the next day: you’ve got the banes (the horns)

When it’s wet, it’s barely raining, and when bzis (peas) fall, it’s sleet.

And most importantly, when you’ve got a girlfriend, you give her poutous (kisses)!

Des chants, des danses, des sainettes lors du Festival La Retornade à Tence

In the past, there was a breed of cow called Mézine, known in Occitan as La froumente for its wheat coat.

Weather saying: Quand Lhiziou prein soun tsapé, bèrdzeïre prein toun manté! (When Lizieux takes his hat, shepherdess, take your coat!)

Animals you may come across: rinart (fox), tsabrol (deer), echirol (squirrel), rachou (buzzard), dzaï (jay)
Forest fruits: aïrèle (blueberry), amoure (blackberry), ampouan (raspberry).

You’ll never hear of the buzzard from the locals, but of the rachou! Or the beech tree, but the faïard!

A geographical space

Let's have a look landscapes speak for themselves!

A number of places offer panoramic views of the Alps, so you can see at a glance the entire Occitan-speakingVivaro-Alpineregion, from Velay and Forez to the Occitan valleys of Italy.

Take the Du Mas à Montivert hiking trail, the landscape speaks to us, the panorama is magnificent between Bénétrèche and Bel-Air, and on a clear day you can even see Mont Blanc!

PR200 Du Mas à Montivert

Further information

Biography

French-Nord-Occitan dictionary
Nord du Vivarais et du Velay by Joannès Dufaud. Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette: Edition Jean-Pierre Huguet, 1998.
Farming geography
Gens et lieux d’Yssingelais, sud-Forez, et hautes vallées du nord-Vivarais d’après leur langue, l’occitan vivaro-alpin by Jean-Yves Rideau. Tence: Association La Retornada, 2018
Le patois de moi à toi
Entre Ardèche et Haute-Loire; lexicon, stories and recipes by Georges Dumas. Editions Dolmazon, 2010
The Occitan language of Yssingeaux
by Jean-Baptiste Martin. Yssingeaux: Association Histoire et Patrimoine, 1997
Songs and tales from Haute-Loire
Didier Perre’s 1946 phonographic survey. Riom: AMTA, 2013

Theodore de Felice fund

In 2005, the commune of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon received the library of Théodore de Félice, a specialist in the Occitan language spoken on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, from his family.

Depending on the circumstances, the 4,000 or so documents in this encyclopedic library, rich in heritage documents, can be loaned with the authorization of the director of the media library at Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, or consulted on site.

Presentation of the collection on Occitanica, the portal for Occitan language and culture