South of Grenoble, the train slides through the long valleys between the foothills that parallel the Alps, first upstream on the River Drac, then coming down into the massive wide valley of the Durace, which itself joins the Rhône further south as a major tributary. The foothills begin to flatten out, and the high Alps recede to the east. One begins to feel the influence of the Mediterranean climate. It is at this point that one leaves the High Rhône and enters the historical region of Provence.
Just west of Gap, at the small town of Veynes, one must change trains if one wishes to continue South into Provence proper. In Veynes, in the vicinity of the plaza by the small train station the street signs are apparently bilingual, in both French and Occitan--- lenga d'òc, aka langue d'oc---the "language of oc," so called because of the word it uses for "yes" (as opposed to the modern French oui, for example).
Occitan is distinctly not a dialect of French. It is actually much closer to Catalan, for example, than French. It is also not the same language as the historical Franco-Provençal, which is a different story. Nowadays when one says Provençal, usually one means the dialect of Occitan spoken within Provence.
It has no official status in France, although it has a dedicated following of people who wish to preserve it (and it is an official minority language in Catalonia). It is used in conversation through a wide region stretching from northern Spain to Alpine Italy, but in the later Twentieth Century the cohort of native speakers has been declining steeply and growing older. It is a common story for unofficial minority languages such as this.
Before arriving in Provence, I had read online that because Occitan is not an official language, one will search in vain to find in written form here.
I can now verify that this statement is true, although via a multilingual pun.
Happy Thanksgiving!
ed. note: not only searched for, but found.
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