This is the first installment in a series I hope to be able to post on a weekly basis. I've posted these before in another forum, but sadly they've been lost to the ravages of time. Or a faulty database. Or whatever.
In my studies I came in contact with the language that is subject of tonight's edition of LotW, Occitan. Having never heard of this language before, I began thinking about the sheer number of human languages that currently exist. Africa alone is the host of thousands of languages! That gave me the idea to further study what other relatively obscure and just plain obscure languages there are out there. Hence this entry you're reading now.
The question is, what language should be defined as "obscure"? My rule of thumb is that if the language in question is spoken as a first language by a majority of people in at least one country, then for the intent and purposes of these blog entries it is not an obscure language. Thus, I won't be writing about Finnish anytime soon, even if it's not a widely spoken language. On the other hand, the Sami languages spoken in northern Scandinavia may be the subject of a future installment.
In this, the premier edition of LotW, we're taking a look at Occitan.
Occitan is, like its close relatives French and Spanish, a Romance language, primarily spoken in southern France, northern Spain and northwestern Italy. Some 2 million people speak Occitan as their first language.
There are several dialects of Occitan, which are sometimes considered separate, distinct languages.
Occitan is mutually intelligible with Catalan, a language spoken in northeastern Spain and the subject of a future installment of LotW. The two are occasionally considered variants of the same language.
For further reading, I suggest checking out the English and French Wikipedia entries (Caveat Emptor: Wikipedia's reliability is mixed at best, but it should nevertheless be a good starting point).
And if you feel so inclined, why not check out the Occitan Wikipedia entry on Occitan? It is actually quite readable if you know a bit of Spanish or French.
Other recommended sources are OccitaNet and Omniglot.
