Occitania

Occitania includes the Alps, the Pyrenees, the French part of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and has a common language. The Occitan Valleys in the Italian Alps are twelve Piedmontese valleys in the provinces of Cuneo and Turin, as well as in scattered mountain boroughs of the Liguria region Imperia. The Occitan Language, which is also called Languedoc or Langue d'oc, in all its historical evolutions and the dialectal variety unites these regions.

Occitan Valleys
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Occitan Valleys (Occitan: Valadas Occitanas, Italian: Valli Occitane) are the part of Occitania (the territory of the Occitan language) which is situated within the borders of Italy. It is a mountainous territory, situated in the southern Alps: most of its valleys are oriented eastward and descend toward the plains of Piedmont. Index

Geography
The territory of the Piedmontese Occitan valleys comprise circa 4.500 km² from the East side of the Alps, with numerous parallel valley and Mountains to the West-East. The connection between the valleys is difficult but the access is easy from the Pianura Padana (the valley of the river Po), which origin is at the same time the border of the Occitan area. The Occitan valleys in the last centuries always had a good connection to Occitania, because of the big territory on the French side of the Alps, given by the mountains Colle della Maddalena and Colle del Monginevro.

Language
In Italy Occitan is also spoken in the Occitan Valleys (Alps) in Piedmont and Liguria. An Occitan-speaking enclave also exists at Guardia Piemontese (Calabria) since the 14th century. Italy adopted in 1999 a Linguistic Minorities Protection Law, or "Law 482", which includes Occitan. Italian is the dominant language. The Occitan language is a language of the Romance family, descending from Latin. Due to its minorised situation it suffers from a huge dialectal fragmentation. Three big dialectal areas are widely defined: Northern Occitan (Limousin, Auvergnat, Vivaro-Alpine), Middle Occitan (Languedocian and Provençal), Gascon. Occitania originates from oc, meaning 'yes', in the so-called oc-language. Oc gave also its name to the province of Languedoc (literally 'language of Oc'). The Occitan spoken in the Piedmont is very similar to the Occitan of the Alps of Provenza. But Occitan is not spoken officially in every Piedmontese valley: the valley of Locana, of Lanzo and Val Susa (including Susa) are part of the linguistic area of the Franco Provencal language or “Arpitana” (as in the valley Valle d'Aosta). The valley of Susa has therefore the characteristic of being quadrilingual (Occitan on the mountains, Franco Provencal in the valley, Italian in general and French for a minority at Susa).

Borderline cases
Whereas for many valley the affiliation to the Occitan linguistic area isn’t in discussion for the valley in the area of Tanaro (valleys of Colla, Pesio, Ellero and Corsaglia, in the south-east of Cuneo) the affiliation is not sure also if they are part of the Occitan language area. To benefit from the Linguistic Minorities Protection Law these boroughs have declared the affiliation to the minorities of the Occitan history. The real borderline cases are some boroughs in the Alps near to the mountains Monte Saccarello (borough of Briga Alta and Ormea in the province of Cuneo and the boroughs of Triora and Olivetta San Michele in the province of Imperia, which, because of some autonomic movements created a special language, called “Lingua brigasca”. Most of the linguistic specialists think that the language spoken in these boroughs of the Alps belongs to the dialect of the Ligurian Alps.