Berrichon

Berrichon is the langue d'oïl of the old province of Berry in central France, descended from the Vulgar Latin of northern Gaul and very close to standard French. Its range also takes in the Bourbonnais, whose speech linguists group with it as Berrichon-Bourbonnais, while its southern fringe forms part of the Croissant, the transition zone to Occitan.

The region takes its name from the Bituriges, the Gaulish tribe whose chief town became Bourges. In 1360 Berry was raised into a duchy, an appanage held by princes of the French royal house, and the court of the dukes at Bourges produced the illuminated Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry in the early fifteenth century.

From the sixteenth century the local aristocracy and townspeople adopted standard French, leaving Berrichon as a peasant patois, and after the Revolution the schools of the Third Republic spread French further into the countryside.