Languedocien

Languedocien is the central Occitan dialect, spoken from Narbonne and Montpellier through Quercy and Rouergue to Albi and Cahors. Midway between the Occitan dialects, it is often the basis of standard written Occitan, and the region owes its name to the langue d'oc.

Its country was Roman Gallia Narbonensis, later held by Visigoths and briefly Córdoba's emirs before Pepin the Short took Narbonne in 759, tying the south to the Frankish kingdom. After the Carolingian collapse it fragmented among Toulouse counts and Trencavel viscounts, towns sheltering Cathar believers; the Albigensian Crusade of 1208 to 1229 crushed Catharism and opened the Midi to the Capetian crown, which absorbed Trencavel lands in 1224, Toulouse in 1271 and Montpellier in 1349.

The Estates first met in 1346; from 1542 the province was administered through the Toulouse and Montpellier generalities. French steadily displaced Occitan in administration and letters, a process completed in villages only long after the Revolution; in 1790 the province was partitioned into new departments.