Occitan

Occitan, or lenga d'òc, is named for òc, its word for yes, which Dante used in De vulgari eloquentia to mark it off from the oïl languages of the north. Its dialects include Limousin, Auvergnat, Languedocien, Provençal and Gascon.

Rooted in the Latin of Gallia Narbonensis of 121 BC, it produced the Boecis poem of around 1000 to 1030, one of Europe's earliest Romance texts, and became the vehicle of the troubadours, whose love poetry made it the first prestigious vernacular literary language of medieval Europe. The Albigensian Crusade of 1209 to 1229 broke the power of the Counts of Toulouse.

From the 1300s Occitan lost status, and the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539 confined official business to French. It remained the everyday speech of the south, but with no place in administration, education or print and no single written standard.