Occitan becomes a lingufranca

You say it "remains" a lingua franca; when was it ever a lingua franca? I was quite sceptical on reading it and looking at the Encyclopedia of European languages doesn't seem to suggest it ever was a lingua franca (as a language of international / trade communication), even if it was at one point a language of some literary influence.
 
You say it "remains" a lingua franca; when was it ever a lingua franca? I was quite sceptical on reading it and looking at the Encyclopedia of European languages doesn't seem to suggest it ever was a lingua franca (as a language of international / trade communication), even if it was at one point a language of some literary influence.

I changed the title already.. thanks..
 
It's possible, but it would need a really early POD: before the formation of France as we know it if possible. Essentially to make this possible you'd need to create an Occitan state (it just won't happen if Occitan isn't the language of the capital) and that state would need to grow to sizable proportions in not too long a period - for instance, it probably couldn't happen if this theoretical Occitania isn't roughly OTL France's size: you need power to become a hegemon and you need size to have power. The beautiful thing about early PODs is you can manipulate events without too much discredit to reach the end-goal that you want to achieve, i.e. you can make Occitania successful enough through various events: enough to say it's "theoretically possible" anyway. Now, would this Occitania be likely to become that successful or would it be a total fluke? That's a different question entirely...

And for anyone who would put forward the Albigensian Crusade as a good POD: I think you'd need earlier. Even if the Cathar heresy was wildly successful (but not too successful lest Paris convert and ruin the Occitan language's chance for glory) I think you'd need far too much handwavium to really have a Cathar Occitan state become powerful enough to make Occitan a lingua franca...
 
Well, consider two things:

1) Lingua Franca means 'Language of the Franks' in Latin, though in this case, it refers to Occitan. Thus, strictly speaking, it already happened OTL.

2) If you want to impose the spirit of the law as in 'a language being used widely', just replace the word 'Occitan' with 'Catalan' (which is very, very similar, if not the same) and we may have something going here.
 
Point of fact:

Look up the language Sabir, which was a trade language across the Med heavily influenced by Occitan/Provencal.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Point of fact:

Look up the language Sabir, which was a trade language across the Med heavily influenced by Occitan/Provencal.
Well, in many respects it resembled a pidgin language (one linguist, Keith Whinnom, has even suggested that it was the ancestor of all the Romance-based pidgins attested from the Americas to the Pacific, through a process he termed "relexification"), and was closely connected to one particular form of trade: the slave trade, initially Trans-Mediterranean and then subsequently Trans-Atlantic.

The basis for Sabir was probably some form of Italian, but it acquired and jettisoned vocabulary as it docked in various ports of call, and at times can appear more like French or Spanish than Italian. I actually can't say that I've seen much Provencal influence in any of the texts alleged to be Lingua Franca or Sabir that have survived.
 
Well, in many respects it resembled a pidgin language (one linguist, Keith Whinnom, has even suggested that it was the ancestor of all the Romance-based pidgins attested from the Americas to the Pacific, through a process he termed "relexification"), and was closely connected to one particular form of trade: the slave trade, initially Trans-Mediterranean and then subsequently Trans-Atlantic.

The basis for Sabir was probably some form of Italian, but it acquired and jettisoned vocabulary as it docked in various ports of call, and at times can appear more like French or Spanish than Italian. I actually can't say that I've seen much Provencal influence in any of the texts alleged to be Lingua Franca or Sabir that have survived.

I'm no linguist, I just have to repeat what I've read.

On the other hand, as the original poster was looking for a POD, I'd say anything that had the Italians less involved and Southern France more involved in the slave trade would probably have a more Provencal form of Sabir.
 
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