In an earlier message commenting on the info Anila provided from an expert on Occitan, I failed to raise the following question:

Patrik Sauzet gave strong indications of a single, common identity. But he didn't really comment that much about levels of intelligibility between the various varieties. Is there any information available on that?

I was reminded of this as I noticed that the UNHCHR has separate versions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for "Occitan Auvergnat" (http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/auv1.htm) and "Occitan Languedocien" (http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/prv1.htm). (Both of these were provided by the French organization Diffusion Multilingue des Droits de l'Homme.) I have no expertise whatsoever in this branch of the Romance family, so my quick first impressions may be wrong, but on a quick glance they seemed much more different than I would have expected for dialects of a single language.



Peter Constable