Cards›Knowledge

Gascon

Occitan dialect spoken in southwestern France, and Catalonia, Spain

Gascon (English: GASK-ən, Gascon: [ɡasˈku(ŋ)], French: [ɡaskɔ̃] ) is the vernacular Romance variety spoken mainly in the region of Gascony, France. It is often considered a variety of larger Occitan macrolanguage, although other authors consider it a separate language due to hindered mutual intelligibility criteria and earlier separation from the other Occitano-Romance varieties. Gascon is mostly spoken in Gascony and Béarn (Béarnese dialect) in southwestern France (in parts of the following French départements: Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Landes, Gers, Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Haute-Garonne, and Ariège) and in the Val d'Aran of Catalonia. Aranese, a southern Gascon variety, is spoken in Catalonia alongside Catalan and Spanish. Most people in the region are trilingual in all three languages, causing some influence from Spanish and Catalan. Both these influences tend to differentiate it more and more from the dialects of Gascon spoken in France. Most linguists now consider Aranese a distinct dialect of Occitan and Gascon. Since the 2006 adoption of the new statute of Catalonia, Aranese is co-official with Catalan and Spanish in all of Catalonia (before, this status was valid for the Aran Valley only).