southern accents

Léon has recently acquired a Toulousain accent. Instead of saying lapin, Léon says, "LA-PAING." Plein has become PLAING, Maman has become MAMANG, and obviously "I want bread" is Je veux du PAING. He attends a preschool a few mornings a week, and many of the teachers there are from Toulouse and environs, so it makes sense that he would pick up the distinctive sing-song lilt.

This southern accent, which stretches from the Pyrénées to Provence, is a remnant of l'Occitan, the language spoken in southwestern France for centuries before François le premier legislated the end of regional tongues in schools. L'Occitan is still spoken today, there are bilingual French/Occitan schools in the city, and when you take public transport, stops are announced first in French, then in Occitan. Occitan sounds much like Catalan, much like Spanish, and it's not hard to capture the link between it and the famous accent Toulousain.

Here is a charmingly edifying video on Toulouse's linguistic history, recounted by a gentleman whose pronunciation is so gorgeously southwestern, and quite châtié; my ears purr as he upholds that liaison between er verbs and the vowels that follow. 

La langue d'Oc