The municipality of Celle San Vito (FG), the smallest in all of Puglia, wants to teach tourists Franco-Provençal, a linguistic variety of Dauni Mountains spoken only in that very small town and nearby Faeto. The initiative is from the group that takes care of the language desk in the area.
The Franco-Provençal
©Chambra d’Oc
As the association Associazione Chambra d’Oc explains, which deals with protecting historical linguistic minorities such as Occitan and Franco-Provençal, the latter belongs, together with French (language of oil) and Occitan (language of oc), to the group of Gallo-Romance languages, which in turn are a subgroup of the Romance languages of Latin origin.
However, the Alpine populations who spoke it had no awareness that their dialects, their “patois” could have linguistic dignity – writes the association – The people of the valleys simply called the familiar idiom “spoke in our fashion” or “spoke from nous-aouti”
Born from the overlap of Latin with the language spoken by the populations that suffered the occupation of the Romans, Franco-Provençal was officially recognized as a minority language with law 482/1999 ‘Regulations regarding the protection of historical linguistic minorities’.
This is certainly not the only linguistic minority in the world and, like others, it risks extinction. Many of them, in fact, belong to indigenous communities or historically marginalized minorities, and in numerous cases, their disappearance is linked to phenomena of cultural assimilation, discrimination or loss of fundamental rights as explained in an article of Guardian Sophia Smith Galer, journalist and author of How to Kill a Language.
Celle San Vito
©Google Maps
Celle San Vito is the smallest village in Puglia, whose origin is linked to the existence in the 11th century of the Monastery of San Nicola, along the Via Francigena, on the slopes of Monte San Vito.
However, the village was founded in the second half of the 13th century by a Franco-Provençal colony in the nearby fortified farmhouse of Heartbreak (no longer existing today), at the behest of Charles of Anjou who saw a safer position there.
Celle still constitutes its neighbor today Faeto the only Franco-Provençal island in Southern Italy.
Teaching Franco-Provençal to tourists, the initiative
In the province of Foggia the Provincial Linguistic Help Desk is active, a service established by the Administration thanks to the funding obtained by Department for Regional Affairs pursuant to Law no. 482 of 12/15/1999 to protect the linguistic minorities present in Capitanata (Franco-Provençal and arbreshe).
The desk offers information and orientation services to minority language citizens to facilitate access to the structures, opportunities and services of the Public Administration, with the aim of protecting the right of these minorities to safeguard their linguistic and cultural heritage.
But now there’s more: the municipality also intends to teach this language to tourists, considering Franco-Provençal a tourist attractor for Celle San Vito.
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Our language is very important – the mayor Palma Maria Giannini explains to ANSA – It is our identity, it is the demonstration of our roots. We are proud to carry it forward and we are also working to be known through our language
The municipality is also preparing a second edition of the dictionary, which introduces new terms, which are not among those mentioned in the first draft and which above all revises the part dedicated to the sound of some words.
Every time we meet a tourist or someone who comes to our village out of curiosity, we realize that our language is very attractive
reports Virginia Carosielliamong those employed at the language desk
The vocabulary could be ready as early as next summer, but in the meantime tourists can be involved in the numerous cultural initiatives linked to the language.
Sources: foggiareporter/Instagram / Tele Foggia/Youtube / Ansa
