Do you really know the regional languages of Creuse? CNRS researchers developed a huge sound atlas on the internet a few years ago. It lists hundreds of regional languages in the world: in France and also in Europe. On this large map, just click on the desired location to discover how a poem by Aesop was pronounced in the local language before the development of the French we know, in Normandy, Anjou, in the Basque Country, in Burgundy and even in Corsica and overseas. Records were thus collected from 126 survey points. The Limousin occupies a good part of it and the Creuse too! The north of Creuse also stands out in this sound atlas because it belongs to the linguistic region of the Crescent.
The north of Creuse, “a zone of turbulence”
In this region of the Crescent, the CNRS noticed that the langue d’oil from the north and the langue d’oc or the occitan from the south rubbed shoulders closely. A situation that gave rise “a zone of turbulence” and therefore important varieties of languages, particularly in the north of Creuse, as explained by Philippe Boula de Mareüil, one of the researchers : “The conjugation is close to Occitan, on the other hand the pronunciation is shared with the speaking of oil. All the words are accented at the end”.
“We can see that the language from one village to another must have fluctuated in these more traditional societies” he continues. In several Creuse villages, inhabitants have recited the same fable and the differences are striking, particularly in the imperfect conjugation, the endings are pronounced in very different ways in Crozant, Azérables, la Celle-Dunoise or Saint-Agnant-de- Versillat. Yet the villages are only a few kilometers away. How can these disparities be explained? “They can be explained by the propensities of our human societies to defend an esprit de corps, to be steeped in order to stand out from others. You have to see it as an asset of your department” concludes Philippe Boula de Mareüil.
A richness that this atlas allows to perpetuate because the speakers of its regional languages are less and less numerous.
– CRNS screenshot
Listen to the regional languages spoken in Creuse
Here is Aesop’s fable read by several Creuse speakers of regional languages: “The breeze and the sun were arguing, each assuring that he was stronger, when they saw a traveler advancing, wrapped in his coat. They agreed that whoever would be the first to remove his coat to the traveler would be considered the strongest. Then the wind started to blow with all its force but the more it blew, the more the traveler tightened his coat around him and in the end, the wind gave up on him. take it off. Then the sun began to shine and after a while the traveler, warmed up, took off his coat. So the wind must have recognized that the sun was the stronger of the two”.