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Non Dago Komuna? Traveling along the Pyrenees gets tricky for those of us with marginal language skills. Flanking both sides of the western-most quarter of the French-Spanish border are about 600,000 Basque-speaking people, most in Spain and a smattering in France. Their language is far removed from either Spanish or French, as is easily evidenced by the signs in the photos. In fact, it is so far removed from any other language that it is called a "language isolate". From Wikipedia, "Little is known of its origins but it is likely that an early form of the Basque language was present in Western Europe before the arrival of the Indo-European languages to the area."

In more modern times, the Basque language has had to compete with Castillian Spanish and French. After the Spanish Civil War, speaking Basque was forbidden for decades. In Basque Country (Euskara), schools are now resuming teaching the language. Had I known that "Non dago komunu" = Where are the toilets? or "Ezdakit eukarazhitz egiten" = I don't speak Basque or at least "Garagardo" = Beer, we might have made better progress.

As we were sitting at the restaurant in Eaux-Bonnes, we asked our multi-languaged server how many others she spoke (besides French, Spanish, Basque and English). She commented that she also spoke the local dialect or patois---Bearn. BEARN??? Was she pulling my leg? When I later looked it up on my good friend the Internet, I discovered Bearn to be a regional dialect of Occitan. Now it makes me wonder if there is a name for the dialect of French spoken in our Ariege region---i.e., the twangy sound of "pang" for "pain".

In my best Basque, "Ikusi arte. Agur." (See you and goodbye.)
Posted by North of Andorra at 5:52 AM 
In the Provence there is the Provencao language or dialect. (The c is soft.) A lot of restaurants and small businesses use the "old" language for their names, Lou Paradou, rather than Le for example. Frederick Mistral, for whom the wind along the Rhone is named, was the first to promote the reintroduction of the language in the south. Bread also sounds like pang, and beang maytang is good morning. Buerre, butter, sounds like burra, two syllables. In fact most words have an additional last syllable. I had a terrible time getting my parisian trained ear to hear the Provencao twang. I still have trouble hearing men, most women seem to slow down for me or clean up their accent but the men can be really difficult. Leslie

August 5, 2008 at 12:50 PM 
Spending time in Texas, Louisiana, and South Carolina gives Luke a great understanding of "regional twangs"! Apparently, like Chicken-man (remember him?) they're everywhere...they're everywhere!

That's right y'all!

August 5, 2008 at 3:44 PM