Gascon language in the context of "Iberian Romance languages"

Occitan (English: /ˈɒksɪtən, -tæn, -tɑːn/; Occitan pronunciation: [utsiˈta, uksiˈta]), also known by its native speakers as lenga d'òc (Occitan: [ˈleŋɡɒ ˈðɔ(k)] ; French: langue d'oc), sometimes also referred to as Provençal, is a Romance language spoken in southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, as well as in the Catalonian Val d'Aran; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitania. It is also spoken in the southern Italian province of Cosenza (mostly in Guardia Piemontese). There it is referred to as Gardiol, which is considered a separate Occitanic language. Some include Catalan as a dialect of Occitan, as the linguistic distance between this language and some Occitan dialects (such as the Gascon language) is similar to the distance between different Occitan dialects. Catalan was considered a dialect of Occitan until the end of the 19th century and still today remains its closest relative. Occitan has a particularly rich lexicon. Lo Panoccinari, considered the most comprehensive dictionary ever published in this language, records over 250,000 unique words (more than 310,000 including dialectal variations).

Occitan is an official language of Catalonia, Spain, where a subdialect of Gascon known as Aranese is spoken (in the Val d'Aran). Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to be the officially preferred language for use in the Val d'Aran.

Bordeaux (/bɔːrˈdoʊ/ bor-DOH; French: [bɔrdo] ; Gascon Occitan: Bordèu [buɾˈðɛw]; Basque: Bordele) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department. Its inhabitants are called "Bordelais" (masculine) or "Bordelaises" (feminine). The term "Bordelais" may also refer to the city and its surrounding region.

The city of Bordeaux proper had a population of 259,809 in 2020 within its small municipal territory of 49 km (19 sq mi), but together with its suburbs and exurbs the Bordeaux metropolitan area had a population of 1,376,375 that same year (Jan. 2020 census), the sixth-most populated in France after Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille, and Toulouse.

The Aquitani were a tribe that lived in the region between the Pyrenees, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Garonne, in present-day southwestern France in the 1st century BC. The Romans dubbed this region Gallia Aquitania. Classical authors such as Julius Caesar and Strabo clearly distinguish the Aquitani from the other peoples of Gaul, and note their similarity to others in the Iberian Peninsula.

Their old language, the Aquitanian language, was a precursor of the Basque language and the substrate for the Gascon language (one of the Romance languages) spoken in Gascony. Between the 1st century and the 13th century, the Aquitani gradually adopted the Gascon language while part of the Roman Empire, then the Duchy of Gascony and the Duchy of Aquitaine.

Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini Line. They include the Ibero-Romance and Gallo-Romance. Gallo-Italic may also be included. The subdivision is based mainly on the use of the "s" for pluralization, the weakening of some consonants and the pronunciation of "Soft C" as /t͡s/ (often later /s/) rather than /t͡ʃ/ as in Italian and Romanian.

Based on mutual intelligibility, Dalby counts thirteen languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Asturleonese, Aragonese, Catalan, Gascon, Provençal, Gallo-Wallon, French, Franco-Provençal, Romansh, Ladin and Friulian.