not the motorcycle diaries

I heard Provencal being spoken whilst in Nimes, and found I could understand it slightly better than French, because it sounds a little like Spanish and/or Italian. For example, the word *star* in Provencal is *estello*, which is more like the Italian *stella* or the Spanish *estrella* than the French *etoile*.

Today’s procrastoresearch suggests that Provencal is indeed related more closely to the ‘Ibero-Romance’ language family, which fits with the geographical location of Nimes, i.e. the south of France.

These days, there are about 400,000 speakers of Provencal in circulation. This compares to 1,075,000,000 Chinese Mandarin speakers, 129,000,000 French speakers and approximately 35 speakers of Livonian.

I’ve become one of *those* bloggers, haven’t I.