Meridional French (French: Français Méridional) is a regional variant of the French language. It is strongly influenced by Occitan and so widely spoken in Occitania. French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ... Occitan, or langue doc is a Romance language characterized by its richness, variability, and by the intelligibility of its dialects. ... Occitania refers to the lands where the Occitan language is spoken. ...

Speakers of Français Méridional can be found in all generations, although the accent is more pronounced among the elderly, who often speak Occitan as a mother tongue. First language (native language, mother tongue, or vernacular) is the language a person learns first. ...

Characteristics of the dialect

• The vowels are denasalised, so pain (bread) sounds like paing. However, words like brun (brown) are pronounced as standard.

• There is a frequent switching between open vowels and close vowels, giving the dialect a "sing-song" sound.

Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ... A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ...

Lexicon

The dialect has some vocabulary peculiar to it, such as péguer, "to pitch" (standard French poisser) and chocolatine, "pain au chocolat". croissant pastry with pain au chocolat on top Pain au Chocolat ( (help· info)), also called chocolatine in certain regions of France, is a French pastry, consisting of a cuboid-shaped puff pastry containing one or more strips of chocolate. ...

Some phrases can mean something different from what they would usually mean in French. For example, s'il faut, literally meaning "if it is necessary" , actually means "maybe" (which would be rendered in standard French as peut-être).