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rfmcdonaldPeter Gill's article in The Telegraph, "Language barriers can be higher than they seem", provides an amusing perspective on the language difficulties he encountered when he, like so many other Britons, moved to France to make a new home in old province of Béarn, located in the east of the modern department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques.
All said, four languages--Basque, the local Gascon variant of Occitan, Spanish, and a local French heavily marked by Gascon influences that was quite distinct from the French that he and his wife had learned--were present in his new home. (Happily, Gill managed to pick up that last language. Eventually.)
Although we knew the area we were moving to, we hadn't taken on board its linguistic complexity. If I look out of the window now I can see areas where four distinct languages are spoken.
Our house is on the northern boundary of the old kingdom of Béarn and the view is across the lovely Béarnaise countryside to the Pyrenees on the skyline. Now Béarn is part of France and its official language is French although that is a recent phenomenon.
Many of our older friends in the area only started to learn French when they went to school and their parents' generation never spoke it at all. But also we can see the (Spanish) Pyrenees - another language which is the main means of communication in a number of the mountain passes on the French side of the border.
All said, four languages--Basque, the local Gascon variant of Occitan, Spanish, and a local French heavily marked by Gascon influences that was quite distinct from the French that he and his wife had learned--were present in his new home. (Happily, Gill managed to pick up that last language. Eventually.)
