Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, the book was written in 1972. I mean "there were some people", not all people - Thomas, in the quote, came from Paris and spoke French. He did not learn a regional language. I don't mean 'many regions' because the only example I had was one region. The fact that there was at least one region where local French people, in a region which had been part of France seemingly since at least the Middle Ages, did not sp…
"Over 50 in rural communities" in one of the more sparsely populated areas of France makes for a very small slice of the population even in that area, and even then, as pointed out, French is spoken by everyone. On top of that, it is more "anyone who speaks limousin is likely over 50, and in a rural community", than "anyone over 50 in rural communities in that area likely speaks Limousin". There are 10k speakers of L…
Yes, as even the Malevil quote I gave pointed out. (At least by school age.)
> On top of that, it is more
The book was written over 50 years ago, so the Wikipedia article about present day use of Limousin isn't all that indicative of what it was like for the adult characters in the book, who would have been born before 1950.
> There are 10k speakers of Limousin
Why are you being so nit-picky? Look, this is a fictional place and the specific local language is never stated. I just today read the Wikipedia entry which give info about the location.
I specifically picked out Limousin, yes, because it fit the area, and because I could quote how the Limousin language was more widely spoken when the book was written than now.
But as the text I quoted says "Limousin ... is a dialect of the Occitan language". Wikipedia says there are about 200,000 speakers of Occitan, so that's the more relevant comparison, and "Though it was still an everyday language for most of the rural population of southern France well into the 20th century, the language is now declining in every region where it was spoken." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitan_language
It seems to me that when Malevil was written, Occitan was still widely spoken as a first language in the area. Wikipedia says the author was living in the area when he wrote the book, so he should know.
The only reason I mentioned it was because you wrote "Finding anyone who even spoke a regional dialect would've been a novelty, let alone one who grew up speaking it before French." while the book, written by the French novelist Robert Merle - Wikipedia informs me he was "a household name in France, with the author repeatedly called the Alexandre Dumas of the 20th century" - comes across that speaking in patois was not a novelty but simply something expected, and which effectively all locals spoke.
I simply cannot reconcile your surprise with my reading and limited understanding except by assuming it's from before your time, from a mostly forgotten era.
> I suppose I grew up learning about the various dialects in France
That's .. kinda the issue, isn't? In Malevil the local language patois is not seen as a dialect of French, as I quoted, it was a language learned in school.
Wikipedia says it's more related to Catalan than French.
Why do you describe it as dialect of French?