A map of the Vivaro-Alpine dialect in the Occitan language area.
Vivaro-Alpine (English name) or Vivaroalpenc, Vivaroaupenc (native name) is a Romance language variety spoken in southeastern France (namely, around the Dauphiné area) and northwestern Italy (the Occitan Valleys of Piedmont and Liguria). It in turn belongs to a broader category known as the Occitan language along with other forms of speech in the south of France such as Provençal and Gascon.[3][4] There is also a small Vivaro-Alpine enclave in the Guardia Piemontese, Calabria, where the language is known as gardiol. It belongs to the Northern Occitan dialect block, along with Auvergnat and Limousin.
Vivaro-Alpine had been considered as a sub-dialect of Provençal, and named provençal alpin (Alpine Provençal) or Northern Provençal.[5]
Its use in the Dauphiné area has also lead to the use of dauphinois or dauphinois alpin to name it.[6] Along with Ronjat[6] and Bec,[7] it is now clearly recognized as a dialect of its own.
The UNESCO Atlas of World's languages in danger[8] uses the Alpine Provençal name, and considers it as seriously endangered.
Cisalpine or Eastern Alpine (native names: Cisalpenc or Alpenc Oriental) in the eastern Occitan Alps AKAOccitan Valleys, which are located in Italy (Piedmont and Liguria).
^The sources for this article do not contain any information regarding the number of native speakers.
^Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Gardiol". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
^(French) Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, Des langues romanes. Introduction aux études de linguistique romane, De Boeck, 2e édition, 1999,
^La langue se divise en trois grandes aires dialectales : le nord-occitan (limousin, auvergnat, vivaro-alpin), l'occitan moyen, qui est le plus proche de la langue médiévale (languedocien et provençal au sens restreint), et le gascon (à l'ouest de la Garonne). in (French)Encyclopédie Larousse
^(French) Jean-Claude Bouvier, "L'occitan en Provence : limites, dialectes et variété" in Revue de linguistique romane 43, pp 46-62
^ ab(French) Jules Ronjat, Grammaire istorique des parlers provençaux modernes, vol. IV Les dialectes, Montpellier, 1941
^(French) Pierre Bec, La langue occitane, Paris, 1995
