So my name is Gabrièu, I was born in Nice in 1998.
And I have the ability to speak Nissart.
Nissart is a Provençal dialect of the Occitan language, which is spoken in the County of Nice,
now often called "Nissart country"
and located on the border between Italy and France.
For me it's an important ability
because the majority of Nissarts today, though they claim their Nissart identity,
no longer know their language.
They use it as expressions or during sport events in order to show their specificity
but they don't really know the grammar that makes it a real language.
Originally I was not a native speaker,
because we didn't speak this language in my family.
At home we only spoke French.
But like the majority of Nissarts from Italian descent,
I felt a sort of inner emptiness about ​​not speaking this language.
Because it is still part of our daily lives: in the names of our dishes, in our songs, in all of that.
All that makes up the culture and the special link a person has
with their land or with their birthplace.
And so I wanted to relearn it.
And to learn it again I had to join a study group
to speak the language, to converse in this language.
And after this I went to live in Toulouse, where I began studying political science.
It's mostly in Toulouse that I've spoken Nissart.
For that reason when I come back to Nice
people say I've taken on the accent of Toulouse when I speak Nissart.
Because the language spoken in Toulouse is also Occitan
but it's a variant closer to Spanish or Catalan than Nissart
which is closer to French or to Italian.
And so it always makes me laugh because well...
When I...
I never have the accent I should.
In Nice I have a Toulouse accent, in Toulouse I have a Nice accent.
I do as much as I can but it's not always easy.
It's a language I like because it's a part of who we are.
It's much more than a hobby for language enthusiasts.
It is actually what makes us human, what makes us both unique and part of a culture.
The problem we have when we talk about this language as an "identity" tool, I would say,
is that people always bring us back to its "usefulness".
They ask us about its social and political usefulness.
And they say for example: "It is very nice of you to preserve the cultural legacy..."
They always talk about "legacy", about "the past", about things that cannot be "present" or "future"
and they say "It is very nice of you to keep that cultural heritage and we also want to preserve it
but why would we spend money to translate panels, radio programs or street names
whereas you all know French perfectly, which is our common language?"
And it is true that French is our common language.
But if we think with this "utilitarian way" as I call it,
we are going straight towards the territorial and cultural standardisation of all humanity.
If we state today that Occitan or Nissart has no cultural interest
because French is more widely spoken,
then nothing will prevent tomorrow from saying that French does not have any interest
in a globalised world because English is more widely spoken.
And so, for me to speak about utilitarianism when we're talking about identity, language or culture
which for me is all connected,
is very dangerous.
In my opinion it's very dangerous.
Because we always have roots, an origin that we should respect
because it makes us unique and creates a connection between people, too.
And sometimes, it creates slightly unexpected connections because...
One day... it's an anecdote I have...
As I'm a political science student, I worked in the French Parliament.
I was a parliamentary assistant for an MP,
who had their office at the first floor of the parliamentary palace.
As an assistant I had the right to walk around in the parliamentary palace, called the Palais Bourbon.
And normally we had our own toilets,
located at the end of the Palace's first floor.
One day, I don't know why, they were closed.
So I needed to go somewhere else,
go down the stairs of the palace, and find other toilets.
The only lavatories I found were ceremonial ones,
which are normally reserved for MPs and their guests,
it is not a place we are supposed to go to.
They were just behind a large, rather... rather beautiful library,
and were much larger and nicer than the apartment I lived in at the time, in Paris.
Well...
So I was washing my hands
when I heard a huge noise behind me,
a really huge noise, like a door that was opening.
And I hear someone telling me, in French:
"Hey my friend, how's it going?"
And I looked very surprised because I instantly recognised that voice.
It is so well known by the French that it is impossible to forget it.
So I said to myself: "No... it's not him!"
I turned around and saw, straight away
Jean Lassalle!
Jean Lassalle, for those who don't know him,
ran for office during the French presidential elections of 2017 and has always stood out.
Always.
Always, always, always.
Because he doesn't talk like a politician. He talks like everyone.
He's like your friend.
And in real life, he obviously also spoke like that. Like a friend.
I didn't know him but he said "My friend how's it going?"
And he's also very well-known in the Occitanist world
because in 2003 he interrupted a political speech by the Minister of the Interior
who was Nicolas Sarkozy at the time,
because he disagreed with what he was saying,
by singing in the hemicycle of the French National Assembly
the Occitan national anthem.
It was an extremely strong symbol to sing the Occitan national anthem
in the French National Assembly during a speech by the Minister of the Interior.
So I found myself in the French Parliament's toilets, facing this man,
unable to say anything because it was so unexpected that I was very surprised.
So in French I told him: "Mr Lassalle I'm very pleased to meet you,
it's an honour for me to see you!"
And he responded, very surprised as well:
"You know, the majority of people here don't talk to me like that,
they're not as happy to see me as you are,
so I am very pleased to talk to you as well."
I suspected he was able to speak Occitan.
I didn't know it at the time but he had such a huge accent when speaking French
that I thought it was impossible he did not know the Occitan language.
So I plucked up courage and talked to him in Nissart.
I said: "I tell you that I'm happy to see you because I am an Occitan speaker, a Nissart"
And he was really surprised to see such a young man expressing himself so well in Occitan,
especially with this Nissart dialect that is even rarer than the one he speaks, called Bearnese.
And so in Bearnese, in Occitan, he responded:
"Oh but you know the language, that's wonderful, where did you learn it?" etc.
And we talked together, I don't remember how long but it may have lasted five or ten minutes:
me in Nissart, him in Bearnese,
both in Occitan, in the toilets of the French Parliament.
And this is maybe the most important memory
I keep from the time I worked in Parliament.
Because I spoke in Nissart,
in the toilets,
with a French politician who had run for the presidential elections.
Hence the Nissart language can lead you to create unexpected links sometimes.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community