The patois

Patois is a Franco-Provençal speech, a Romance language that, along with the langue d’oïl (French) and the langue d’oc (Provençal or Occitan), composes the linguistic group known as Gallo-Romance. The definition of Franco-Provençal dates back to the founder of Italian dialectology, Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, and is explained, according to the author, by the fact that this language possesses certain characteristics common to French and others common to Provençal, while nevertheless preserving its own individuality and independence from both the langue d’oïl and the langue d’oc.

Franco-Provençal can be considered a proto-French or an archaic French in a very primitive phase. After initially following the orientation of the langue d’oïl, it subsequently broke away (between the end of the Merovingian era and the beginning of the Carolingian era, 8th century) and remained conservative, unlike the dialects of northern Gaul which evolved rapidly. Having never coincided with a political entity (its territory extends across Italy, France, and Switzerland) and never having known a moment of unification, Franco-Provençal exists as a myriad of local speeches; it is therefore in a perfect dialectal state, meaning it exists only through the great variety of its patois.

Its spread on the eastern side of the Alps—a phenomenon that created a geolinguistic continuum uniting populations on both sides of such an imposing mountain range—began in 575 when Gontran, the Merovingian king of Burgundy and the Orléans region, drove the Lombards out of Provence. To avoid further military action, the Lombards preferred to negotiate, recognizing Frankish authority over the Aosta Valley and the Susa Valley—territories with strategically vital mountain passes—as well as over the high valleys of the Po and its tributaries, down to the Col di Tenda. From this date, the Aosta Valley shared the fate of the Gauls, and Pont-Saint-Martin became the boundary between the speeches of the Gauls and those of Northern Italy—the great border between French and Italian.

Today, Franco-Provençal is a seriously threatened language which, in neighboring regions such as Savoy and the Romand Valais (French-speaking Switzerland), is rapidly fading. However, it survives remarkably well in the Aosta Valley (with the exception of the three German-speaking municipalities of the Lys valley: Gressoney-la-Trinité, Gressoney-Saint-Jean, and Issime). Throughout the region, linguistic variability is so marked that multiple varieties exist even within the same municipality.

The dialect of Ayas, located at the eastern extremity of the Franco-Provençal area, is characterized by archaic traits on one hand and influences from Piedmontese on the other. These are not due to territorial contiguity but to historical factors: the seasonal migrations of sawyers and sabotiers (clog makers), attendance at fairs—especially livestock fairs—and weekly markets, itinerant trade and, in more recent times, employment in the industries of the Canavese area or the lower Aosta Valley.

Based on the provisions of the special statute, the official languages of the Aosta Valley today are Italian and French, which enjoy equal dignity, although the use of the former is decidedly more prevalent than the latter.

Since 1963, the ‘Abbé Jean-Baptiste Cerlogne’ Patois School Contest (Concours scolaire de Patois) has been held to safeguard the mother tongue of the Valdostan people and to encourage students and teachers to research oral tradition documents in patois, focusing on a different theme each year.