The Counts of Toulouse and the Cross of Toulouse:  Occitan:  Relationship with French.

A common misconception in France, deliberately perpetrated by the education system until recently, is that Occitan is a mere "patois", a distorted form of French.   A more balanced view is that Occitan and French are two different languages both of which developed from vulgar Latin.   French has moved further away from its parent language than Occitan, a consequence of Germanic invasions of (northern) France during the 4th and 5th centuries. Here are a few examples:

• Occitan retained the latin sound "a", where it was changed it into [e] in French.  
  (Compare the Latin word for nose, nasum, and Occitan nas to French nez).
• Occitan retained the Latin "o", where it was changed into [oe] in French.  
  (Compare the Latin word for flower, florem and Occitan flor to French fleur).
• Occitan retained the Latin "e", where it was changed into [wa] in French.  
  (Compare the Latin word for pear, peram and Occitan pera to French poire).
• Occitan retained the Latin "au", where it was changed into [o] in French.  
  (Compare the Latin word for ear, auriculam and Occitan aurelha to French oreille).

These are just a few of a long list of examples where French has changed more than Occitan.  French schoolteachers were therefore not merely in error.  They were teaching almost the opposite of the truth.  As one devotee puts it:
"Occitan is not a dialect or a patois of French; it is a true language with its own rules; it was written and sung well before French was. French itself is nothing more than le patois du roi (the [French] king's dialect).

(For more on this, and much else, see    http://occitanet.free.fr/) .
Click on the following link for more about the Occitan and French