Vivaro-Alpine had been considered as a sub-dialect of Provençal, and named provençal alpin or Northern Provençal. Its use in the Dauphiné area has also led to the use of dauphinois or dauphinois alpin to name it. Along with Ronjat and Bec, it is now clearly recognized as a dialect of its own. The UNESCO Atlas of World's languages in danger uses the Alpine Provençal name, and considers it as seriously endangered.
Subdialects
Western: vivarodaufinenc or vivaro-dauphinois near northern Vivarais, northeastern Velay, a southern fringe of Forez, Drômedepartment and a fringe in southern Isère department.
Eastern: Alpine or alpenc, aupenc, in the Occitan Alps.
* Cisalpine or Eastern Alpine in the eastern Occitan Alps Occitan Valleys, which are located in Italy.
Characterization
Vivaro-Alpine is classified as an Indo-European, Italic, Romance, or Western-Romance language. Vivaro-Alpine shares the palatization of consonants k and g in front of a with the other varieties of North Occitan, in particular with words such as chantar and jai. Southern Occitan has, respectively, cantar and gai. Its principal characteristic is the dropping of simple Latin dental intervocalics:
chantaa or chantaia for chantada,
monea for moneda,]
bastia or bastiá for bastida,
maür for madur.
The verbal ending of the first person is -o : parlo per parli or parle, parlavo per parlavi or parlave, parlèro for parlèri or parlère. A common trait is the rotacismo of l :
barma for balma or bauma,
escòra for escòla,
saraa or sarai for salada.
In the dialects of the Alps, Vivaro-Alpine maintained the pronunciation of the r of the infinitive verbs. An estimated 70% of languages are estimated to have "interrogative intonation contours which end with rising pitch." However, Vivaro Alpine follows the opposite pattern with yes/no questions—an initial high tone followed by a fall. Questions that end in a rising pitch are so common that they are often considered "natural." One reason that questions begin with a high tone in some languages is that the listener is immediately being alerted to the fact that they are being asked a question.
Status
Vivaro-Alpine is an endangered language. There are approximately 200,000 native speakers of the language worldwide. Transmission of the language is very low. Speakers of Vivaro-Alpine typically also speak either French or Italian.
Examples
These are the lyrics to a traditional Occitan song, called "Se chanta." Lyrics:
