Béarnese dialect

Béarnese (endonym bearnés or biarnés) is the name given to the Gascon spoken in the Béarn.

The usage of a specific name for Béarnese lies in the history of Béarn, a viscounty that became a sovereign principality under Gaston Fébus. From the middle of the 13th century until the French Revolution, Béarnese was the institutional language of this territory. The standardised orthography defined by the administrative and judicial acts was adopted outside the limits of Béarn, not only in a part of Gascony, but also in some Basque territories.

The French language exerted an increasing influence on Béarn from the middle of the 16th century, due to its annexation as a French province in 1620. The use of Béarnese as an institutional language ended with the Revolution, its use being limited to popular culture. Cyprien Despourrins, Xavier Navarrot and Alexis Peyret, for example, bring Béarnese to life through their works. From the second half of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, the Béarnese language was standardized, particularly by Vastin Lespy, Simin Palay and Jean Bouzet.

Béarnese remained the majority language among the Bearnais people in the 18th century. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that its use declined in favor of French. The French school entered into direct conflict with the use of regional languages in the last third of the nineteenth century and until the first half of the twentieth century, causing a clear decline in the transmission of Béarnais within the families from the 1950s. As a reaction, the first calandreta school was created in Pau in 1980, allowing for the revival of its teaching. The number of speakers of Béarnais is difficult to estimate; a 2008 survey suggests that 8 to 15% of the population speaks Béarnese, depending on the definition chosen.