The traditional language of Carcassonne—the French medieval walled city that we wrote about earlier—is called Occitan.
Occitan is a language spoken at least partially by about 3 million people in Occitania, a cultural territory that includes parts of south France (including Carcassonne), Monaco, Italy and Spain.
A Romance language, Occitan is most similar to Catalan, one of three official languages of Catalonia in northeast Spain. The other two official languages are Spanish (of course) and Aranese, which is a dialect of Occitan.
