High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Occitan (English pronunciation: /??ks?t?n/,Occitan: or ), known also as Lenga d'oc (Occitan: ; French: Langue d'oc), is a collection of related Romance-language dialects spoken in southern France, Italy's Occitan Valleys, Monaco, and Spain's Val d'Aran: the regions sometimes known informally as Occitania. It is also spoken in the linguistic enclave of Guardia Piemontese (Calabria, Italy). It is an official language in Catalonia, Spain (known as Aranese in Val d'Aran). Modern Occitan is the closest relative of Catalan. Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to be the officially preferred language for use in the Val d'Aran. The languages, as spoken in early mediaeval times, might be considered variant forms of the same language. The term Provencal (Occitan: provencau or prouvencau, IPA: ) may be used as a traditional synonym for Occitan but, nowadays, Provencal is mainly understood as an Occitan...