Also called Languedoc, or  Provencal, l'Occitan is a Romance language spoken by about 1,500,000 people in southern France. All Occitan speakers use French as their official and cultural language, but Occitan dialects are used for everyday purposes and show no signs of extinction. The name Occitan is derived from the geographical name Occitania, which is itself patterned after Aquitania and includes the regions of Limousin, Languedoc, the old Aquitaine, and the southern part of the French Alps, all of the populations of which are Occitan-speaking.

The name Languedoc comes from the term langue d 'oc, which denoted a language using oc for "yes" (from Latin hoc), in contrast to the French language, the langue d 'oïl, which used oïl (modern oui) for "yes" (from Latin hoc ille). Languedoc refers to a linguistic and political-geographical region of the southern Massif Central in France. The name Provençal originally referred to the Occitan dialects of the Provence region and is used also to refer to the standardized medieval literary language based on the dialect of Provence.

Literature in Occitan is plentiful, for Provençal was a standard and literary language in France and northern Spain in the 12th to 14th century and was widely used as a vehicle for poetry; it was the primary language of the medieval troubadours. The earliest written material in Occitan is a refrain attached to a Latin poem said to date from the 10th century.

The modern dialects of Occitan are little changed from the speech of the Middle Ages, although they are being affected by their constant exposure to French. The major dialects are those of Limousin, Auvergnat, Provence, and Languedoc. Gascon, a Romance dialect of southwestern France, is usually classified as a dialect of Occitan, although it is sometimes considered a distinct language because it differs a great deal from the other, more or less uniform, Occitan dialects. Occitan is closely related to Catalan, and, although strongly influenced in the recent past by French, its phonology and grammar are more closely related to Spanish than to French.