as
Aranese.
The area where Occitan was historically dominant is home to some 14 million inhabitants. It may be spoken as a first language by as many as two million[citation needed] people in France, Italy, Spain and Monaco[5] Some researchers state that up to seven million people in France understand the language. However, these two estimates should be considered very optimistic upper bounds; the actual figures are almost certainly substantially lower. More widely accepted wisdom suggests that as few as half a million proficient speakers remain in France, for example.[citation needed] Written Occitan is generally understandable by readers who have some knowledge of French, Italian and Spanish, but especially of Catalan.
English-speakers often use the term Provençal (an older French word derived from the name of the region Provence) to refer to Occitan.
The name Occitan comes from lenga d'òc (i.e. òc language), which comes from òc, the Occitan word for yes. The Italian medieval poet Dante was the first to have recorded the term lingua d'oc. In his De vulgari eloquentia he wrote in Latin "nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil" ("some say òc, others say sì, others say oïl"), thereby highlighting three major Romance literary languages which were well known in Italy, based on each language's word for "yes", the òc language (Occitan), the oïl language (French), and the sì language (Italian). This was not, of course, the only defining character of each group.
