The Provencal speech is, therefore, not at all what it would have been
if it had had an independent literary existence since the days of the
Troubadours. The influence of the French has been overwhelming, as is
naturally to be expected. A great number of idioms, that seem to be pure
gallicisms, are found, in spite of the deliberate effort, referred to
above, to eliminate French forms. In _La Reino Jano_, Act III, Scene IV,
we find _Ie vai de nostis os_,--_Il y va de nos os_. _Vejan_, _voyons_,
is used as a sort of interjection, as in French. The partitive article
is used precisely as in French. We meet the narrative infinitive with
_de_. In short, the French reader feels at home in the Provencal
sentence; it is the same syntax and, to a great degree, the same
rhetoric. Only in the vocabulary does he feel himself in a strange
atmosphere.

The strength, the originality, the true _raison d'etre_ of the Provencal
speech resides in its rich vocabulary. It contains a great number of
terms denoting objects known exclusively in Provence, for which there is
no corresponding term in the sister speech. Many plants have simple,
familiar names, for which the French must substitute a name that is
either only approximate, or learned and pedantic. Words of every
category exist to express usages that are exclusively Provencal.

The study of the modern language confirms the results, as regards
etymology, reached by Diez and Fauriel and others, who have busied
themselves with the Old Provencal. The great mass of the words are
traceable to Latin etyma, as in all Romance dialects a large portion of
Germanic words are found. Greek and Arabic words are comparatively
numerous. Basque and Celtic have contributed various elements, and, as
in French, there is a long list of words the origin of which is
undetermined.

The language shares with the other southern Romance languages a fondness
for diminutives, augmentatives, and pejoratives, and is far richer than
French in terminations of these classes. Long suffixes abound, and the
style becomes, in consequence, frequently high-sounding and exaggerated.

One of the most evident sources of new words in the language of Mistral
is in its suffixes. Most of these are common to the other Romance
languages, and have merely undergone the phonetic changes that obtain
in this form of speech. In many instances, however, they differ in
meaning and in application from their corresponding forms in the siste