Gallo-Romance languages

[Comte Arnau]

This is absolutely wrong.
Patois is a very old Mediaeval word that never designated any particular language, but the lower register of any language.
For instance, in the 15th century, an educated citizen of Metz speaking Lorrain French would have described as a patois the simplified speech spoken in the villages all around, though they belonged to the same dialect. There was certainly a class conscious factor, some disdain towards lower class people, but it was in no way an "an attempt to ridiculize" non-official languages.

You're basically confirming with other words the second part of my alternative ( << based on an attempt to ridiculize them OR make them look as unworthy ways of speaking compared to the official ones).

But I can see why some would prefer to hear things like je peux parler patois rather than je peux parler la langue gasconne, for example.

Still nowadays, the term patois is frequently used on the country as a cherished word to qualify the local way of speaking.

True, those terms end up being cherished by many locals, just as many slurs end up being cherished by those affected, because they eventually become identity marks, after all, and gradually lose their initial pejorative meaning. That doesn't make them any more serious as terms.

[Ouistreham]

I can see why some would prefer to hear things like je peux parler patois rather than je peux parler la langue gasconne, for example.

Objection ridicule. Un gentilhomme gascon lettré du 14e siècle eut qualifié de "patois" le gascon basique de ses paysans gascons.

Je répète, le terme "patois" décrit un registre de langage dans son usage local, n'exprime pas la morgue conquérante d'un prétendu impérialismes linguistique — malgré l'emploi polémique du mot fait par l'abbé Grégoire et ses pareils.

L'expression "écrivain patoisant" n'a jamais eu de sens péjoratif, bien au contraire. Par contre, un "écrivain jargonnant", c'est quelqu'un qui écrit avec son pied gauche. (Tiens, à propos, c'est drôle, du côté de Lille on appelle gasconner le fait de mélanger français et patois mal à propos.)

Marre de cette pseudoscience et de ces falsifications (qui s'auto-alimentent sur Wikipédia notamment) par lesquelles les régionalistes discréditent leurs causes.

[Comte Arnau]

Estàs fet un cas com un cabàs. No cal esmerçar-hi gaire temps més; qui tingui orelles, que escolti.

[Empecinado]

This is an example of Alacanti accent (1:48), the island of Tabarca is the only neighborhood of Alicante where all their inhabitants are Valencian speakers:

[Xochi]

[Comte Arnau]

Every year around this time an album's recorded here with Catalan covers performed by several artists to give support for a certain disease. Italians keep surprising me at how well they usually pronounce Catalan in comparison with West Iberians. This year I think it's the first time I hear a Romanian singer in Catalan, and I was also pleasantly surprised. I might reconsider the phonological closeness.

[AphroditeWorshiper]

is Venetian and Istriot really Gallo Romance?

I think they are more related with south Italian than Occitan,French or Catalan. I'm not a expert btw

[Ouistreham]

is Venetian and Istriot really Gallo Romance?

Of course they're not.

· Gallo-Romance includes the various Oïl French and so-called "Franco-Provençal" dialects.
· I may include sometimes as well the Raetho-Romance (Romansh, Ladin, Friulan) and the whole Occitan-Catalan groups, but that's debatable.
· Some want to add to the list the Gallo-Italic languages (Piedmontese, Lombard, Ligurian, Emilian), that are clearly quite remote.
· But never did anyone propose to add Venetian and Istriot!

[AphroditeWorshiper]

Of course they're not.

· Gallo-Romance includes the various Oïl French and so-called "Franco-Provençal" dialects.
· I may include sometimes as well the Raetho-Romance (Romansh, Ladin, Friulan) and the whole Occitan-Catalan groups, but that's debatable.
· Some want to add to the list the Gallo-Italic languages (Piedmontese, Lombard, Ligurian, Emilian), that are clearly quite remote.
· But never did anyone propose to add Venetian and Istriot!

Piedmontese and Ligurian are pretty similar to Occitan/Catalan, but with obviously strong Italian influence

[Ouistreham]

Piedmontese and Ligurian are pretty similar to Occitan/Catalan, but with obviously strong Italian influence

Quite right.
The oldest available Piedmontese texts showed that this language was absolutely Occitan, closer to mediaeval Provençal than to anything else. It even made plurals with -s, which is the conventional marker between Italy's Italian languages and the others (Sardinian, Friulan, Ladin).
Since then, Piedmontese has heavily drifted towards Italian whilst Occitan was undergoing French influence.