Patwé Club Savièse

The "patois" of Savièse is more than 1000 years old. It belongs to a group of languages called Francoprovençal or Arpitan, spoken all around Mont-Blanc and in two villages the Puglia region in South Italy.

Till around 1950 every Saviese child was raised in that language. Contributing to the language disuse, school forbid the language around that time, but more importantly the people themselves abandoned it, aiming at helping children master French, the language of education.

Savièse Arpitan has got a rich lexicon of 11'000 words with example sentences since 1960, and a French-Patois dictionary since 2013.

The goal of our association is to use and revive this tasty and original vernacular language.