Michel Grosclaude
Michel Grosclaude
Born	Michel Grosclaude July 8, 1926 Nancy
Died	May 21, 2002 Sauvelade
Resting place	Sauvelade
Nationality	France
Occupation	Professor
Spouse	Claudette Perrotin

Michel Grosclaude (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl ɡʁɔsklod]; Occitan: Miquèu; 1926–2002) was a French linguist, and an author of works on grammar, lexicography and Occitan onomastics.

Biography

Born on 8 July 1926 in Nancy. He was the son of Pierre Grosclaude, an academic. He studied in Lyon and in Marseille and spent time in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during the war, which had some significance for his humanistic ideas. He finished his training in Latin, Greek, and philosophy at the Sorbonne.

He was appointed as a professor at Chinon where he married Claudette Perrotin, a teacher. They then sought the possibility of compatible posts and came across them in Béarn: she at Sauvelade, he in the Orthez high school where he arrived in 1958.

Volunteering to take the post of secretary of the town council in Sauvelade, he was confronted for the first time with the Occitan language in its béarnaise and Gascon variants. He understood the importance of this language that he had seen at the Mistral de Marseille high school. He decided to train with the help of Roger Lapassade, a high school colleague, who in 1960 founded the association Per Noste in Orthez as a Gascon section of the Occitan Studies Institute (ASI). Noted for his knowledge of Latin and Greek, he integrated with the association in 1965 and quickly became a specialist, lexicographer and historian of the language. He would be one of the leaders of the defence of Occitan culture until his death.

He became professor of Occitan and worked on the publishing of first level textbooks with Robert Darrigrand. At the same time he contributed to the magazine Per Noste País Gascons and a History of Béarn designed for teachers and students.

He directed his first elementary French-Occitan dictionary (for Bearnais) for the La Civada association in Pau. Then he tackled writing a more complete version of this dictionary, with Gilbert Narioo, and it was completed by Patric Guilhemjoan after his death in 2002.

Meanwhile, he taught himself the onomastics of Occitan and made some very interesting studies of Gascon toponymy and patronymy. For twelve years he hosted his 15-minute daily show, lo Cercanoms (the researcher of names), on Ràdio País with Crestian Lamaison who was one of his students. His show was open to all topics pertaining to the heritage of proper names.

Along with his job as a professor of philosophy it was little known that he was interested in many subjects, some of which he was passionate about, such as geology and book binding. He wrote some plays for the Gascon theatre. He also worked with the Centre for the Study of Béarnais Protestantism^[1] and published several papers in their journal.

He died on 21 May 2002, and was buried at Sauvelade.

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References