For things named Crescent, see Crescent (disambiguation)

Crescent (disambiguation)

A crescent is a shape symbolising the MoonCrescent may also refer to:* Crescent lunar phase, the Moon phases when 1–49% of the Moon are visible* Croissant, a popular buttery French bread in the shape of a crescent moon-Biology:...

.

The Crescent is a crescent-shaped linguistic zone, located in far northern Occitania

Occitania

Occitania , also sometimes lo País d'Òc, "the Oc Country"), is the region in southern Europe where Occitan was historically the main language spoken, and where it is sometimes still used, for the most part as a second language...

 (i.e. southern central France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

), where people traditionally speak varieties of the Occitan language (of the Lemosin and Auvernhat dialects) with transition features toward French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

; nevertheless Occitan features remain dominant.

The first author who coined the name Crescent was linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 Jules Ronjat, in his 1913 PhD thesis. A prominent study about the Crescent is Guylaine Brun-Trigaud's PhD Thesis: Le Croissant: le concept et le mot (1990).