A FRENCH village has paid homage to an Otley man - almost 90 years after he helped preserve the area's unique language.

French professor Paul Barbier, who came from a French family but lived in Otley up until his death aged 74 in 1947, served in the French army as an interpreter during the First World War.

And while the opening battles of the war were played out, Prof Barbier, who was stationed in the Picardy village of Erquinghem-Lys, near Armentieres, used his linguistic skills to discover the roots of the local language.

Fascinated by the source of words and after talking to locals about the place, he filled a exercise book with the words of the old French patois still spoken by the village elders.

His remarkable dictionary of some 3,000 words survived the war and more than 60 years later, in 1980, the Barbier lexicon was eventually published by the Museum of Picardy so its contents could become known by future generations.

Now, the Professor, who spoke eight languages, has been remembered once again in the village, which regards him as a local hero, by devoting a major exhibition to his work and unveiling a public bench in memory of his life and times in France.

To mark the occasion, exactly 88 years after the professor arrived in the village with a British ambulance unit, his grand daughter, Delphine Isaaman, presented the mayor, M Alain Bezirard, with the original exercise book, dated January, 1915, filled with the patois words in his own handwriting.

Mrs Isaaman, who lives in Newent, Gloucestershire, said: "It was a very moving occasion. How my grandfather managed to compile his dictionary in the middle of so much death and destruction still amazes me.

"The exercise book was among our family papers. After much thought I decided that it was right that I should return it to where it began its life so long ago, and where it will in the future be seen in the museum that Erquinghem-Lys is now planning to build in a couple of years time."

She said her grandfather created a number of dictionaries in the French villages where he was posted, but only one survived the war.

Paul Barbier was born in Manchester and brought up in Cardiff with his three brothers and four sisters. He studied at the Sorbonne and London University before reading Welsh at Cardiff and taking his MA in Celtic and French. In 1899 he was appointed lecturer in French at the then Victoria University in Leeds in in 1903. After a successful career there, he was made Chevalier de la Legion D'Honneur.

Almost 100 people attended the exhibition opening and unveiling on Friday, November 8, including two of Paul Barbier's other grandchildren, Michael Barbier and Carole Youngs, who travelled specially to France for the occasion.