The Reality of Dialects in Italy

It’s often said that the dialects of Italy will be dead in 30 years. There is no way on Earth that that is true. On the other hand, the hard or pure dialects are dying, as they are all over Europe, in Sweden, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

The hard dialects are often spoken only by the old now, and many old words have fallen out of use. The hard dialects often had a limited vocabulary restricted to whatever economic activity was typical of the area. A lot of the old dialects are now being written down in local dictionaries to preserve their heritage.

The dialects were of course killed by universal education, and this was a positive thing. All Italians should learn to speak some form of Standard Italian. In the old days when everyone spoke dialect, people had a hard time communicating with each other unless there was some form of regional koine that they could speak and all understand. It doesn’t make sense if you can only talk to people in a 20 mile or less radius.

A diglossia where hard dialects would exist alongside Standard Italian was never going to work. People are pretty much going to speak one or the other. As people learn Standard Italian, their local dialect will tend to become more Italianized. In other cases, the hard local dialect will tend to resemble more the local regional dialect.

For instance, in southern Campania, the region of Naples, in a part called Southern Cilento, there are still some Sicilianized dialects spoken, remnants from Sicilian immigrants who came in the 1500′s. These dialects are now dying, and the speech of the young tends to resemble more the Neapolitan Cilento speech of the surrounding area more.

In other cases, koines have developed.

There is a regional koine in Piedmont that everyone understands. There is a similar koine in West and East Lombard, the Western one based on the speech of Ticino. There is a Standard Sicilian, spoken by everyone and understood by all, and then there are regional dialects, which, if spoken in hard form, may not be intelligible with surrounding regions. A koine has also developed in Abruzze around Pesaro. There is “TV Venetian,” the Venetian used in regional TV, a homogenized form that has speakers of local dialects worried it is going to take them out.

Even where hard dialects still exist, the younger people continue to speak the local dialect, except that it is now a lot more Italianized and regionalized. A lot of the old words are gone, but quite a few are still left. So the dialects are not necessarily dead or dying, instead they are just changing.

In the places where the dialects are the farthest gone such as Lazio and Tuscany, the regional dialects are turning into “accents” which can be understood by any Standard Italian speaker.

The situation in Tuscany is complicated. Although the hard dialects are definitely going out, even the hard dialects may be intelligible to Standard Italian speakers since Standard Italian itself was based on the dialect of Florence, a city in Tuscany.

Florence was chosen as the national dialect around 1800 when Italian leaders decided on a language for all of Italy. But the truth is that the language of Dante had always been an Italian koine extending far beyond its borders, just as the language of Paris had long been the de facto Standard French (and it still is as Parisien).

This is not to say that there are not dialects in Tuscany. Neapolitan speakers say they hear old men from the Florence region on TV and the dialect is so hard that they want subtitles. And there is the issue of which Florentine was chosen as Standard Italian. A commenter said that the language that was chosen was the language of Dante, sort of a dialect frozen in time in the 1400′s. In that case, regional Tuscan could well have moved far beyond that.

Even in areas where dialects are said to be badly gone such as Liguria, local accents still exist. It is said that everyone in Genoa speaks with a pretty hard Ligurian accent. That is, it is Standard Italian spoken with a Genoese accent.

Many younger Italians are capable of speaking in what is called “close,” “strict” or “tight” dialect. This means the hard form of the dialect. Speaking in this hard dialect, they often say that outsiders have a hard time understanding them. They can also speak in a looser form that is more readily intelligible. People adjust their speech to interlocutors.

We seem to be seeing a resurgence of interest in dialects among young people. Even if they can’t  speak them, many understand them. Most young people grew up with mothers, fathers or certainly grandparents who spoke in this or that dialect, and they learned at least to understand it from them. In addition, in many parts of Italy, dialects are still going strong, and many young people at least understand the local dialect even if they do not speak it.

Check Out Torrese

Torrese is the Neapolitan dialect spoken on the Italian coast 10 miles southeast of Naples. This is a port city with a very unique dialect. The hardcore Torrese does not even appear to be completely intelligible in Torre del Greco 5 miles to the north or in Castellamare di Stabia 5 miles to the south.

The video above, apparently from Naples TV, is making the rounds with Italians on Youtube, mostly because no one seems to be able to understand what these women are saying. For sure, this is one wild, over the top dialect all right.

There are also a lot of comments about people who can’t even speak proper Italian, about low-class, slummy, scummy, uneducated people, and about the slums of Naples. It’s true that the Naples region has a lot of run-down housing, especially in suburbs. There is also a tremendous amount of corruption, and the Camorra, or the local Mafia, is simply everywhere. They have even heavily infiltrated the police. For a while there, trash was piling up all over Naples because no one wanted to collect the garbage.There is not a lot of random violent crime, but there is a lot of property crime. Be careful even parking your car on the streets.

The women in the video are apparently complaining about cockroaches in their building. They appear to be saying that they are as big as rats, which is dubious.

The “Southern Question” has long been a problem of Italian politics. It’s a question that is heavily tinged with the racism that Northern Italians feel towards Southern Italians. A frequent comment, along the lines of “Africa begins at the Pyrenees,” is, “Africa begins in Naples.” Northern Italians often say that Naples is part of Africa. Southerners are said to be criminal, rude, belligerent, hot-tempered, violent, corrupt, stupid, uneducated and poor. In addition, they can’t even speak proper Italian.

Drawing a line at where the South begins is difficult, but an argument can even be made that Abruzze is southern in culture. Where Rome fits is anyone’s guess. Perhaps a more proper division is North, Center and South Italy.

The Southern Question shows no sign of resolution in my lifetime.

Check Out Romanesco

Romanesco is the Italian dialect or language of Rome and the surrounding area. This Youtube video took Italy by storm. It is called “Girls of Ostia Beach – Interview in Dialect.” The announcer interviews two teenage girls on the beach in Rome for about 1 1/2 minutes.

Their dialect was so strong that those who made the video had to put subtitles on it because many Italians couldn’t understand any of the dialogue otherwise. So you see, even the dialect of Rome is unintelligible in much of Italy.

This is interesting because Rome and its province of Latium and Tuscany are the two parts of Italy where the old dialects are the most far gone. Here they are heavily diluted and Italianized, reduced in many cases from full languages to mere dialects of Italian. But as you can see in this video, the hard dialect of Rome is still alive and well.

The video caused a storm all over Italy but especially in Rome. Many people, especially Romans, were outraged at the girls’ dialect, which they felt was coarse, rude, vulgar and low class. They compared it to the speech of the ghetto or to uneducated idiots. The truth is that this is just hardcore Romanesco dialect from the center of Rome, not from the suburbs or surrounding villages.

Many older Romans were outraged at what the video said about their beautiful Roman dialect. They longed for the “pure and elegant” Romanesco of 50 years ago, now kept alive by the elderly.

Many said that this was not Romanesco at all but instead was Romanaccio, a so-called rude street form of the “true and glorious” Romanesco. The truth is that what you hear in the video is the language of quite a few Roman youth today. And indeed it is quite a bit different from the hardcore Romanesco now spoken by the older folks.

Even if you can’t understand Italian, if you listen to the dialect and try to compare it to the subtitles, you can see that the speech bears little resemblance to the subtitled words.

I don’t speak Italian, but I kind of liked the sound of this dialect. Has kind of a wild sound to it. And the girls are pretty nice to look at.

Check Out Siculo Gallo-Italic

These are fascinating Romance dialects spoken in Sicily. The are called the Gallo-Italic dialects of Sicily. Some of them are also found in other parts of Italy, mostly in the far south in Basilicata.

Gallo-Italic languages are spoken in far north of Italy and are so called because there is heavy French influence on these Italian varieties. They include Venetian, East and West Lombard, Piedmontese, Ligurian, Emilian and Romagnolo.

In the 1100′s and 1200′s, Sicily was ruled by Norman rulers from the north of France. They had conquered much of Italy, and were in control of parts of the north also. In order perhaps to consolidate their rule in Sicily, which they had just conquered, they sent some Norman soldiers to Sicily to help populate the region and set up Norman outposts there.

These were mostly soldiers from the southern Piedmont (Monferrate)  and Ligurian (Oltregiogo) regions of Italy and from the Provencal area in the south of France. There were also a few from the Lombard region and other parts of northern Italy. They went down there with their families and formed a number of settlements in Sicily and a few other places in Italy.

Over the next 800 years, their Gallo-Italic language came under heavy influence of varieties of Sicilian in Sicily, Basilicatan in Basilicata and other languages in other parts of Italy. Yet the heavy Gallo-Italic nature of their lects remains to this day and Sicilian speakers of surrounding villages find Gallo-Italic speakers impossible to understand.

The dialects have tended to die out somewhat in the past 100 years. Villagers were tired of speaking a language that could not be understood outside the village and increasingly shifted to the Sicilian language. A situation of bilingualism in Gallo-Italic and Sicilian developed. Over time, this became trilingualism as children learned Standard Italian in school. Gallo-Italic was used inside the village itself, and Sicilian was used for communication with outsiders.

Whether or not Gallo-Italic lects in different parts of Sicily can understand each other is not known, but they have all undergone independent paths of development over 800 years or so. The same is also an up in the air question about Basilicatan Gallo-Italic and Gallo-Italic settlements in other parts of the country. This is an interesting question in need of linguistic research.

In this 1 1/2 minute video, I am not sure if I understood a single word he said. The language he is speaking sounds like a mixture of Provencal Piedmontese with a heavy dose of Sicilian. Sicilian itself is so odd that a Sicilian speaker can barely be understood at all outside of Sicily. It has at least 250,000 words, 25% of which have no equivalent in Standard Italian. It underwent heavy French, Spanish and especially Greek and Arabic influences.

Mutual Intelligiblility in the Romance Family (Reading)

Just a personal anecdote. I have been reading a lot of Italian lately (with the help of Google Translate). I already read Spanish fairly well. I have studied French, Portuguese and Italian, and I can read Portuguese and French to some extent, Portuguese better than French.

But I confess that I am quite lost with Italian. This is worse than French and worse than Portuguese. A couple weeks of wading through this stuff hasn’t made me understand it any better.

Portuguese and Galician are said to be so close that they are a single language. I don’t agree with that at all, but they are very close, much closer to Spanish and Portuguese. Intelligibility may be on the order of 80-90%.

Nevertheless, the other day I tried to read a journal article on Galician. It looked like it was written in Portuguese, and who would write in Galician anyway? I copied the whole thing into Google Translate and let it ride. I waded through the whole article, and I must say it was a disaster. I had a very hard time understanding many of the main points of the article.

Then I remembered that Translate works on Galician now, so I decided on an off chance that the guy may have written the piece in Galician for some nutty reason. I ran it through Translate using Galician as target. The article went through perfectly. You could understand the whole thing. It was then that I realized how far apart Portuguese and Galician really are.

You can try some other experiments.

Occitan is said to be nearly intelligible with Spanish or maybe even French, better if you know both. There’s no Google Translate for Occitan yet, but I had to deal with a lot of Occitan texts recently. I couldn’t make heads or tails of them despite by Romance reading background. So I tried using Translate to turn them into Spanish or French. French was a total wreck, and there was no point even bothering with that. Spanish was much better, but even that was a serious mess.

Now we come to the crux. Catalan and Occitan are said to be so close that they are nearly one language. Translate now works in Catalan. So I ran the Occitan texts through Translate using Catalan. The result was a serious mess, but you could at least understand some of what the Occitan texts were about. But no way on Earth were those the same languages.

People keep saying that if you can read Spanish, you can read Portuguese. It’s not true, but you can see why people say it. Try this. Take a Spanish text and run it through Translate using the Portuguese filter. Now take a Portuguese text and run it through Translate using the Spanish filter. See what a mess you end up with!

Despite the fact that I can read Spanish pretty well, I have tried to read texts in Aragonese, Asturian, Extremaduran, Leonese and Mirandese. These are so close that some even say that they are dialects of Spanish. But even if you read Spanish, you can’t really read any of those languages, and they are all separate languages, I assure you. Sure, you get some of it, but not enough, and it’s a very frustrating experience.

There are texts on the Net in something called Churro or Xurro. It’s a Valencian-Aragonese transitional dialect spoken around Teruel in Aragon in Spain. It also has a lot of Old Castillian and a ton of regular Castillian in it. Wikipedia will tell you it’s a Spanish dialect. Running it through both the Spanish and Catalan filters didn’t work and ended up with train wrecks. I doubt if Xurro is a dialect of either Catalan or Spanish. It’s probably a separate language.

There is another odd lect spoken in the same region called Chappurriau. It is spoken in Aguaviva in Teruel in the Franca Strip. The Catalans say these people speak Catalan, but the speakers say that their language is not Catalan. Intelligibility with Catalan is said to be good. So effectively this is a Catalan dialect.

I found some Chappurriau texts on the Net and ran them through Translate using Catalan as the output. The result was an unreadable disaster, and I couldn’t really figure out what they were saying. Then I tried the Spanish filter, and that was even worse. I am starting to think that maybe Chappurriau is a separate language as its speakers say and not a Catalan dialect after all.

I conclude that the ability to cross read across the Romance languages is much exaggerated.

Not only that, but many Romance microlanguages, transitional dialects and lects that are supposedly dialects of larger languages may actually be separate languages.

Check Out Ormeasco

Ormeasco is a very strange dialect of spoken in the far northwest of Italy in Piedmont Province near the border with Liguria Province near the French border in the Ligurian Alps.

It is a dialect of the Ligurian language. It is basically a Brigasco Ligurian dialect with heavy South Cuneo Piedmontese influences. There are also strong French influences via Piedmontese and Occitan borrowings via Brigasco. It is so strange that even residents of nearby villages have a hard time understanding it. Ormeasco has been studied by linguists for over 150 years since it is so unusual.

In the video, apparently made for a Piedmontese TV station, the announcer is apparently speaking Italian, though she may be speaking with a Piedmontese accent, which is a pretty wack accent of Italian. The persons interviewed are speaking Ormeasco. If you listen to the Ormeasco, you can see that it almost sounds more French than Italian.

I really get tired of hearing people say that Spanish and Italian are intelligible with each other. Italian speakers who travel to Colombia say they had a very hard time being understood. Colombians understand no more than 30-40% of what they were saying.

Now, as far as the Italian speaker in this video, let me tell you how much of her language I can understand: 0%! If you have any knowledge of French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese, you might find this video interesting. See if you can understand any of it.

I must say though, that sure is a beautiful little Italian village!

What Languages Are You Studying?

Please feel free to update us on your current language learning endeavors, if they exist.

As for me:

English: Native speaker, no need to study anything. In fact, it’s unusual that I run across a word that I don’t know. The most recent one was analphabetism. I bet you don’t know what that means.

Spanish: I have been studying Spanish on and off since I was 6 years old. Studying Spanish is more or less of an ongoing thing with me. We have a lot of bilingual signs and prinouts in our area. I often read them with the English translations to bone up on my Spanish.

I could do better. There is a bilingual newspaper that is issued around here for free, but I never bother to pick it up.

Part of the problem is that when you are as good at Spanish as I am, learning more Spanish (such as reading Spanish papers) is really a serious drag. Spanish as written down especially in papers does not translate literally. Not only are there a ton of not commonly used words, but there are also a lot of figures of speech. In addition, there are lots of phrases, that, when looking at the Spanish and then at the English, one wonders how they managed to go from one to the other. The Spanish-English translation is not transparent at all.

As you learn Portuguese, French and Italian, it only helps you with your Spanish, though the assistance is not obvious. After a while, all Romance just starts running together. You might as well just study Latin and get it over with.

I speak Spanish to Spanish speakers around here on a regular basis. It’s a lot of fun, and they really appreciate if you can speak three words of their language, unlike the French.

The Spanish-speakers who are actually born in Mexico appreciate it a lot more than the ones who are born in the US. I am not sure why that is, but in so many ways, Hispanics who were born in Latin America are much better people than Hispanics who were born on the US. It’s popular to dog on Latin America, but Latin American Hispanic culture is much superior to US Hispanic culture.

There are deep elements of respect, pride, kindness, brotherhood, politeness and dignity present in Latin American Hispanic culture that are almost neutered in US Hispanic culture. US Hispanics are pretty much just typical asshole Americans, except that they happen to be Hispanics. And in many ways, such as the lumpenization of their culture, US Hispanics are actually worse than the rest of Americans.

I’m not sure what it is with US Hispanics, but something has gone terribly wrong. They’ve lost most of what’s grand about Latin American culture, and they’ve replaced it with what’s worst about US culture, in addition to concocting up various cultural poisons of their own. It’s cultural mongrelization of the worst sort, all of the bad, none of the good and a bunch of new innovations, almost all bad.

Portuguese: Past. I studied it a bit in the past when I was hanging around with this Brazilian woman. Now I’ve given it up. I am already studying Spanish and French, and after a while, you are just studying too many Romance languages. The words are so similar that you start getting them all tangled up in your head. You go to say a Spanish word and you say the Portuguese, Italian or French word instead. If you have some Spanish (especially), French and Italian, you get lots of help with Portuguese.

Italian: I study this language a little bit, but not too much. I am not very good at it, but it’s interesting. If you know some French, Spanish and Portuguese, you can go a long way with Italian.

French: My latest fetish is French. I am not very good at it, so I am at the point where learning the language is fun because you’re always learning new stuff. I have blown off verbs and just concentrate on vocabulary. Verbal conjugations in Romance languages suck anyway. Even in Spanish, they can be quite complex.

German: Past. Mostly I just picked up some basic vocabulary. Attempts to run beyond that, I am afraid, run into Hell. I understand that they still have case, and that the nouns are pretty crazy. There are supposedly other difficult aspects of this language, but I am not sure what they are. Learning basic vocabulary is pretty fun though.

That’s about it. For the most part, as a language learner, I concentrate on the Romance languages. They are difficult enough, believe me! Going beyond Romance seems like a gigantic PITA to me. You’re pretty much traveling to whole new planets. Why bother when Romance is hard enough as it is?

Threatened Languages of France

The French Constitution declares that French is the only language of France. Although France has declared some regional languages to be language of France, France is prevented from ratifying the EU Treaty on Minority Languages due to its Constitution.

A UNESCO report on endangered languages ​​shows that French is seriously threatening 26 languages ​​or dialects in France, including: Basque, Burgundian, Breton, Champenois, Corsican, Flemish, Franche-Comté, Moselle Franconian, Rhine Franconian, Francoprovençal (Arpitan), Gallo, Ligurian, Lorrain, Norman, Occitan (Auvergne, Gascony, Languedoc, Limousin, Provençal), Picard and Poitevin-Saintonge.

Of these, the following are langues d’oil, related to French: Picard, Gallo, Burgundian, Champenois, Franche-Comté, Lorrain, Norman,and Poitevin-Saintonge. These are actually separate languages or patois. They are not dialects of French. Many of them split from langue d’oil long ago. In general, they are quite incomprehensible to French speakers. Let’s look at them:

Burgundian is spoken in Burgundy around Dijon. It is not in good shape, but it still has a lot of speakers. Not intelligible with Standard French. It has about 2,000 native speakers.

Champenois is spoken in Champagne around Reims and in neighboring Belgium, where it is a regionally protected language. I don’t have much information on it, but it’s probably not in good shape. Not intelligible with Standard French.

Franche-Comté is still spoken in Franche-Comte around Besancon. It still has some elderly speakers, but it’s probably not in good shape. Not intelligible with Standard French. It has 3,700 speakers in Switzerland. Figures for France are not known.

Gallo is spoken in eastern Brittany around Rennes. It is still in reasonably good shape. Not intelligible with Standard French. 28,000 speakers. 200-400,000 with at least passive knowledge.

Lorrain is spoken in the northwest of France in the Lorrain region around the city of Nancy, the Vosges Mountains and even into Belgium. Not intelligible with Standard French.

Norman is spoken on the coat of Normandy around Le Havre and on the Channel Islands. This is actually several separate languages. It is not doing well, and is doing especially poorly on the Islands where the influence of English is very strong. Not intelligible with Standard French. Up to 243,000 speakers.

Picard has about 700,000 speakers in far northwest France around Calais, Lille and Dunkirk and in Belgium. It is probably actually two separate languages. Not intelligible with Standard French.

Poitevin-Saintongeais is spoken on the west-central coast of France and around Poitiers. Eleanor of Acquitaine was actually a Poitevin speaker. This is actually two separate languages. Saintongeais is still widely spoken. Poitevin is doing well and has 150-500,000 speakers.

There are actually other langues d’oil, but I won’t list them.

Basque is spoken by only about 10% of the population of the French Basque country. This area is a huge tourist destination, and that has really hurt the Basque language badly in France. Basque is in much better shape in Spain. French Basques are rather quiet and not particularly militant, but there was an armed group at one point. Mostly the French Basque country is used by ETA radicals from Spain as a hideout from the law.

Breton is the Gaelic language related to Welsh that is spoken in Brittany on the northwest edge of France. This language does have 200,000 speakers, but most of them are over age 50. There are also 500 schools or diwans teaching the language. Although this sounds promising and Breton is in better shape than the other languages listed here, there are a lot of worries about this language. For one thing, the French won’t allow it to be taught in French schools.

Corse is spoken on the island of Corsica by about 40% of the population. It is not in good shape. There is a large independence movement in Corsica with huge support. Corse is really just an ancient Tuscan Italian dialect from about ~1500. Speakers of Standard Italian, based on Florentine Tuscan, can understand Corse easily. 100,000 speakers, 1/3 of the island, but many of them are older. Some young people are learning it, but it starts too late – by high school. Instruction needs to start earlier.

Flemish is still spoken by about 20,000 speakers in the far northwest of France around Dunkirk. It is not in good shape at all.

Francoprovençal or Arpitan is an old language with 112,000 speakers that split away from the langue d’oil at about the time it was first becoming consolidated around 800-900. Arpitan split from Catalan-Occitan around 600. This language is also spoken in Italy and Switzerland. It is probably actually 10 or more languages, since there is poor communication among the dialects. It is spoken in the part of France near Switzerland, in the Savoy and around Lyon, Grenoble and St. Etienne to the west of Switzerland.

This language is doing very poorly in France but was still very widely spoken until the 1970′s and 1980′s. It probably resembles French more than any other language.

Ligurian is a Gallo-Romance language similar to a cross between French and Italian. It is mostly spoken around Genoa in Italy, but it is spoken in several dialects along the coast of southeastern France near the border with Italy in the Maritime Alps. Up to 2 million speakers total, but the language is still thought to be in poor shape because few young people are learning it.

Moselle Franconian is spoken in an area of the Alsace-Lorraine on the border with Germany. The variety spoken in France is called Lorraine Franconian and is not in good shape. This German language is not intelligible with Standard German. 78,000 speakers.

Occitan (Auvergnat, Gascon, Nissart, Mentonasque, Monegasque, Languedoc, Limousin, Cisalpine, Provençal dialects) is spoken in the south of France by up to 7 million people understand the language, and 1 million speak it as a first language. It is probably doing better than most of the languages listed in here, but it does not have a secure position.

This is the ancient language of the Troubadours and it is closely related to Catalan, having split from Catalan around 1000. Catalan-Occitan started to split away as a separate language around 800. Occitan itself split from langue d’oil in the 800′s. From 1000-1600, Catalan and Occitan evolved along similar lines.

It is quite unintelligible to French speakers. Sort of a cross between French and Spanish. The question of whether or not the dialects can understand each other and to what degree is a thorny one that does not have good answers. Nissart, Gascon, Limousin, Cisalpine and Languedocien are definitely separate languages.

Rhine Franconian is spoken in France in the same general region as Moselle Franconian, except a bit to the west. It is intelligible with Standard German or with Moselle Franconian. It is not doing very well.

How Learning One Language Well Helps You Learn Others

Repost from the old site.

In the comments, the ever-perceptive dano notes:

dano: The thing is, I’ve found that once you learn to speak a European language, and particularly a Latin-based one, you see similarities in many words across the board and a rough kind of pattern emerges, making it easier to learn more languages.

Dano is correct – once you learn one Romance language, you can learn others. Also, the better you know English, the more easily you can learn a Romance language because so many English words have Latin roots. I also have knowledge of Proto Indo-European, so I can see roots that go back even farther back than Latin.

It helps to learn Greek and Latin roots in English. That way you can pick up more English words that you don’t know just by figuring out roots. Also it helps a lot with Romance languages.

Let’s try a little experiment. I know English very well, including many obscure terms, and I am familiar with many Latin roots. I know Spanish pretty well. I know a tiny bit of French and know a few words in Indo-European. With that knowledge, let us see how far that will get me in Venetian, a language I had never heard of before, and Italian, a language I have never been able to make heads or tails of.

Comparison of Venetian and Italian with English, Spanish, French and Indo-European

Venetian gato , Spanish “gato”, English “cat”

Venetian grasa, Spanish “grasa”, English “gross” fat, corpulent

Venetian qua, Indo-European “kuon”, French “chien”, English “canine”, “hound”, dog

Venetian çena, Spanish “cena”, dinner

Venetian scóła, Spanish “escuela”, English “school”

Venetian bała, Spanish “bala”, English “ball”

Venetian pena, English “pen”

Venetian bìsi, English “peas”

Venetian diałeto, Spanish “dialecto “, English “dialect”

Venetian sgnape, English “schnapps”

Venetian scóndar, Spanish “esconder”, English, “abscond”, to hide, to depart rapidly to avoid persecution

Venetian baxar, Spanish “besar”, English “buss”, to kiss, kiss

Venetian dormir, Spanish “dormir”, English “dormitory”, to sleep

Venetian pàre, Spanish “padre”, English “patrilineal”, father, in the father’s family line

Venetian parlar, French “parler”, English “parlance”, to speak, way of speaking

Venetian scusàr, Spanish “excusar”, English “to excuse”, to forgive

Venetian aver, Spanish “haber”, English “to have,” to possess

Venetian essar, Spanish “estar”, to be, English “essence,” essential quality of a thing

Venetian sentir, Spanish “sentir”, English, “sentiments”, to feel, feelings

Venetian venir, Spanish “venir”, to come

Venetian cantar, Spanish “cantar”, English “cantata”, to sing, song, “canto,” a type of lyric poetry,

Venetian vaca, Spanish “vaca”, cow

Venetian vardar, Spanish “guardar”, English “to guard”, to look, to guard

Venetian sghiràt, English “squirrel”

Venetian récia, Spanish “orecha”

Venetian plàstega, Spanish “plastica”, English “plastic”

Italian forchetta, English “fork”

Italian ratto, Spanish “raton”, English “rat”

Italian pipistrello, English “pipistrelle”, bat, a type of bat

Italian asino, English “ass”, donkey

Venetian mustaci, English “mustache”

Italian io, Spanish “yo”, English “I”

Venetian mare, Spanish “madre”, mother, English “matriarchal”, rule by women

Italian uscita, English, “exit”

Venetian fiól, English “filial”, son, relating to a son or daughter

Italian quando, Spanish “cuando”, when

Venetian cascàr, English “cascade”, to fall, waterfall

Venetian trón, English “throne” chair, king’s chair

Venetian bèver, Spanish “beber”, English “to imbibe”, to drink

Venetian trincàr, English “to drink”

Venetian òcio, Spanish “ojo”, English “ocular”, eye, of the eye

Venetian morsegàr, English “morsel”, to bite, a bite

Venetian nome, Spanish “nombre”, English “name”

Venetian solo, Spanish “solo”, English “solo”, only, alone

Venetian grande, Spanish “grande”, English “grand” big, great

Italian piccante, Spanish “picante”, English “piquant”, spicy hot

Venetian calle, Spanish “calle,” street

Venetian łéngua, Spanish “lengua”, English “language”

Venetian senpre, Spanish “siempre”, always

Venetian mar, Spanish “mar”, English “maritime”, sea, of the sea

Venetian nostre, Spanish “nuestro”, our

Venetian vite, Spanish “vida”, English, “vital”, life, living

Venetian virtuosi, Spanish “virtuoso”, English “virtuous”

Venetian serae, Spanish “seria”, would be

Venetian spirito, Spanish “espiritu”, English “spirit”, ghost, spirit

Venetian segura, Spanish “seguro”, English “secure”, safety, safe

Venetian robar, Spanish “robar”, English “to rob”, to loot, to steal

Venetian mal, Spanish “mal”, English “malevolent”, bad, evil-minded

As we can see, there is a huge amount of similarity between Venetian, an obscure language I had never heard of, and Spanish and English. Even the frightening Italian has quite a few Spanish and English cognates. Learning one foreign language, or even learning your own language very well, really does help you to learn even more languages so much more easily. Go ahead and give it a shot!

A Look At the Venetian and Friulian Languages

Repost from the old site.

Here we will compare Friulian and Venetian with Italian. The Friulian language is spoken in northeastern Italy. Among Friulian speakers, the language is affectionately known as Marilenghe and is best known from the Udine, the main town of the Friulian zone. It has 794,000 speakers and is in pretty good shape.

Friulian is probably closer to Latin itself than most other Romance languages. There is a close relationship with Ladin and Romansch. Most speakers also speak Standard Italian. In regions of Slovenia bordering Friuli, almost everyone speaks Friulian as a second or third language. Friulian is closer to French than to Italian. Friulian language edition of Wikipedia.

Friulian is in decline. It has lost 18% of its speakers since 1989 and since 1981, there has been a 20% decline in people speaking it to the children. There is one FM station that broadcasts only in Friulian and another station that broadcasts partly. There is only 15 minutes a week on TV in Friulian. There is one monthly magazine. All of these initiatives are private.

This is in contrast to Switzerland, where minority languages are promoted. Since Mussolini, Italy has had a policy to get rid of minority languages in favor of Italian. Only 20 schools have started teaching Friulian, and Italian is used as the vernacular. In Udine, about 40% of street signs are bilingual Friulian and Italian.

This paper analyzes the legal status of Friulian and feels that it is lacking, although a landmark law was passed in Italy in 1999. This law was very controversial, and public opinion in Italy continues to be that regional languages should all give way to Italian.

Venetian is said to be a dialect of the Italian language, but it is actually a completely separate language related more to French than Italian. It is spoken mostly in northeastern Italy in Venice, Trieste and other areas by 2,280,387 people, but the number may actually be up to 3 million. Venetian Wikipedia is here. There is television, radio and magazines in Venetian.

Venetian still lacks a unified orthography, so people just write it however they pronounce their local dialect. That Venetian is closer to French, Catalan, Portuguese and Spanish than to Italian seems outrageous to many people, but apparently it is based on structural similarities. Much of the Italian similarity is probably due to borrowing.

The Venetian cause has been taken up by Northern Italian separatists and has unfortunately become associated with fascist movements. This is ironic since Mussolini tried to stamp out Venetian. Various idiotic ethnic nationalist myths have arisen – that Northern Italians are Celtic (more White) and that Venetian is some kind of Celtic language.

There was a Celtic language spoken in the area some 1,800 years ago, but it has not left much trace on the languages of today. North Italians are not Celtic and Venetian has no relation to Celtic. Venetian is close to the northern Italian languages Piedmontese, Ligurian, Western Lombard , Eastern Lombard and Emiliano-Romagnolo.

The debate over regional languages being “dialects of Italian” was cemented by Mussolini’s fascism, which tried to wipe out all regional languages. This feeling is still widespread in Italy today. However, speakers of regional languages refer to such a mindset as “that of the Roman Empire” and those who promote it as fascists.

My English translation is a free literary translation and is not literal or word for word at all. It translates the text into the best possible literary English.

Central (Udine) Friulian

Copiis

Il puar biāt al ą copiāt il Siōr
par dīj: “O soi come tč”:
ma il Siōr nol ą copiāt.

Magari chel biāt j ą vuadagnāt,
ma i fīs, daspņ, cetant ąno pajāt
no savint jéssi sé?

Il lōr destin al č, savéso quāl?

Copie de brute copie origjnāl!

Eastern/Coastal (Triestino) Venetian

Copie

Il sempio il gą copią il Sior
par dir “Mi son come ti”
ma il Sior no’l gą copią.

Forsi quel sempio xč divegnudo sior,
ma i fioi, dopo, quanto i gą pagą par
non saver come xe stado?

Savč vł qual xč il loro destin?

copie dela bruta copia original!

Notes: Both Friulian and Venetian are structurally separate languages. It’s very difficult to write in Friulian, and very few people know how to do it properly. Venetian is easier to write, and more speakers are able to write it.

Friulian ā is a long a.

Venetian x is the same as English z

Venetian ł resembles the “lh” sound. This sound does not occur in English.

Standard Italian

Il poveretto voleva copiare il Signore
per dire: “Io sono come te’,
ma il Signore non ha copiato.

Forse quel poveretto ha guadagnato
ma i figli, dopo, quanto hanno pagato
non sapendo cosa ?

Sapete qual’č il loro destino?

Essere copia dell’originale brutta copia!

Notes:Poveretto: povero di mente: simpleminded fellow
Signore: educated, gentleman
Guadagnato: learned something, got wiser
Pagato: to pay in a moral, education way, to “learn your lesson”

English

The simple man tried to copy the gentleman,
so he could say, “I’m just like you”,
but the gentleman could not be copied.

Now, maybe that simple man learned a thing or two,
but how much would his sons, later on, have
to pay for not knowing a thing?

The sons’ destiny?

To be a copy of the original rude copy.