Fun fact: sardinian is an isolate within romance. Every other romance language from portuguese to romanian to sicilian is more closely related than any are to sardinian.
The easiest way to see this is that whereas all other romance languages have articles derived from latin "illa, ille", sardinian's articles are from "ipsa, ipse". Also in that sardinian vowels are identical in quality to latin vowels, just without length distinction. All other romance languages turned some short vowels into diphthongs.
Dante famously disliked sardinian because it was so conservative he believed it was a poor imitation of latin rather than a natural romance language.
Genetically they are distinct from basically ANY other people. DNA didn't go through the same crossover with other DNAs as the rest did. It's basically the same it was since the second gatherer Sapiens migration 40k years ago.
You can find some similarities in the so called Lausberg Area, on the Calabria-Basilicata border. Dialects in this area are pretty conservative and "archaic" mainly due to geographical isolation made by mountains, the region of Calabria was called the third island for this reason.
This. I don’t speak Catalan but my dad’s mom’s side of the family is from there and I grew up with some nursery rhymes in catalan. I speak Portuguese thanks to my other side of the family and when I visited Sardinia to my brain it was like HEY IS THAT LIKE CATALAN IN PORTUGUESE OR SOMETHIN’!?
I’m not a Latin derived language native speaker, my mother tongue is Scandinavian. I understand Catalan and can speak some, and I understand Algherese pretty ok.
It’s mind boggling.
And catalán in fact was an influence in same areas of Sardinia (especially in the north of the Island). Castillan too, though rather in the southern area.
we Sardinians also use the auxiliary verb "essere = to be" and not the verb "stare = to stay" conjugate the other verbs to the gerund.
Example:
Sto tornando a casa -> literally: I stay returning to home;
Seu torrendi a domu -> literally: I am returning to home;
Meaning for both: I'm coming home
As a sardinian, I generally can understand other italian dialects (I don't actually speak sardinian that well cause I grew up in the biggest city and my parents only spoke little sardinian at home, mainly italian, but I can understand 80% of it just cause when I go to visit my grandma they speak way more sardinian).
I have trouble understanding neapolitan if they're talking really fast, same for sicilian even tho 90% of the times I can understand what they're talking about even if I can't understand every single word just cause a lot of words are similar in italian.
Then probably the northern dialects are a bit difficult too.
This is just my personal experience tho so I'm sure other people will answer differently.
I've never studied spanish except for one year in elementary school and despite that I can understand spanish at a B2 level at least (can't speak it tho) just because it's really similar to italian and even more to sardinian. My surname is sardinian but when I went to Spain they thought I was spanish because of it.
Each color is a completely different language and the shades symbolize the different dialects of that language.
The language we today call Italian is a modified version of the Florence dialect of the Tuscan language (which is red in this map), it was artificially created over time by writers and poets of medieval Italy in the process of establishing a common language for literates.
Most people didn't speak proper Italian on a daily basis until TVs became a thing in most households. Before people used their broken Italian just to read the newspaper or to speak with people from somewhere else or state officials, but in any other occasion they would use their regional language.
Northern Italian romance languages are classified as gallo-italic languages and they share some similarities with French and Occitan. Southern and Central Italian languages form their own subfamily of romance languages called Italo-Dalmatian. "Unrelated/special" romance languages are Friulan and Ladin(the rhaeto romance languages together with Romansch) and Sardinian. Historical minorities of non-romance language speakers in the peninsula include: German, Albanian, Slovene, Croatian and Greek.
Today Italian has replaced the local languages in all of the conversations that are not with family or friends, especially among younger people. In the bigger cities in the North, Italian has basically completely replaced the local language because of immigration of people from different regions. In central Italy, since Italian was already very close to the regional languages, the two have fused and formed a dialect continuum of people who just speak Italian but with funny accents.
In the South the use of Sicilian and Neapolitan is still very wide spread and this makes them the most likely ones to survive the generational change together with Sardinian.
Saying each colour is a very different language is an exaggerated statement and a gross oversimplification.
Most people do not speak the "language" and in many cases it never existed in any codified written source.
Lombardia region tied for a decade to codify "lumbard" so they could use it as an official second language in the administration and teach in school, but they had to give up as it was an impossible task, as there was no regional language to begin with, only a fluid variations of local dialect that only a small minority would use consistently
https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/22_marzo_10/lega-ci-ripensa-la-lingua-lombarda-non-esiste-addio-rivoluzione-culturale-dialetto-padano-19b4b57c-a03f-11ec-83b4-cf7e2400b5e9.shtml
That's the problem with any language that hasn't been institutionalized. Dialect continuums exist everywhere. You can argue there also used to be a continuum of dialects from Wallon to Sicilian to Asturian, but then came the nation states that picked which dialect was to be taught in schools and to become the standard language. A language is a dialect with an army.
You are right, some of these were never codified into a standard written language because they never had to be taught in schools in order to form an identity, so there was never a higher power or a literary class that picked a dialect from that continuum to declare it a language. If they were not able to choose one dialect from this cluster to be the standard Lumbard, this doesn't take away the fact that people in Lombardy speak similarly to each other and differently from people in other regions of Italy
We can argue for hours how to define the borders of a language and never come to a conclusion. Linguists have concluded that these are the dialect clusters in Italy that share enough similarities with eachother and have enough differences with the others, that they can be considered as part of a language, so I am just stating what most linguist say, these are the regional "dialect clusters" of Italy which often shade into the others.
Sorry if I'm not understanding properly, but having lived in lombardy for some time, and being aware of Italy's linguistic diversity, I couldn't help but inquire about local languages when traveling to more rural and isolated areas, and there definitely is something like a language.
"A fluid variation of local dialects"... Yeah but dialects of what? Italian? Idk, I speak italian and my grandpa spoke to me in Lombard a lot as a child so I can understand it enough + my own little "linguistic exploration" while in italy, and that's definitely not a dialect of italian; not with a different grammar, spelling, etymology it's not. Sure, you can spell lombard in like five different ways according to where in italy/switzerland you're from, but no institutionalised spelling doesn't negate a distinct pronunciation and phonology, not to speak of the already present corpus of literature in lombard
And the fact nobody speaks it can, to my understanding, be traced back to the fact that the state, like many other romance speaking countries, tried to limit regionalisms to pursue a forced sense of national unity because otherwise soldiers couldn't understand each other in the trenches; not really fault or proof of absence of language, just of its endangerment.
My grandpa had to learn italian from scratch from an eastern lombard dialect, and made pretty big mistakes and lapsed back to lombard while speaking standard italian all the time. It all disappeared in later generations due to suppression from above, but there definitely is a language there.
What you’re saying is not wrong but I find that calling Standard Italian an artificial language is a bit of an exaggeration. More than a modified version it’s an archaic version of Florentine, since standard italian was purposefully codified following 14th century’s Florentine of Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio as it was seen as the purest version of Florentine. Then in the 19th century Manzoni decided to “rinse the clothes in the Arno” and decided to base Modern Italian on the language that was spoken by the florentine upper classes (which was very similar to the standard since they were educated and taught 14th century’s Florentine)
My family speaks Piemontese! I’m American though and learned “normal” Italian in high school. My family can understand me but I can’t understand them because the dialect sounds French to me. I know just enough to know when my mom is mad.
The reason my family didn’t teach me our language is because they’d say “you are American now, you will speak English like an American”. People forget Italians were heavily looked down on as poor uncouth unwanted immigrants prior to WW2
Oh yeah and my dad’s family is southern Italian (Naples and Calabrian) so you don’t even wanna know what my northern grandpa has to say about that. I know just enough Piemontese to know it’s not nice words
My father was beat by Italian nuns with a rubber hose in Catholic elementary school for speaking Italian when he arrived in the US as a child. So yes, he literally got the language beat out of him. My sister and I are the only ones in the family who are not fluent because my father insisted that we assimilate. Still makes me upset! But this map also explains why, when I was taking Italian in high school, my father would give me the wrong answers to my homework! My teacher would say, did your father help you with this?!!
Yup that tracks. My grandparents came here as adults but they were deep in the community here in America so they made us as American as possible. My grandparents are old enough to have gotten beat for writing with their left hands
I understand your struggles. Learned proper Italian and never learned the abbruzzese dialect my nonni speak. Ever since I started to learn Italian, they now somehow expect me to know their dialect too
Same. My family in the mountains thought it would be easier for me to understand if they switched to dialect and it was 10xs harder than formal school Italian
"Diu faus d'un piciola d'merda, tardoc! Criste!"
"False god, you're a shitty penis, you retarded! Christ!"
This could be a literal translation of a normal Piedmontese insult.
That’s pretty accurate. Whole lotta che vergogna e sciffo porko misele
And my favorite: ohhh no jeebus crista sum ob a bitch
As you can see from my first post I have no idea how to spell some of these words
O gosh yes, they sound real funny up here! Piemontese definitely has a lot of similarities with French, but they also sound a bit French even when speaking normal Italian. It’s the r’s.
I use to joke with them saying what if we’re part French? It makes sense our home town is like 50km from their border. They say huat tua we’re side switchers not cowards 😂🤣 Italians say some real unhinged things they can’t let go from that era
I'd say piemontese is one of the hardest dialects to understand especially older canavesan spoken by elderly people, sounds like total gibberish, plus it changes basically km by km
The map is not even as granular as real life is, it just can't be. Towns a few kms apart speak different dialects, the people in Rome speak a totally different dialect from the people in Marino, 10 kms south east. Of course this is a particularly blatant one because Rome is a bit its own world and those two dialects are worlds apart, but even between Marino and Rocca di papa, just another few km south east, you can hear a pretty strong difference with Rocca having an accent more similar to the marchigiano dialect. And then, the whole Castelli area, a mere 400 Square km, is a separate story from the rest of the central Latium region. And this is just a very small portion of the whole country.
I’m Italian, from inner Sicily, super small town 2000 inhabitants, in these small towns we don’t have highschools so we have to move to another town to go. In my hs class there were people from 6 different little towns. The jokes about our different dialects were crazy you can imagine, and all the towns are 15km to a max of 50 the farthest apart.
I really love our languages.
Also a fun fact for the Americans: Italian Americans that immigrated in the early 20th century came from regions of Italy where they still spoke these regional languages rather than Standard Italian!
Dio ostia m'ha za stufà veder tuti 'sti foresti che n'i capisse cossa che destengua 'na lengua da un dialeto.
Più che ti provi spiegarghielo, manco li lo capisse.
Almanco ghe semo nualtri, fioli!
D'onde gerili li to antenai? Da seguro, da como che ti scrivi, no li gera veneziani como de mi, ma credo che par altro la mazor parte deli imegrai in Sudamerica li fusse dala teraferma.
Forsi Treviso, cole vocale che no ghe xe?
Parò no'l gera niente mal, el modo che ti ga scrito. Se capiva tuto, 'deritura che el to papà el fusse Trevisan! Complimenti par aver mantignio la tradizion e la nostra bela lengua, e me racomando, continua mantignirla anca in fuduro!
I am a native Italian and I live on the border between Lombardy and Veneto and I speak and understand both dialects well. Even if a Venetian speaks perfect Italian, the influence of the dialect on his Italian is impossible to remove. Furthermore, if he is of a certain age he is even stronger and I would distinguish him from a thousand Italians speaking at the same time.
I have moved away from my hometown which was populated mainly with Trevisani. One afternoon I went to a mall with my wife in the Toronto area. I sat in the food court listening to a group of older men at a table near me. They were speaking “Trevisan”. I understood every word. Many of my friends growing up were Calabrese. I had difficulty with their dialect.
It has been 20 yrs since I moved from my hometown. I miss hearing Trevisan & always look forward to visiting the family.
Como parleu al confin? Xelo più veneto el vostro dialeto, o più lombardo?
Mi me pareva d'aver leto che verso de Mantoa gh'è dei paesi, par cussì dir lombardi, 'ndoe ch'i parla più tipo i veronesi.
Par altro, chielo che ti dixi ti m'ha sempre parso la più granda ipocresia del italian e deli so' sostegnedori: zente che la dixe che no ghe piaxe parlar in dialeto, co na "ere de Marghera" più forte che mi gabia mai sentio.
Che belo che ga da eser! 'Na cossa che go trovà molto interesante xe che paesi como de Monzamban, Castelaro e Sermion li gera veronesi 'na volta, parcui imazeno che anca la zente là la gabia più un dialeto veneto. Ma te sentistu più veronese, mantoan, o nissun dei do?
Mi son venezian, 'more! Me capissistu co che scrivo cussì?
Saria belo che tuti i veneti i lo savesse parlar, ma anca scriver, el dialeto.
Purtopo no ghe xe chiesta cultura e chiesto voler in tel nostro popolo, ma la speranza la xe l'ultema morir!
While it's true that there are a lot of languages in Italy, their usage can vary wildly by situation or location. The regional languages are primarily spread in smaller towns, with old people and in more casual environments. Younger, formal, big city things are usually in standard Italian. For example, I, a young Roman, know my dialect very little while my countryside dwelling family members use it pretty often. Also, some regions use them more often than others. Sardinian or Friulian are quite a bit more common than Lombard or Ligurian. This is for a variety of reasons, from history, to migration, to urbanisation, to isolationism
It's also due to the legal protections, due to the fact that the Friulian and Sardinian languages are recognized minority languages by law 482 of 1999, which allows their autonomous regions to enact language revitalization policies. In contrast, a regional law promoting the Piedmontese language was challenged in the courts and was [ultimately overturned by the Constitutional Court](https://www.regione.piemonte.it/statico_piemonte_informa/piemonteinforma/wwwregionepiemonteit/notizie/piemonteinforma/diario/archivio/2010/maggio/piemontese-la-regione-presenter-una-nuova-legge.html).
Both aren't recognized as languages and thus have institutional barriers, so it would essentially depend on popular sentiment keeping them alive.
There seems to be a renewed interest in the Sicilian language with even some involvement of EU parliament members of the last legislature, dunno about Venetian though it also sounds like there's an effort to keep it alive.
That said, Neapolitan is being hard carried by television series and both Sardinian and Friulan are official languages of their regions, so they may have an easier time in getting people back to speaking them
UNESCO recognizes most of the languages on the map, and there is an ISO-693-3 code for them, sadly, Italy is resistant to reclassify them and thus properly protect them.
It would be optimal if everyone got the recognition and protection they deserve, and especially a proper codification (at least, that's the biggest obstacle from a Sicilian perspective)
Yeah I know, I’m from Napoli (non ho capito se sei siciliano) and here dialect is our main language, between “us” we almost speak that unless u’re in a formal situation. W DIALECTS❤️
Se, Sicilianu sugnu.
Unfortunately it was strongly discouraged here to speak Sicilian, even in homes it was common to hear parents reprimand their children when they spoke Sicilian.
Good thing we have the internet and language communities now, we reached the point that I'm the one explaining how Sicilian is to my mother.
Can I ask what it's like on the ground? Like it is spoken by folks across demographics? Or is it something you'll only really hear amongst old people or people talking with old people? I've seen something similar here in Taiwan where I live where although the Taiwanese language is very much alive I'm worried that it'll mostly fade away within several generations since it really seems to be the language of the 50+ crowd, a handful of blue collared people and people talking with elders.
Curious what it's like in Italy.
Speaking as someone born and raised in venice, like you said a pure dialect speaker is usually in the 50+ age range, most people speak a blend of standard italian and dialect with the ratios varying person to person, however common expressions, especially swearing, are all in dialect
I was born and raised in Naples and there the dialect is still very much alive within ALL demographics and social classes. I attended a renowned liceo classico (a high school where you study ancient greek and latin for 5 years) and I'd say at least 65% of every class was in Neapolitan. I changed schools and went to more of a social studies high school, with "lower-class" (sorry, I really don't mean it in a bad way, and they weren't necessarily working class) classmates and I kid you not, the Neapolitan-spoken lessons spiked up to 95%. For all subjects!
When I was 16 (this was in 2013) I still lived in NA and used to date a guy in his 19-20. He was born in Naples too but really didn't speak Italian, he used to try for me but it was very broken. We grew up literally a 15 minutes walk apart, but the difference was astounding. Once he even told me he would have liked to move somewhere else and start a new life but he was very self conscious about his lack of language skills. We have to thank his elementary school teachers who knew his family was involved with camorra (organized crime): they thought he would follow his father's steps and die so soon that teaching him ANYTHING would be useless. They basically condemned a kid and I fear eventually they'll be right because of course no one legally employs him or anything. and no one gave him any opportunities but the fucking camorra.
Then I moved to Genoa, in the north-west. Here almost only the elderly speak Genoese, so much so that in 8 years I've been here I did get the genoese accent but can't really speak the dialect because no one wants to practice it with me! I never thought you could live somewhere and NOT learn the dialect. Of course in smaller towns or in the countryside it's much more common, but Liguria is such an old people region anyway that you almost don't see any young people, let alone young people speaking Genoese.
Lastly, my mum is Sardinian and she taught me her Campidanese dialect along with Italian when I was still a baby, so I don't have the accent but I 100% understand it and speak it with my immediate family because I don't wanna lose it. Sardinian is still very used (and evolving! I can't forget when 15 years ago my aunt was speaking Sardinian, telling us of some couple that met online, and basically impromptu created the Sardinian gerund for the verb "to chat") and I think they still have mandatory Sardinian classes in some schools.
What do you mean by "Taiwanese language", if you don't mind me asking?
Do you mean the Min and Hakka dialects of the pre-1949 settlers, as opposed to Mandarin, or do you mean the original, aboriginal Formosan Austro-Asiatic languages?
Taiwanese/台語. The Minnan dialect spoken here in Taiwan. Hakka is Hakka (and even within that there are tons of dialects with a range of mutual intelligibility), the individual aboriginal languages (as someone learning Paiwan it's incredible to me just how many local aboriginal languages there are on this small island) go by their local names but 9/10 times the local Hokkien/Minnan dialect is just referred to as just Taiwanese.
Very interesting! I guess that the Kuomintang tried to crack down on all previous local dialects to maintain control. So nowadays almost everyone in Taiwan speaks only clear mandarin?
Very few people speak it.
The village has a "marina" (new settlement by the coast) where it is virtually non existent, and the ancient village on a mountain above the sea, where some speakers remain.
They have a nice litte museum that tells their history. They are making an effort to protect the language.
Unrelated, but in the areathere are also Arbreshe minorities, which speak an archaic form of Albanian. For a little area like that there's a lot of linguistic diversity!
My great-grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Guardia Piemontese (up on the hill) and still spoke “the old language,” as they called it, among themselves. I’ve visited a couple times to see extended family, and it’s cool they’re working to protect it now
ok, so you are going to tell to a guy from Trieste that he speaks Veneto and to a guy from the east border that speaks Sloveno...
did you remember to buy a bullet proof vest?
questo lo sanno tutti, non so quanti lo vogliono ammettere pero'... e Comunque la mappa assimila tutti i dialetti in "veneti orientali" anche quello che - pochissimi - parlano ancora a Udine citta' come quelli che parlano nel veneto orientale... ma non credo che se mandi un udinese a "sburtar radicio" lo capisca
Infatti... e' non e' l'unico errore della mappa, vedi la diffusione dello sloveno a Trieste, o la totale mancanza di differenziazione tra i vari dialetti sloveni.
I was born and live in Trieste and slovenian is my mother tongue. My sons attend our local slovenian school, which is one of the slovenian schools in the city.
It's not really clear to me what you meant too. If the person from the east border is a Slovene, he'll agree with you. If he's Italian, he'll just correct you.
so you say that there are 100.000 persons with a Slovene passport living along the east border of FVG, in Italy (not in Trieste itself but the upper orange part of FVG) ?
When using terms like Slovenes, Croatian, Italians etc., it is usually meant to indicate their nationality (or ethnicity), not their citizenship. Slovenes are present at almost the whole east border, including Trst/Trieste.
No, my point was that it's not clear why someone should have a bullet proof vest when saying to someone living here that he speaks Slovene. He would either agree with you or correct you.
ok, I was meaning, sorry for upsetting you, that there are a lot of minorities that speak different flavours of dialects of slovenian or venetian origin that do not like to be put under a single slovenian or venetian flag but have pride to say that they speak that specific derivation that they often call with a specific name. For example the people speaking the venetian origined dialect in Trieste do not say that they speak venetian but "triestino" which, by the way, is not the "tergesteo" that was used before the austrians rebuilt the city...
No offence taken. Though I don't know of any slovenian community that prefer their language to be called as a specific slovenian dialect, rather than slovenian. This is since we speak both standard slovenian and one of the many slovenian dialects. Likewise, no person from Trieste would be offended if someone would tell him that he speaks italian. What we take pride is that people don't mix between dialects, so for example you should never tell to a slovenian Karst inhabitant that he speaks a Breg dialect (brežansko) or someone from the city that he speaks a Karst dialect (kraško).
BTW the old dialect used in the city was tergestino, and apparently its last speakers lived until the beginning of WW1.
Very cool but still oversimplified.
I live in Lombardy (in between Bergamo and Brescia provinces), from town to town dialect has different shades, different pronunciation for same words (for example cold = frèt or also frecc) or even completely distinct words that are used only in specific towns (for example: gnari, shcecc, tusèi all means "guys", and you can find them, depending on the zone, in a range not wider than 20km)
In my tiny town (we are 500) you can still hear differences with another neighbouring town that's 300 meters apart. Our word for woman is "fumèla", while their as a different pronunciation, more like "füméla", and this is just one example.
Totally this, I live in the "Ve1" zone and it's definitely too big, I can differentiate just listening at least 3 or 4 variants of the dialect in this zone and understand where they're from from
At home, most Ticinese people used to speak a variant of Lombard in the 1970s, but by 2012 [this number had fallen to 30%](https://www.swissinfo.ch/ita/societa/patrimonio-linguistico_dieci-piccole-lingue-della-svizzera/44101334#:~:text=Da%20decenni%20questi%20dialetti%20sono,se%20un%20po). Something similar is happening in the Canton of the Grisons, too. Unless extensive language revitalization measures are put in place, I don't see this trend reversing.
As an Italian, this is unnecessary. We only know that there is ONE Veneto, ONE Sardo and so on and so forth. I’m joking btw I know that there are multiple types of dialect for each region.
For those wondering how different these languages are to one another, it really depends. The one I speak is a hybrid between Venetian and Ladin, so I can understand quite a few dialects of Venetian, Ladin, Friulian and Lombard, as they are similar enough to my own, even though I might struggle a bit. At the same time, other dialects from the same general area can be very hard to understand, especially those from more rural and isolated areas. so proximity doesn't always correlate to intelligibility.
As far as southern languages are concerned, I think I'd have less trouble understanding Spanish, honestly. They are so different from my own language that I'd struggle to understand more than one word every blue moon.
Centuries ago to escape from the ottoman invasion some Albanian moved to the south of Italy founding communities which are now towns
From my perspective they are the best example of integration and many countries should learn from them
I (Sicilian) live something around 20-30 minutes from one of the town who were founded by Albanian and I often go there,they keep speak their version of the Albanian (which is different from the modern ones),street signs are in both languages and they are somehow orthodox (I don’t remembered what exactly kind of Catholic they are)
It’s beautiful because they keep have their tradition and culture even living in Italy (obviously they are fully integrated in the country and they are Italian too)
Their church is called Byzantine-Catholic Church. Because as you said they're Catholic but they still follow the byzantine rite, with mass told in Arbëreshë
In the T08 area (the one called Lucchese from the city Lucca) there is tecnically a dialect but lets say Its not a full dialect like, just to make an example the one in Napoli
Its more composed by singular words or expression that get changed
It is basically standard italian
People in different cities (even 10km apart) speak variations of the same dialect and in some extreme cases they can't even understand each other when speaking in dialect.
None of these dialects come from Italian, they are completely different branches that come from Latin (mostly, especially in Southern Italy) and they are considered different languages and some of them are officially different languages recognized by UNESCO *(Napoletano, Siciliano, Piemontese, Lombardo, Veneto, Ligure, Emiliano, Romagnolo)*
According to an ISTAT research back in 2006 about 91,8% of Italians can speak Italian. Dialects act as a second language
Italy has the equivalent of slangs too that are regional variations of standard Italian
It's pretty accurate, but I can assure you that there are small urban centers that have dialects that are almost completely different from the macro area of origin.
It’s not even this simple. This map says that in lower Puglia we speak the Lingua Siciliana, but we really have our own dialect which is “similar” to Sicilian but we still don’t really understand each other’s dialect 100%.
The map is not really correct regarding slovenian in and around Trieste/Trst: it seems as no one speaks it in the city, Opicina, Repen, Col... Also it doesn't distinguish between the various slovenian dialectal variants in Italy. A better map is here: [https://narecja.si/](https://narecja.si/)
Another day, another poor representation of sardinian. Sardo campidanese going so deep in the center it deletes sardo barbaricini, sardo oristanese, and many other sardinian dialects that completely differ from sardo campidanese, both in words, pronounciations and oftentimes meaning.
I honestly have a hard time believing that, given the fact that nationalism and mass-media have been destroying dialects and local languages all over Europe for the past 100 years. In my country, all minority languages and dialects (except a few anomal areas) are on the verge of extinction and almost nobody below 30 speaks them anymore.
Italian colture is stronger than nationalism. And italian colture love individualism and like that you get people that feel them selfs less italian and more from his region ( more often the city ). But of course maybe you know better than me, in any case i would advise to come here in italy and visit a few different city.
I don't pretend that I know better than you, I'm just surprised that this general trend isn't true for Italy. I was just asking myself if you perhaps idealise the situation. But ok.
No problem man. Italian colture is really strong. And adding the fact that we are on an averege pretty racist even between our self, you get a lenguage spoken on tv and in school ( not even in school so much i had teacher speaking their dialect without noticing) and than you have a great deal of dialect that gives us the tool to not like each other.
Ok, but then the next question is what we define as "dialect" here. Is it just a different accent (pronounciation) or a distinct dialect with variations in vocabulay and even grammar?
You sould see for your self and made your idea on the matter. I usually put this line: when 2 or more people can't ( i mean really can't) understand each other speaking what they think is the "common" language. My gf that come from sicily ( i'm not) is always surprise to know that the words she uses often are not italian ( she has 2 college degree and lives in north italy for years, clearly not a simple woman from the sicilian fields). Same thing for sardinians ( they have another language and an accademia on their own). When italy became one state italians use to spoke more than 6 language ( not dialect) than the king choose the one that became the italian we know today. As in avery part of the world that as a "few" years of colture you can see thing like this happening. ( see the persians, today Iran if you like)
Ok, so the situation is similar to Germany (where I'm from). We also had many dialects who weren't really intelligable to each other as well. This similarity is probably rooted in the fact that our countries were united so late in history compared to most others. But in Germany, most dialects are on the verge of extinction now, with only older people speaking them for the most part. The only exceptions are the southern dialects (Swabian and Bavarian basically). And the same is true for the minority languages (Frisian and Sorbian)...
Modern Russian language is almost the same everywhere. There are slight differences in pronunciation, several regional words and that's it. I would even say modern Russian doesn't have dialects. There were dialects maybe 100 years ago but they died out.
They're gonna be smaller usually, on this map every color is an invidual language and shades are dialetcs.
For Poland, you will find max 3 languges, and 10+ dialects, for German 2 languages,
UK, I agree, I would want to see if Irish or Welsh have dialects.
France looked like this 300 years ago, but I don't know how regional language look now, they're much smaller for sure.
China is a linguistic clasterfuck with over 20 languages and many dialects, good idea for a map.
Russia would be due to Russification mainly map of minorities, every not pure Russian would be speaking pure Russian nowadays in most cases, but locations of Turks would be still a good map.
Fun fact: sardinian is an isolate within romance. Every other romance language from portuguese to romanian to sicilian is more closely related than any are to sardinian. The easiest way to see this is that whereas all other romance languages have articles derived from latin "illa, ille", sardinian's articles are from "ipsa, ipse". Also in that sardinian vowels are identical in quality to latin vowels, just without length distinction. All other romance languages turned some short vowels into diphthongs. Dante famously disliked sardinian because it was so conservative he believed it was a poor imitation of latin rather than a natural romance language.
Sardinian people are also genetically distinct from other Mediterranean people.
Genetically they are distinct from basically ANY other people. DNA didn't go through the same crossover with other DNAs as the rest did. It's basically the same it was since the second gatherer Sapiens migration 40k years ago.
You can find some similarities in the so called Lausberg Area, on the Calabria-Basilicata border. Dialects in this area are pretty conservative and "archaic" mainly due to geographical isolation made by mountains, the region of Calabria was called the third island for this reason.
Just two points: Catalan also has articles derived from ipse, ipsa (Sa Caleta... ) and Galician and Portuguese never diphthonged short vowels.
This. I don’t speak Catalan but my dad’s mom’s side of the family is from there and I grew up with some nursery rhymes in catalan. I speak Portuguese thanks to my other side of the family and when I visited Sardinia to my brain it was like HEY IS THAT LIKE CATALAN IN PORTUGUESE OR SOMETHIN’!?
Alghero's dialect (city on Sardinia's Western coast) is considered an offshoot of Catalan so I guess you went there more or less?
Interesting. No, the resort was in the southeast but most of the Sardinian I heard was walking around Cagliari
I’m not a Latin derived language native speaker, my mother tongue is Scandinavian. I understand Catalan and can speak some, and I understand Algherese pretty ok. It’s mind boggling.
And catalán in fact was an influence in same areas of Sardinia (especially in the north of the Island). Castillan too, though rather in the southern area.
we Sardinians also use the auxiliary verb "essere = to be" and not the verb "stare = to stay" conjugate the other verbs to the gerund. Example: Sto tornando a casa -> literally: I stay returning to home; Seu torrendi a domu -> literally: I am returning to home; Meaning for both: I'm coming home
Sardinian likely is the last remaining African romance language.
Oh so that's why no one in the rest of Italy has any idea of what Sardinians say when they speak their dialect xD
I have no idea what the neighboring town say when they speak! Central Italy is super weird like that
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As a sardinian, I generally can understand other italian dialects (I don't actually speak sardinian that well cause I grew up in the biggest city and my parents only spoke little sardinian at home, mainly italian, but I can understand 80% of it just cause when I go to visit my grandma they speak way more sardinian). I have trouble understanding neapolitan if they're talking really fast, same for sicilian even tho 90% of the times I can understand what they're talking about even if I can't understand every single word just cause a lot of words are similar in italian. Then probably the northern dialects are a bit difficult too. This is just my personal experience tho so I'm sure other people will answer differently. I've never studied spanish except for one year in elementary school and despite that I can understand spanish at a B2 level at least (can't speak it tho) just because it's really similar to italian and even more to sardinian. My surname is sardinian but when I went to Spain they thought I was spanish because of it.
Each color is a completely different language and the shades symbolize the different dialects of that language. The language we today call Italian is a modified version of the Florence dialect of the Tuscan language (which is red in this map), it was artificially created over time by writers and poets of medieval Italy in the process of establishing a common language for literates. Most people didn't speak proper Italian on a daily basis until TVs became a thing in most households. Before people used their broken Italian just to read the newspaper or to speak with people from somewhere else or state officials, but in any other occasion they would use their regional language. Northern Italian romance languages are classified as gallo-italic languages and they share some similarities with French and Occitan. Southern and Central Italian languages form their own subfamily of romance languages called Italo-Dalmatian. "Unrelated/special" romance languages are Friulan and Ladin(the rhaeto romance languages together with Romansch) and Sardinian. Historical minorities of non-romance language speakers in the peninsula include: German, Albanian, Slovene, Croatian and Greek. Today Italian has replaced the local languages in all of the conversations that are not with family or friends, especially among younger people. In the bigger cities in the North, Italian has basically completely replaced the local language because of immigration of people from different regions. In central Italy, since Italian was already very close to the regional languages, the two have fused and formed a dialect continuum of people who just speak Italian but with funny accents. In the South the use of Sicilian and Neapolitan is still very wide spread and this makes them the most likely ones to survive the generational change together with Sardinian.
Saying each colour is a very different language is an exaggerated statement and a gross oversimplification. Most people do not speak the "language" and in many cases it never existed in any codified written source. Lombardia region tied for a decade to codify "lumbard" so they could use it as an official second language in the administration and teach in school, but they had to give up as it was an impossible task, as there was no regional language to begin with, only a fluid variations of local dialect that only a small minority would use consistently https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/22_marzo_10/lega-ci-ripensa-la-lingua-lombarda-non-esiste-addio-rivoluzione-culturale-dialetto-padano-19b4b57c-a03f-11ec-83b4-cf7e2400b5e9.shtml
That's the problem with any language that hasn't been institutionalized. Dialect continuums exist everywhere. You can argue there also used to be a continuum of dialects from Wallon to Sicilian to Asturian, but then came the nation states that picked which dialect was to be taught in schools and to become the standard language. A language is a dialect with an army. You are right, some of these were never codified into a standard written language because they never had to be taught in schools in order to form an identity, so there was never a higher power or a literary class that picked a dialect from that continuum to declare it a language. If they were not able to choose one dialect from this cluster to be the standard Lumbard, this doesn't take away the fact that people in Lombardy speak similarly to each other and differently from people in other regions of Italy We can argue for hours how to define the borders of a language and never come to a conclusion. Linguists have concluded that these are the dialect clusters in Italy that share enough similarities with eachother and have enough differences with the others, that they can be considered as part of a language, so I am just stating what most linguist say, these are the regional "dialect clusters" of Italy which often shade into the others.
Sorry if I'm not understanding properly, but having lived in lombardy for some time, and being aware of Italy's linguistic diversity, I couldn't help but inquire about local languages when traveling to more rural and isolated areas, and there definitely is something like a language. "A fluid variation of local dialects"... Yeah but dialects of what? Italian? Idk, I speak italian and my grandpa spoke to me in Lombard a lot as a child so I can understand it enough + my own little "linguistic exploration" while in italy, and that's definitely not a dialect of italian; not with a different grammar, spelling, etymology it's not. Sure, you can spell lombard in like five different ways according to where in italy/switzerland you're from, but no institutionalised spelling doesn't negate a distinct pronunciation and phonology, not to speak of the already present corpus of literature in lombard And the fact nobody speaks it can, to my understanding, be traced back to the fact that the state, like many other romance speaking countries, tried to limit regionalisms to pursue a forced sense of national unity because otherwise soldiers couldn't understand each other in the trenches; not really fault or proof of absence of language, just of its endangerment. My grandpa had to learn italian from scratch from an eastern lombard dialect, and made pretty big mistakes and lapsed back to lombard while speaking standard italian all the time. It all disappeared in later generations due to suppression from above, but there definitely is a language there.
That's probably why Italians talk about "speaking in dialect", they never say "language".
What you’re saying is not wrong but I find that calling Standard Italian an artificial language is a bit of an exaggeration. More than a modified version it’s an archaic version of Florentine, since standard italian was purposefully codified following 14th century’s Florentine of Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio as it was seen as the purest version of Florentine. Then in the 19th century Manzoni decided to “rinse the clothes in the Arno” and decided to base Modern Italian on the language that was spoken by the florentine upper classes (which was very similar to the standard since they were educated and taught 14th century’s Florentine)
Is it Tuscan or based on Neapolitan?
Tuscan, specifically Florentin
But, why a niche language and not a broader one?
Because Dante Alighieri, the poet that basically invented moderno Italiano, was from Florence
My family speaks Piemontese! I’m American though and learned “normal” Italian in high school. My family can understand me but I can’t understand them because the dialect sounds French to me. I know just enough to know when my mom is mad. The reason my family didn’t teach me our language is because they’d say “you are American now, you will speak English like an American”. People forget Italians were heavily looked down on as poor uncouth unwanted immigrants prior to WW2
Piemontese sounds French indeed
Oh yeah and my dad’s family is southern Italian (Naples and Calabrian) so you don’t even wanna know what my northern grandpa has to say about that. I know just enough Piemontese to know it’s not nice words
😂😂
My father was beat by Italian nuns with a rubber hose in Catholic elementary school for speaking Italian when he arrived in the US as a child. So yes, he literally got the language beat out of him. My sister and I are the only ones in the family who are not fluent because my father insisted that we assimilate. Still makes me upset! But this map also explains why, when I was taking Italian in high school, my father would give me the wrong answers to my homework! My teacher would say, did your father help you with this?!!
Yup that tracks. My grandparents came here as adults but they were deep in the community here in America so they made us as American as possible. My grandparents are old enough to have gotten beat for writing with their left hands
I understand your struggles. Learned proper Italian and never learned the abbruzzese dialect my nonni speak. Ever since I started to learn Italian, they now somehow expect me to know their dialect too
Same. My family in the mountains thought it would be easier for me to understand if they switched to dialect and it was 10xs harder than formal school Italian
I live in the mountains of Piedmont, based on experience I can only imagine what your mom says to you when she's angry... 😂😂
So do I! Where are you?
Valli di Lanzo, 50 kilometri da Torino
Ahh io sono l’altra parte di Torino, Alta Langa!
Bro yeah I'm not even sure how to properly translate it into English.
"Diu faus d'un piciola d'merda, tardoc! Criste!" "False god, you're a shitty penis, you retarded! Christ!" This could be a literal translation of a normal Piedmontese insult.
That’s pretty accurate. Whole lotta che vergogna e sciffo porko misele And my favorite: ohhh no jeebus crista sum ob a bitch As you can see from my first post I have no idea how to spell some of these words
😂😂😂 Porca miseria. So piemontese.
Yes! That! That was one of the first things I learn to say as a kid 😂
O gosh yes, they sound real funny up here! Piemontese definitely has a lot of similarities with French, but they also sound a bit French even when speaking normal Italian. It’s the r’s.
I use to joke with them saying what if we’re part French? It makes sense our home town is like 50km from their border. They say huat tua we’re side switchers not cowards 😂🤣 Italians say some real unhinged things they can’t let go from that era
😂😂 That’s hysterical and I can just picture them saying that!
Indeed , it's not a surprise in Piedmont it is/was usual to study french and considered easy The dialect is very similar 😅
I'd say piemontese is one of the hardest dialects to understand especially older canavesan spoken by elderly people, sounds like total gibberish, plus it changes basically km by km
What an interesting map!!!
The map is not even as granular as real life is, it just can't be. Towns a few kms apart speak different dialects, the people in Rome speak a totally different dialect from the people in Marino, 10 kms south east. Of course this is a particularly blatant one because Rome is a bit its own world and those two dialects are worlds apart, but even between Marino and Rocca di papa, just another few km south east, you can hear a pretty strong difference with Rocca having an accent more similar to the marchigiano dialect. And then, the whole Castelli area, a mere 400 Square km, is a separate story from the rest of the central Latium region. And this is just a very small portion of the whole country.
I’m Italian, from inner Sicily, super small town 2000 inhabitants, in these small towns we don’t have highschools so we have to move to another town to go. In my hs class there were people from 6 different little towns. The jokes about our different dialects were crazy you can imagine, and all the towns are 15km to a max of 50 the farthest apart. I really love our languages.
Also a fun fact for the Americans: Italian Americans that immigrated in the early 20th century came from regions of Italy where they still spoke these regional languages rather than Standard Italian!
Ma no ghe xe nissun che sa scriver in dialeto? Porca ostrega!
Femose sentire, zio canèa! Tuto sto inglese dopo on fià el rompe anche e bae, co tuto el rispetto.
Dio ostia m'ha za stufà veder tuti 'sti foresti che n'i capisse cossa che destengua 'na lengua da un dialeto. Più che ti provi spiegarghielo, manco li lo capisse. Almanco ghe semo nualtri, fioli!
MORE snaoshots like this Please, love this whole thread
Diu fa, mi parla nin a nostra moddá parchí poi niun capis!
Che te tenga da di? Me pare cumplicat a scriv cert suone! (Tentavo ciociaro )
Ciociaro xe un dialeto? Da dove?
Questa è la trista realtà, anca mi del mi' dialet so poco
Fega se l’è bel’l dialet
Si, ma non son mía capaz de capir. Col veneto pi o meno, ma de quei altri no. Mi son uruguaiano
Mi son svedès
Xe pedo ancora 😂
D'onde gerili li to antenai? Da seguro, da como che ti scrivi, no li gera veneziani como de mi, ma credo che par altro la mazor parte deli imegrai in Sudamerica li fusse dala teraferma. Forsi Treviso, cole vocale che no ghe xe?
El mio pare xe nato a Pederobba, TV, ma mi son nato qui in Uruguay. >como che ti scrivi Son manco capaz de parlarne, figurati de scriver 😂
Parò no'l gera niente mal, el modo che ti ga scrito. Se capiva tuto, 'deritura che el to papà el fusse Trevisan! Complimenti par aver mantignio la tradizion e la nostra bela lengua, e me racomando, continua mantignirla anca in fuduro!
My parents are Trevisan. I took Italian in high school thinking it would be an easy credit. I was wrong. Had to learn whole different Italian.
I am a native Italian and I live on the border between Lombardy and Veneto and I speak and understand both dialects well. Even if a Venetian speaks perfect Italian, the influence of the dialect on his Italian is impossible to remove. Furthermore, if he is of a certain age he is even stronger and I would distinguish him from a thousand Italians speaking at the same time.
I have moved away from my hometown which was populated mainly with Trevisani. One afternoon I went to a mall with my wife in the Toronto area. I sat in the food court listening to a group of older men at a table near me. They were speaking “Trevisan”. I understood every word. Many of my friends growing up were Calabrese. I had difficulty with their dialect. It has been 20 yrs since I moved from my hometown. I miss hearing Trevisan & always look forward to visiting the family.
Como parleu al confin? Xelo più veneto el vostro dialeto, o più lombardo? Mi me pareva d'aver leto che verso de Mantoa gh'è dei paesi, par cussì dir lombardi, 'ndoe ch'i parla più tipo i veronesi. Par altro, chielo che ti dixi ti m'ha sempre parso la più granda ipocresia del italian e deli so' sostegnedori: zente che la dixe che no ghe piaxe parlar in dialeto, co na "ere de Marghera" più forte che mi gabia mai sentio.
Se vaghi a Mantua son verones, se son a Verona son mantuan. Am pias tut, la pearà e i tortei ad suca!
Che belo che ga da eser! 'Na cossa che go trovà molto interesante xe che paesi como de Monzamban, Castelaro e Sermion li gera veronesi 'na volta, parcui imazeno che anca la zente là la gabia più un dialeto veneto. Ma te sentistu più veronese, mantoan, o nissun dei do?
Mi son venezian, 'more! Me capissistu co che scrivo cussì? Saria belo che tuti i veneti i lo savesse parlar, ma anca scriver, el dialeto. Purtopo no ghe xe chiesta cultura e chiesto voler in tel nostro popolo, ma la speranza la xe l'ultema morir!
While it's true that there are a lot of languages in Italy, their usage can vary wildly by situation or location. The regional languages are primarily spread in smaller towns, with old people and in more casual environments. Younger, formal, big city things are usually in standard Italian. For example, I, a young Roman, know my dialect very little while my countryside dwelling family members use it pretty often. Also, some regions use them more often than others. Sardinian or Friulian are quite a bit more common than Lombard or Ligurian. This is for a variety of reasons, from history, to migration, to urbanisation, to isolationism
It's also due to the legal protections, due to the fact that the Friulian and Sardinian languages are recognized minority languages by law 482 of 1999, which allows their autonomous regions to enact language revitalization policies. In contrast, a regional law promoting the Piedmontese language was challenged in the courts and was [ultimately overturned by the Constitutional Court](https://www.regione.piemonte.it/statico_piemonte_informa/piemonteinforma/wwwregionepiemonteit/notizie/piemonteinforma/diario/archivio/2010/maggio/piemontese-la-regione-presenter-una-nuova-legge.html).
As a Foreign Languages student who's very passionate about languages and their origins, I think I'm having an orgasm.
Aside from Tuscan-derived Italian, only Sicilian and Venetian will survive as spoken languages in the 22nd century.
Napolitan seems quite healthy
Both aren't recognized as languages and thus have institutional barriers, so it would essentially depend on popular sentiment keeping them alive. There seems to be a renewed interest in the Sicilian language with even some involvement of EU parliament members of the last legislature, dunno about Venetian though it also sounds like there's an effort to keep it alive. That said, Neapolitan is being hard carried by television series and both Sardinian and Friulan are official languages of their regions, so they may have an easier time in getting people back to speaking them
Neapolitan is recognized as a language and world heritage from UNESCO🥲
UNESCO recognizes most of the languages on the map, and there is an ISO-693-3 code for them, sadly, Italy is resistant to reclassify them and thus properly protect them. It would be optimal if everyone got the recognition and protection they deserve, and especially a proper codification (at least, that's the biggest obstacle from a Sicilian perspective)
Yeah I know, I’m from Napoli (non ho capito se sei siciliano) and here dialect is our main language, between “us” we almost speak that unless u’re in a formal situation. W DIALECTS❤️
Se, Sicilianu sugnu. Unfortunately it was strongly discouraged here to speak Sicilian, even in homes it was common to hear parents reprimand their children when they spoke Sicilian. Good thing we have the internet and language communities now, we reached the point that I'm the one explaining how Sicilian is to my mother.
I'd say also Neapolitan and Sardinian
Neapolitan is definitely in healthier shape than Sicilian.
Can I ask what it's like on the ground? Like it is spoken by folks across demographics? Or is it something you'll only really hear amongst old people or people talking with old people? I've seen something similar here in Taiwan where I live where although the Taiwanese language is very much alive I'm worried that it'll mostly fade away within several generations since it really seems to be the language of the 50+ crowd, a handful of blue collared people and people talking with elders. Curious what it's like in Italy.
Speaking as someone born and raised in venice, like you said a pure dialect speaker is usually in the 50+ age range, most people speak a blend of standard italian and dialect with the ratios varying person to person, however common expressions, especially swearing, are all in dialect
I was born and raised in Naples and there the dialect is still very much alive within ALL demographics and social classes. I attended a renowned liceo classico (a high school where you study ancient greek and latin for 5 years) and I'd say at least 65% of every class was in Neapolitan. I changed schools and went to more of a social studies high school, with "lower-class" (sorry, I really don't mean it in a bad way, and they weren't necessarily working class) classmates and I kid you not, the Neapolitan-spoken lessons spiked up to 95%. For all subjects! When I was 16 (this was in 2013) I still lived in NA and used to date a guy in his 19-20. He was born in Naples too but really didn't speak Italian, he used to try for me but it was very broken. We grew up literally a 15 minutes walk apart, but the difference was astounding. Once he even told me he would have liked to move somewhere else and start a new life but he was very self conscious about his lack of language skills. We have to thank his elementary school teachers who knew his family was involved with camorra (organized crime): they thought he would follow his father's steps and die so soon that teaching him ANYTHING would be useless. They basically condemned a kid and I fear eventually they'll be right because of course no one legally employs him or anything. and no one gave him any opportunities but the fucking camorra. Then I moved to Genoa, in the north-west. Here almost only the elderly speak Genoese, so much so that in 8 years I've been here I did get the genoese accent but can't really speak the dialect because no one wants to practice it with me! I never thought you could live somewhere and NOT learn the dialect. Of course in smaller towns or in the countryside it's much more common, but Liguria is such an old people region anyway that you almost don't see any young people, let alone young people speaking Genoese. Lastly, my mum is Sardinian and she taught me her Campidanese dialect along with Italian when I was still a baby, so I don't have the accent but I 100% understand it and speak it with my immediate family because I don't wanna lose it. Sardinian is still very used (and evolving! I can't forget when 15 years ago my aunt was speaking Sardinian, telling us of some couple that met online, and basically impromptu created the Sardinian gerund for the verb "to chat") and I think they still have mandatory Sardinian classes in some schools.
What do you mean by "Taiwanese language", if you don't mind me asking? Do you mean the Min and Hakka dialects of the pre-1949 settlers, as opposed to Mandarin, or do you mean the original, aboriginal Formosan Austro-Asiatic languages?
Taiwanese/台語. The Minnan dialect spoken here in Taiwan. Hakka is Hakka (and even within that there are tons of dialects with a range of mutual intelligibility), the individual aboriginal languages (as someone learning Paiwan it's incredible to me just how many local aboriginal languages there are on this small island) go by their local names but 9/10 times the local Hokkien/Minnan dialect is just referred to as just Taiwanese.
Very interesting! I guess that the Kuomintang tried to crack down on all previous local dialects to maintain control. So nowadays almost everyone in Taiwan speaks only clear mandarin?
Don't forget Puglia with Leccese and Barese for example, lived 3 years there and never had someone approach me first in "Italian"
Pisano-livornese is my favorite dialect.
Deh 🙅🏻💪
Deh
TIL occitan is spoken in an exclave in southern italy due to refugees fleeing reformation persecution. Gotta visit Guardia Piemontese one day
Very few people speak it. The village has a "marina" (new settlement by the coast) where it is virtually non existent, and the ancient village on a mountain above the sea, where some speakers remain. They have a nice litte museum that tells their history. They are making an effort to protect the language. Unrelated, but in the areathere are also Arbreshe minorities, which speak an archaic form of Albanian. For a little area like that there's a lot of linguistic diversity!
My great-grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Guardia Piemontese (up on the hill) and still spoke “the old language,” as they called it, among themselves. I’ve visited a couple times to see extended family, and it’s cool they’re working to protect it now
Fascinating
ok, so you are going to tell to a guy from Trieste that he speaks Veneto and to a guy from the east border that speaks Sloveno... did you remember to buy a bullet proof vest?
Triestine is a dialect of Venetian so yes, they'd speak a Venetian dialect. I'm from Central Veneto and I can somehow understand someone from Trieste
vai a dirglielo, chiamami prima che voglio assistere /s
Io sono di Trieste ed il dialetto triestino (italiano) e' effettivamente un dialetto veneto.
questo lo sanno tutti, non so quanti lo vogliono ammettere pero'... e Comunque la mappa assimila tutti i dialetti in "veneti orientali" anche quello che - pochissimi - parlano ancora a Udine citta' come quelli che parlano nel veneto orientale... ma non credo che se mandi un udinese a "sburtar radicio" lo capisca
Infatti... e' non e' l'unico errore della mappa, vedi la diffusione dello sloveno a Trieste, o la totale mancanza di differenziazione tra i vari dialetti sloveni.
I was born and live in Trieste and slovenian is my mother tongue. My sons attend our local slovenian school, which is one of the slovenian schools in the city.
There are 100.000 Slovenes living in Italy, of course they speak Slovene. Are you bothered by that?
that was never the point, read it again :-P
It's not really clear to me what you meant too. If the person from the east border is a Slovene, he'll agree with you. If he's Italian, he'll just correct you.
so you say that there are 100.000 persons with a Slovene passport living along the east border of FVG, in Italy (not in Trieste itself but the upper orange part of FVG) ?
When using terms like Slovenes, Croatian, Italians etc., it is usually meant to indicate their nationality (or ethnicity), not their citizenship. Slovenes are present at almost the whole east border, including Trst/Trieste.
so you mean that in FVG which has about a million citizens about 100k (10%) are of slovenian nationality?
No, my point was that it's not clear why someone should have a bullet proof vest when saying to someone living here that he speaks Slovene. He would either agree with you or correct you.
ok, I was meaning, sorry for upsetting you, that there are a lot of minorities that speak different flavours of dialects of slovenian or venetian origin that do not like to be put under a single slovenian or venetian flag but have pride to say that they speak that specific derivation that they often call with a specific name. For example the people speaking the venetian origined dialect in Trieste do not say that they speak venetian but "triestino" which, by the way, is not the "tergesteo" that was used before the austrians rebuilt the city...
No offence taken. Though I don't know of any slovenian community that prefer their language to be called as a specific slovenian dialect, rather than slovenian. This is since we speak both standard slovenian and one of the many slovenian dialects. Likewise, no person from Trieste would be offended if someone would tell him that he speaks italian. What we take pride is that people don't mix between dialects, so for example you should never tell to a slovenian Karst inhabitant that he speaks a Breg dialect (brežansko) or someone from the city that he speaks a Karst dialect (kraško). BTW the old dialect used in the city was tergestino, and apparently its last speakers lived until the beginning of WW1.
Very cool but still oversimplified. I live in Lombardy (in between Bergamo and Brescia provinces), from town to town dialect has different shades, different pronunciation for same words (for example cold = frèt or also frecc) or even completely distinct words that are used only in specific towns (for example: gnari, shcecc, tusèi all means "guys", and you can find them, depending on the zone, in a range not wider than 20km)
In my tiny town (we are 500) you can still hear differences with another neighbouring town that's 300 meters apart. Our word for woman is "fumèla", while their as a different pronunciation, more like "füméla", and this is just one example.
Vecio
Totally this, I live in the "Ve1" zone and it's definitely too big, I can differentiate just listening at least 3 or 4 variants of the dialect in this zone and understand where they're from from
Same here in Romagna, dialect from Rimini is extremely different from Ravenna or Forlì
I was gonna comment the same. As detailed as this seems, it still is inaccurate.
BTW: in Ome they aspirate the S like in most of the Bergamo province… in Camignone they’re closer but they don’t.
What about the Italian in Switzerland?
At home, most Ticinese people used to speak a variant of Lombard in the 1970s, but by 2012 [this number had fallen to 30%](https://www.swissinfo.ch/ita/societa/patrimonio-linguistico_dieci-piccole-lingue-della-svizzera/44101334#:~:text=Da%20decenni%20questi%20dialetti%20sono,se%20un%20po). Something similar is happening in the Canton of the Grisons, too. Unless extensive language revitalization measures are put in place, I don't see this trend reversing.
Well, it's in Switzerland.
True, that's not part of the "reality"
Where do you get map like this one for any country???
The map in sardinia is wrong. There are towns in East sardinia that speak logudorese
I misread the title. I thought it said “The reality of Italian sausage.” I’m disappointed. And hungry.
Sorry bro! My mistake!
I love this, and I'm amazed by it at the same time. (and I'm Italian)
Cosa sto vedendo?
The reality of italian language
As an Italian, this is unnecessary. We only know that there is ONE Veneto, ONE Sardo and so on and so forth. I’m joking btw I know that there are multiple types of dialect for each region.
Era una battuta, sono italiana pure io, ho solo ripetuto il titolo ahahaha Comunque c’è solo un dialetto lombardo, ed è il mio (/s)
Ië son n ladin! 👌 I am ladin!!☺️
For those wondering how different these languages are to one another, it really depends. The one I speak is a hybrid between Venetian and Ladin, so I can understand quite a few dialects of Venetian, Ladin, Friulian and Lombard, as they are similar enough to my own, even though I might struggle a bit. At the same time, other dialects from the same general area can be very hard to understand, especially those from more rural and isolated areas. so proximity doesn't always correlate to intelligibility. As far as southern languages are concerned, I think I'd have less trouble understanding Spanish, honestly. They are so different from my own language that I'd struggle to understand more than one word every blue moon.
A mi plaseres capi parcje in friul a metin ca si tabae veneto in tal miec… posippo! A codroip dut un veneto par lor.. Basoars dio plevan
come sudtirolese/altoathesino confermo
My great-great-grandpa was a proud speaker of Li1
I miss hearing my nonna’s dialect 🥺
Why those red dots of Albanian scattered in different places?
Centuries ago to escape from the ottoman invasion some Albanian moved to the south of Italy founding communities which are now towns From my perspective they are the best example of integration and many countries should learn from them I (Sicilian) live something around 20-30 minutes from one of the town who were founded by Albanian and I often go there,they keep speak their version of the Albanian (which is different from the modern ones),street signs are in both languages and they are somehow orthodox (I don’t remembered what exactly kind of Catholic they are) It’s beautiful because they keep have their tradition and culture even living in Italy (obviously they are fully integrated in the country and they are Italian too)
Their church is called Byzantine-Catholic Church. Because as you said they're Catholic but they still follow the byzantine rite, with mass told in Arbëreshë
Right,I forgot!!!
In the T08 area (the one called Lucchese from the city Lucca) there is tecnically a dialect but lets say Its not a full dialect like, just to make an example the one in Napoli Its more composed by singular words or expression that get changed It is basically standard italian
Bellissima mappa
Sardinian is closer to catalan langue than it is italian
As an italian I confirm we don't even know how much languages and dialects are there
Username checks out
T01 is uncorrect. North of that area is different a lot from the south
People in different cities (even 10km apart) speak variations of the same dialect and in some extreme cases they can't even understand each other when speaking in dialect. None of these dialects come from Italian, they are completely different branches that come from Latin (mostly, especially in Southern Italy) and they are considered different languages and some of them are officially different languages recognized by UNESCO *(Napoletano, Siciliano, Piemontese, Lombardo, Veneto, Ligure, Emiliano, Romagnolo)* According to an ISTAT research back in 2006 about 91,8% of Italians can speak Italian. Dialects act as a second language Italy has the equivalent of slangs too that are regional variations of standard Italian
This is so beautiful
Yes, there are SO many. I can speak veneto, specifically veneto centrale and veneziano, but I can mimic veronese.
Veneto Trevigiano. A Belluno. Ma DC.
It's pretty accurate, but I can assure you that there are small urban centers that have dialects that are almost completely different from the macro area of origin.
Can comfirm that, as someone that lives in umbria, no one understands eachother beetween regions👍
Manca il ciociaro
All looks plenty eye-talian to me.
Why is my city SPECIFICALLY separated from the rest of its area? Like in the middle of a giant blue vomit you have this random red spot, lol
to2 best one
Grazie scemodimerda
Sono profondamente offeso di essere stato inserito nello stesso gruppo dei fiorentini.
It’s not even this simple. This map says that in lower Puglia we speak the Lingua Siciliana, but we really have our own dialect which is “similar” to Sicilian but we still don’t really understand each other’s dialect 100%.
Dialects in northern Italy are dying, I never heard someone speak a dialect except in Naples
You need to come to Trieste then :)
Omg this map is really beautiful
Unfortunately dialects and regional languages are becoming less and less common.
Zaccagniiiii
Sbagliato in veneto c'è anche eil masseo
Maremma buhaiola
Thanks a lot
The map is not really correct regarding slovenian in and around Trieste/Trst: it seems as no one speaks it in the city, Opicina, Repen, Col... Also it doesn't distinguish between the various slovenian dialectal variants in Italy. A better map is here: [https://narecja.si/](https://narecja.si/)
Sorry but grouping Crotonese within "Catanzarese" category is honest to god making my blood boil
As an italian, I'm TO1!
So what is the reality? Is there anyone who cannot be understood if they have to transact daily life in another part of the country?
No because everyone learns standard Italian and so most people speak something close to standard with an accent and a few different words.
Another day, another poor representation of sardinian. Sardo campidanese going so deep in the center it deletes sardo barbaricini, sardo oristanese, and many other sardinian dialects that completely differ from sardo campidanese, both in words, pronounciations and oftentimes meaning.
Il veneto Trevigiano è troppo in su però
Mantua me genuit. Son nat là ma laur a Verona. Le mia un problem.
Cool, but now tell me how much of all that is still spoken today and by young people.
The young people speak it as much as the elder.
I honestly have a hard time believing that, given the fact that nationalism and mass-media have been destroying dialects and local languages all over Europe for the past 100 years. In my country, all minority languages and dialects (except a few anomal areas) are on the verge of extinction and almost nobody below 30 speaks them anymore.
Italian colture is stronger than nationalism. And italian colture love individualism and like that you get people that feel them selfs less italian and more from his region ( more often the city ). But of course maybe you know better than me, in any case i would advise to come here in italy and visit a few different city.
I don't pretend that I know better than you, I'm just surprised that this general trend isn't true for Italy. I was just asking myself if you perhaps idealise the situation. But ok.
No problem man. Italian colture is really strong. And adding the fact that we are on an averege pretty racist even between our self, you get a lenguage spoken on tv and in school ( not even in school so much i had teacher speaking their dialect without noticing) and than you have a great deal of dialect that gives us the tool to not like each other.
Ok, but then the next question is what we define as "dialect" here. Is it just a different accent (pronounciation) or a distinct dialect with variations in vocabulay and even grammar?
You sould see for your self and made your idea on the matter. I usually put this line: when 2 or more people can't ( i mean really can't) understand each other speaking what they think is the "common" language. My gf that come from sicily ( i'm not) is always surprise to know that the words she uses often are not italian ( she has 2 college degree and lives in north italy for years, clearly not a simple woman from the sicilian fields). Same thing for sardinians ( they have another language and an accademia on their own). When italy became one state italians use to spoke more than 6 language ( not dialect) than the king choose the one that became the italian we know today. As in avery part of the world that as a "few" years of colture you can see thing like this happening. ( see the persians, today Iran if you like)
Ok, so the situation is similar to Germany (where I'm from). We also had many dialects who weren't really intelligable to each other as well. This similarity is probably rooted in the fact that our countries were united so late in history compared to most others. But in Germany, most dialects are on the verge of extinction now, with only older people speaking them for the most part. The only exceptions are the southern dialects (Swabian and Bavarian basically). And the same is true for the minority languages (Frisian and Sorbian)...
I need this map for French, German, Russian, Polish, English (UK), Chinese and other languages
Modern Russian language is almost the same everywhere. There are slight differences in pronunciation, several regional words and that's it. I would even say modern Russian doesn't have dialects. There were dialects maybe 100 years ago but they died out.
They're gonna be smaller usually, on this map every color is an invidual language and shades are dialetcs. For Poland, you will find max 3 languges, and 10+ dialects, for German 2 languages, UK, I agree, I would want to see if Irish or Welsh have dialects. France looked like this 300 years ago, but I don't know how regional language look now, they're much smaller for sure. China is a linguistic clasterfuck with over 20 languages and many dialects, good idea for a map. Russia would be due to Russification mainly map of minorities, every not pure Russian would be speaking pure Russian nowadays in most cases, but locations of Turks would be still a good map.