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Italian dialects

Encyclopedia : I : IT : ITA : Italian dialects

Italian population generally indicates as Italian dialects all vernacular idioms spoken in Italy other than Italian and other recognized languages. As a rule of thumb, all Romance languages spoken in Italy are customarily termed as dialects, except Sardinian, French, Friulian and possibly the Occitan, Franco-Provençal, and Catalan varieties present in some areas.

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Languages or dialects

Certain people assert that some dialects have language status (sometimes for political reasons, such as the Northern League). Being the definition of language and dialect a matter of standard, this issue can be matter of lengthy debates.

According to [Ethnologue], some of these idioms (normally termed dialects by their own users) can belong to different branches of the family of Romance languages. Some of these variations can be different enough to be classified as separate languages. However, there is a substantial disagreement within the scholarly community over a consistent set of parameters for that end. 

Origin of Italian dialects

Many italian regions had already a different substratum before the conquest of the Italy by the romans: the Northern Italy had a celtic substratum (this part of Italy was known as Gallia Cisalpina, Gallia in this part of Alps), a ligurian substratum, or a venetian substratum; the Central Italy had an etruscan substratum, and the Southern Italy had an italic substratum, or a greek substratum. All that began a diversification between the way to speek Latin (the official language of the Empire).


Due to the long history of separation in many small states and colonization by foreign powers (especially France, Spain and Austria-Hungary) that Italy went through since the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Italian reunification in 1861, there has been ample opportunity for linguistic diversification.


However, most states used either the colonial language as the official one, or Latin in the case of independent Italian states (such as the Vatican). Rarely was the local vernacular used in official documents, and as such a formal grammar for most vernaculars was usually not established. Private citizens who could write would use vernacular as an informal way to write notes, as Leonardo da Vinci did, using Latin instead for more important publications.


The question of synthesising an Italian language from the various dialects was the main goal in the life of Alessandro Manzoni, who advocated to build a national language mainly on the Florence vernacular, that had gained prestige since Dante Alighieri had used it in his Divina Commedia.


It would therefore be a mistake to use the expression "Dialects of Italian", since they did not derive from Italian, but straight from Vulgar Latin: it was Italian that derived from dialects, not the other way around.


Dialects remained the common parlance of the population until about the 1950s. With progressive increases in literacy, Standard Italian became gradually accepted as the national language, but until World War II people of lower classes, who could not afford schooling or simply had no use for a national language, continued to use their own dialects in their daily lives. It is probably in this period that the stigma against using dialects in public arose, since it was a sign of low social status.



Current usage

The solution to the so-called language question that had troubled Manzoni so much came from television. Its widespread adoption as most popular appliance in houses was the single main factor in helping Italians learn the national language. Roughly in the same period, many southerners moved to the north to find jobs. The powerful trade unions, to maintain the workers united, successfully campaigned against the usage of dialects: this allowed southerners, whose dialects were not mutually intelligible with the northerners', to integrate using Standard Italian. The large amount of mixed marriages, especially in large industrial cities as Milan and Turin, resulted in a generation that could confidentially speak only Standard Italian, and normally only understand some of their parents' dialects.


As a result of these phenomena, dialects in Italy stand stronger in the South (where no immigration occurred), in rural areas (where there has been less blending and less influence from trade unions), among older generations. Being unable to speak Italian still carries a stigma, and even strongly pro-dialect political forces such as the Northern League rarely resort to anything else than Standard Italian to write or speak publicly.



Dialects of Italian and dialects of Italy

Dialects of Italian are regional varieties (Tuscan, Central Italian) which are closely related to Standard Italian, while the terms Dialects of Italy is suggested for those idioms, such as Neapolitan, Sicilian, and Gallo-Italian languages which show considerable differences in grammar, syntax and vocabulary. Many "dialects of Italy" should thus be considered distinct languages in their own right, and actually are assigned to separate branches on the Romance language family tree by [Ethnologue] and other academic works. However, for historical, cultural and political reasons, these idioms have not yet been given an official status, nor have they developed a unified written standard.
It should be remembered that Sardinian, Ladin and Friulian are considered as completely distinct languages. All the dialects of Italy have many variety inside, especially in Northern dialects, where the fragmentation in different states was harder and where there was isolation because of the mountains.



List of varieties


See also: List of Languages of Italy





External links



Bibliography



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