The Italian Language

Thanks for these, Pax Augusta,

I'm not a linguist, but from just listening to these people speak, the different demarcation lines in Massa Carrara and the La Spezia area make absolute sense to me. Vezzano Ligure (my maternal grandfather's area) is definitely north and west of all those lines, as is Pontremoli. The area where line 1 terminates looks to be pretty close to the ancestral villages of my mother's mother. Line 3, more in the black and white version than the colored one tracks the Magra River for part of the way, with the accents to the west being less influenced by Tuscan.* It's always been and is still extraordinary to me that there could be such a difference across a river that in the height of summer is often mostly dry and thus you can walk to the other side. However, even into my father's time if not my mother's (he was much older) to cross the river from where I was born was impossible for most of the year. You had to go far up or down river to reach a bridge. Interestingly, in Roman times there was a large bridge there. Lines 2,4,6 and 7 are in the Garfagnana, which definitely sounds more Tuscan to me, and the Fivizzano of Bonomi is under their influence..

The different demarcation lines in Massa Carrara and the La Spezia area demonstrate how the passage from Tuscan to Gallo-Italic (and vice versa) is gradual and that the Magra river could have had a role indeed.


*I don't have the link handy, but the division around this area is much earlier even than Diocletian's administrative reforms. Even in the earliest times the Magra served as a boundary (a secondary one after the Arno) between the "Etruschi" and the Celti-Liguri. For example, although the Etruschi were not far, no settlements have been found in the Lungiana, just trade goods, and, interestingly, some written Etruscan on some of our statue stele The earliest Roman administrators drew the administrative line nearby as well, at Luni at the mouth of the Magra.

Yes, Luni as most of modern-day Lunigiana was in Etruria region during the reign of Augustus. The mouth of the Magra seems to be the historical border. True that no Etruscan settlements have been found in the Lunigiana but according to historical sources (Titus Livius Patavinus known as Livy) Luni was an ancient Etruria town just before being occupied by Ligurians and then by Romans. Not to mention that there is another Luni in Italy and it's located in southern Etruria, modern-day Latium, Luni sul Mignone, but probably just a coincidence. In Liguria Etruscan remains were found, however, if I remember correctly in Genoa and other places (Chiavari?). Anyway the interactions between Ligurians and Etruscans, probably very ancient, deserve some other posts. I will be back on this.


Titus Livius Patavinus known as Livy, (XLI, 13)

.... De Ligure captus is ager erat. Etruscorum antequam Ligurum, fuerat.

Livy said that Ager Lunensis (Lunigiana) was Etruscan before than Ligurian.


Emanuele Repetti (he was born in Carrara), Dizionario geografico, fisico, storico della Toscana: contenente la descrizione di tutti i luoghi del granducato, ducato di Lucca, Garfagnana e Lunigiana, 1833-1845.

"LUNI (LUNA) nella Val di Magra. Piccola città distrutta di origine etrusca, per quanto sia stata per molto tempo dominata dai Liguri, cui sottentrarono i Romani, dai quali la, città col suo distretto fu riunita al governo di Pisa, e conseguentemente alla provincia toscana. Quindi Luni sotto il triumvirato di Ottaviano, M. Antonio e Lepido dov� acocogliere una colonia militare. Dal dominio imperiale passò in potere dei Visigoti. quindl tornò ligia degl'Imperatori d'Oriente, cui fu tolta al prinicipio del secolo VII dai Longobardi che la riunirono pacificamente al loro regno. Vinti cotesti, ed espulsi dai Franchi, Luni decadde ogni giorno più sotto il regno de'Carolingi. Finalmente saccheggiata varie volte da genti di mare e disertata di abitatori dai ristagni palustri, che resero ogni giorno più malsano quel suolo, nel secolo XV fu totalmente abbandonata anche dal clero, quando si trasportarono a Sarzana con le reliquie di Luni le onorificenze di città."

http://www.archeogr.unisi.it/repetti/dbms/sk.php?id=2513



Roman_regioVII_etruria.jpg



a more exacting ( recent , 2 to 3 years old ) picture of the languages of the northern italian lands..............note even the cimbrian languages

The bergamo area , known as east-lombard has a very high concentration of venetian in it............most likely due to the 350 years of venetian control

http://digidownload.libero.it/alpdn/Mappe/LinguePadanesi.png

Thanks. My gf has Cimbrian ancestors. I will post something about them later.
 
Sorry, guys, I was trying to edit my post and I accidentally removed the whole thing.

@PaxAugusta,

Yes, Luni was a Roman colonia, and before that mixed Etruscan and Ligure. After the final fall of Luni, the inhabitants dispersed into the interior under their Bishop, including to Sarzana.

I apologize that this map is smallish, but I think you can enlarge it a bit. Somewhere I have a paper that posits that Etruscan influence tracks mostly to Luni and then north and then easterly along the right or south bank of the Magra to Aulla and then basically followed the Aulella to just around Fivizzano. (I hope I can find it.) So, I don't know that I'd say that the majority of the modern Lunigiana was under Etruscan influence. Of course, these river boundaries were not impenetrable. It's interesting, however, that even today that tracks pretty well with the areas of strongest "Tuscan" influence on the language. It's amazing to me that such small boundaries can make a difference in speech patterns.

map-lunigiana.png


They probably weren't terribly interested in the more mountainous areas. The most prosperous part of the Lunigiana has always been the low, fertile valley of the Magra nearer to the coast.

Perhaps this gives a better view:
ttd_lunigianamap.jpg



There are dozens of maps out there based on the intensity of the Etruscan influence and also different depending on the time period, but this is one which is based on the fact that some scholars see the major demarcation line as the Arno, and the areas to the northwest of it as mixed Ligure and Etruscan.

2.jpg


This creator obviously saw it differently, as this includes Luni and the lower valley.


Etruscan_civilization_map.png


This one has the influence going all the way through northern Italy to the Swiss border and beyond, which makes sense if the Etruscans fled north.
2000px-Iron_Age_Italy.svg.png



It's difficult to know precisely how Livy's "Lunigiana" would correspond to the modern Lunigiana.

Certainly, when geneticists go looking for Italians to test for similarity to ancient Etruscan dna they don't go to the Lunigiana or LaSpezia or even Sarzana. (I do see that Barbujani got them to test in Adria. Like me, it seems he always wanted his area to have some Etruscan influence. :))
 
The Italian language is very similar to the Spanish language, and during the learning of the Italian language I often mixed the words form both languages .. The language is very sonorous and easy to learn
 
@ Sile
I'm not a specialist about Italian dialects so I 'll leave Italian speakers do the most of the work here.
Just:
latin 'pômum' "fruit" >> popular latin 'pôma' french 'pomme,: "apple" ('aval' in breton): 'poma' spite it's a semantic and /gender morphologic evolution, is Italian', not a foreign word -
'giorno' and 'di' have the same root; 'giorno' is an evolution of 'diurn-' >> french 'djourn' >> 'jour(n)', welsh 'dydd': "day" and 'diwrnod' :"daytime".
all the today states standard languages are evolutions of a dominant dialect + loanwords (dialects and foreign) + new words of popular AND scholar creation; (except German, a more artificial creation of the southern group of chancelleries, after the printing system elaboration of Gutemberg; very often you can find synonyms of diverse origins, some popularly some scholarly created.
more generally, the classification of dialects is a very hard work; the vocabulary is the less efficient way to discriminate dialects, because words travel with traders and stuff, and when dialects are no more in dense use, they tend to loose richness and select different words among the synonyms, creating a patchwork of holes, or of full and empty compartments for every word or seme; it's the case in Italian dialects for 'poma'/'mela' and other words, as in breton, french or any big or small language;
phonetics evoluate more slowly and it's why, searching about past population moves or gravity centers of social life, I put more attention to phonetic isoglosses;
in Italy, ranges of isoglosses seem interesting concerning History, dividing the country in parts which seem having some worth for History; the words distribution only could not give us as valuable clues; the 'toscan' classification for corsicanS dialectS is for me a badly based one, by example: more "administrative" (influence zone) than "ethnic" (origin and habits of speakers);
Just my impressions. I leave the knowers to speak for details.
 
@ Sile
I'm not a specialist about Italian dialects so I 'll leave Italian speakers do the most of the work here.
Just:
latin 'pômum' "fruit" >> popular latin 'pôma' french 'pomme,: "apple" ('aval' in breton): 'poma' spite it's a semantic and /gender morphologic evolution, is Italian', not a foreign word -
'giorno' and 'di' have the same root; 'giorno' is an evolution of 'diurn-' >> french 'djourn' >> 'jour(n)', welsh 'dydd': "day" and 'diwrnod' :"daytime".
all the today states standard languages are evolutions of a dominant dialect + loanwords (dialects and foreign) + new words of popular AND scholar creation; (except German, a more artificial creation of the southern group of chancelleries, after the printing system elaboration of Gutemberg; very often you can find synonyms of diverse origins, some popularly some scholarly created.
more generally, the classification of dialects is a very hard work; the vocabulary is the less efficient way to discriminate dialects, because words travel with traders and stuff, and when dialects are no more in dense use, they tend to loose richness and select different words among the synonyms, creating a patchwork of holes, or of full and empty compartments for every word or seme; it's the case in Italian dialects for 'poma'/'mela' and other words, as in breton, french or any big or small language;
phonetics evoluate more slowly and it's why, searching about past population moves or gravity centers of social life, I put more attention to phonetic isoglosses;
in Italy, ranges of isoglosses seem interesting concerning History, dividing the country in parts which seem having some worth for History; the words distribution only could not give us as valuable clues; the 'toscan' classification for corsicanS dialectS is for me a badly based one, by example: more "administrative" (influence zone) than "ethnic" (origin and habits of speakers);
Just my impressions. I leave the knowers to speak for details.

clearly the occitan influence in the 10th and 11th centuries (via the bards who travelled from Barcelona to Venice ) in north-italy and catalonia has stood the test of time ................

FRA = Pomm piedmont = Poma veneto = Pomo

even names
Fra = pierre........north-italy = Pierro and Italy = pietro

Fra = marissa north-Italy = marisa and italy = MariaLuisa
 
The so-called Italian dialects are however not dialects of Italian (standard);
Italian itself is mostly based on a Tuscan dialect, that of Petrarch and Bocaccio (standrdised by Bembo like German was by Lutherbibel and English by Hakluyt);
The Italian dialects are diverse dialects of several Romanic branches thus making them sisters to each other and not daughters of "an Italian" language;

How compatible each dialect was with another from a diff. branch would than depend on the specific dialects; But there are substantial diffs. (for example) between a dialect of Rhaeto-Romanic and a dialect of Italo-Dalmatian;

A unified Italy (as we know it today) only existed since 1861;
In 1870 (just 9 years after unification) Charles Dickens Jr. wrote a piece titled 'The Italian Peasant' and in this passage concerning the North Italian peasants/contadini he notes .... To them the lingua Toscana - the national speech of Italy - is a foreign tongue .... Their local speech is not recognised by the law .... (Sermons/Proclamation/Law-suites) are carried on, in a language which is as strange to them as the English language used to be to the inhabitants of the interior of Wales

He further notes that the middle and upper classes of Lombardy and Venetia spoke a kauderwelsch which included bits of German and French and the Elite (en vogue) language being French at the time;

Of the Tuscan peasant he notes:
.... The shepherd-boy who tends his flocks on the mountains of the Val d'Arno, and knows nothing of books except that they have been forbidden by the priest, talks more correctly and pronounces his words better than the average Lombard gentleman

Charles Dickens Jr. - 'The Italian Peasant' (1870) / p.438(right column)
All the Year Round - Charles Dickens - Google Books
 
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I had an Italian for boss and there was a very pretty blond Italian girl there. Having being taught in a Christian Brothers (mostly Irish Brothers, there was an American Brother named Donahue who was a former Marine and taught us to do push ups and to clap our hands on the ups. It was fun) boarding school for boys. I didn't know anything about girls. This pretty blonde winked at me. I didn't know what it meant. I was afraid of her as she was close to my boss. He was nice guy but you never know how he would react if I got too friendly his 'girl' i.e. he treated her like a daughter. Anyway she told me that in Italy one region could not understand speakers from another region which surprised me at the time. Now, that I think about it I missed my chance. That's life.:disappointed:

She looked like Jackie Evancho here except her nose is slightly smaller and has hair up to her neck and curly hair

https://www.google.ca/search?q=jack...Kh2TPZkjM:&usg=__Pe4d8AF7GXJ7_-BSARJtCpw1cQ4=
 
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I had an Italian for boss and there was a very pretty blond Italian girl there. Having being taught in a Christian Brothers (mostly Irish Brothers, there was an American Brother named Donahue who was a former Marine and taught us to do push ups and to clap our hands on the ups. It was fun) boarding school for boys. I didn't know anything about girls. This pretty blonde winked at me. I didn't know what it meant. I was afraid of her as she was close to my boss. He was nice guy but you never know how he would react if I got too friendly his 'girl' i.e. he treated her like a daughter. Anyway she told me that in Italy one region could not understand speakers from another region which surprised me at the time. Now, that I think about I missed my chance. That's life.:disappointed:

HAR HAR HAR
You really were one of the dumbest (dib #its) around when i was still active;
No changes there;
 
@ Nobody1
I agree "italian" dialects cannot be dialects of standard italian for they are older than it; when I say 'Italian', by example, I rhink "of Italy" - the same for French; standard french is roughly an Île-de-France dialect influenced by Touraine/Orléanais dialect (South) and Champagne dialect (Northeast: here I speak of language, not of wine!) because Île-de-France is in contact with both and the France kings in Middle Ages were found of tours in Orlénais; after that, like in every standard language chosen for some political reason, french became enriched with ancient latin and grek forms for science, law, tecnics plus foreign more or less exotic words (trade) etc... how often I heard French people themselves saying to me: "how is it possible these patois (dialects) had deformed so deeply the french language (standard, in their mind)!"
 
Italian dialects: in fact: romance dialects of Italy
 
@ Nobody1
I agree "italian" dialects cannot be dialects of standard italian for they are older than it; when I say 'Italian', by example, I rhink "of Italy" - the same for French; standard french is roughly an Île-de-France dialect influenced by Touraine/Orléanais dialect (South) and Champagne dialect (Northeast: here I speak of language, not of wine!) because Île-de-France is in contact with both and the France kings in Middle Ages were found of tours in Orlénais; after that, like in every standard language chosen for some political reason, french became enriched with ancient latin and grek forms for science, law, tecnics plus foreign more or less exotic words (trade) etc... how often I heard French people themselves saying to me: "how is it possible these patois (dialects) had deformed so deeply the french language (standard, in their mind)!"

what you agree with or not is highly secondary to me;
 
@ Nobody1
I agree "italian" dialects cannot be dialects of standard italian for they are older than it; when I say 'Italian', by example, I rhink "of Italy" - the same for French; standard french is roughly an Île-de-France dialect influenced by Touraine/Orléanais dialect (South) and Champagne dialect (Northeast: here I speak of language, not of wine!) because Île-de-France is in contact with both and the France kings in Middle Ages were found of tours in Orlénais; after that, like in every standard language chosen for some political reason, french became enriched with ancient latin and grek forms for science, law, tecnics plus foreign more or less exotic words (trade) etc... how often I heard French people themselves saying to me: "how is it possible these patois (dialects) had deformed so deeply the french language (standard, in their mind)!"

In standard italian as well as standard french ...........the ancient regional linguistic influences ALWAYS penetrate the standard languages , italian from the south is not exact as italian from NE-Itlay or italian from NW -Italy .

I have same issue with my cousins in Toulouse and Aix-les-Bains ( Savoie) in france , they argue with each other on who speaks the proper standard french because there is a difference.
 
The so-called Italian dialects are however not dialects of Italian (standard);
Italian itself is mostly based on a Tuscan dialect, that of Petrarch and Bocaccio (standrdised by Bembo like German was by Lutherbibel and English by Hakluyt);
The Italian dialects are diverse dialects of several Romanic branches thus making them sisters to each other and not daughters of "an Italian" language;

How compatible each dialect was with another from a diff. branch would than depend on the specific dialects; But there are substantial diffs. (for example) between a dialect of Rhaeto-Romanic and a dialect of Italo-Dalmatian;

A unified Italy (as we know it today) only existed since 1861;
In 1870 (just 9 years after unification) Charles Dickens Jr. wrote a piece titled 'The Italian Peasant' and in this passage concerning the North Italian peasants/contadini he notes .... To them the lingua Toscana - the national speech of Italy - is a foreign tongue .... Their local speech is not recognised by the law .... (Sermons/Proclamation/Law-suites) are carried on, in a language which is as strange to them as the English language used to be to the inhabitants of the interior of Wales

He further notes that the middle and upper classes of Lombardy and Venetia spoke a kauderwelsch which included bits of German and French and the Elite (en vogue) language being French at the time;

Of the Tuscan peasant he notes:
.... The shepherd-boy who tends his flocks on the mountains of the Val d'Arno, and knows nothing of books except that they have been forbidden by the priest, talks more correctly and pronounces his words better than the average Lombard gentleman

Charles Dickens Jr. - 'The Italian Peasant' (1870) / p.438(right column)
All the Year Round - Charles Dickens - Google Books



watch your step................you will be banned for saying this, not from me..............but others here
 
HAR HAR HAR
You really were one of the dumbest (dib #its) around when i was still active;
No changes there;


I am glad I made you laugh. We all do stupid things once in a while either from ignorance or by mistake, yes? I don't mind your laughter. I do all of this for fun anyway. I don't take anything too seriously.
 
watch your step................you will be banned for saying this, not from me..............but others here
No one is ever banned here for stating their opinions in a civilized and fact based manner. Insult filled, vulgarity laden, racist riddled rants, or deliberate distortions of data are not permitted, and that is something upon which all the moderators are agreed, as they were in this specific case .

As to your implication about the substance of the post, which has to do with the "dialects" spoken in Italy, everybody knows that most Italians didn't speak standard Italian at the time of unification. Likewise, most French people didn't speak standard French in the mid-1800s either, and the Germans didn't all speak one standard German when they were unified in the late 1800s either. Is this supposed to be news?

Who cares? Be grateful that Italy, unlike France, accommodates so many "languages" and "dialects".

@Oriental, That's very tolerant of you, but as a matter of principle we can't allow that kind of thing.
 
I enjoy reading your posts. You are tenacious, intelligent and very informative. Thank you.
 
Is Romanian intelligible with Italian?
 
Is Romanian intelligible with Italian?

None of the Romance languages are perfectly intelligible from my experience as a lay person. For me, Spanish is the most intelligible from an "audible" point of view. I found written French much easier than spoken French. I looked it up once, and Italian and French share the most vocabulary, but French pronunciation is more different.

As for Romanian, I spent some weeks in Romania on business, and even in that short time I started to understand quite a bit of it. I would think it would be relatively easy for an Italian to learn Romanian and vice versa. Certainly, all the Romanian immigrants in Italy seem to have picked it up quickly, even if the pronunciation is off.

One of our linguists will hopefully chime in.

I just looked for a graphic of the relationships which I've used before, and this one showed up, which I'd never seen before. It measure lexical distance. As you can see, there is less of a relationship to Romanian than to French and Spanish.

Interestingly, it bears out my experience with Catalan. It was even easier for me than Spanish, in some ways. Also interesting is the closeness to Galician. That one I don't understand.

lexicaldistanceielangs.jpg
 

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