Italian Languages

"Gallo-Italian languages like Lombard o Piedmontese belong to a different branch within the Romance languages group than Standard Italian , so evidently they are different languages."

The same for Occitan. Nissart is really different from Limousin for example. This because Gallo-Italic and Occitan are not normed.

If you consider Milanese as the central language of the Gallo-Italic group, you have solved the problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milanese

Thanks for your posts, everybody. There is no truly accepted conscensus, as of yet, as to what separates a 'dialect' from a 'language'. Moreover, what defines a 'dialect' and a 'language' can vary from region to region, insofar as carrying political and social overtones. For the sake of this thread, if a person wants to call the Romance varieties spoken within Italy's borders 'dialects', let him do it. Likewise, if a person wants to call them 'languages', he is in every right, no? I, personally, prefer to call them languages because of historical and linguistic reasons.

<< They are similar the way French is similar to Italian -- you may recognize cognates owing to the fact that they have common ancestry, but they are not mutually comprehensible. What distinguishes Ligurian, Lombard, and Piemontese as separate languages? Differences in grammar, syntax, vocabulary, verb conjugations, etc. >>

Thanks for the texts, bonnaire. Would you happen to know of any resources for studying the Gallo-Italic branches? (Online, books, et cetera.) From what I have read, I thought they had no defined ortography? Are the texts you provided from an earlier Bible or something? Thanks. :)

<< If you consider Milanese as the central language of the Gallo-Italic group, you have solved the problem. >>

Milanese as another name for Western Lombard or as a language on its own?

Is there any way to learn any of these languages?

There is not a Western Lombard standard. Milanese is one of the dialects of Western Lombard language, for sure the most important.

How many people still speak Lombard?

Emmanuel,

<< How many people still speak Lombard? >>

I'm not in a position to speak for its siuation in Italy; I imagine that it's status is not too healthy, albeit not necessarily in threat of permanent decline. i.e. still widely spoken by elderly inhabitants of provincial towns and villages; perhaps even more so in Ticino (Italian Switzerland).

Here in the South of Brazil; there are vestiges of Eastern Lombard; second and third-generation descendents of immigrants from Mantua, Brescia and western fringes of Verona (technically Venetian territory) and Trento (part of Trentino-Alto Adige) provinces. But these speakers themselves are all elderly and the language they pass on to each new generation is steadily diluting in favour of Portguese (with a few Italianized phrases mixed into the conversation). Furthermore, because of their proximity to and intermarriage with Venetian speakers; a sort of synthetic dialect developed between the two; now add Portuguese to the mix.

So there is very little 'pure' Lombard conserved here nowadays.

Is Leghorn Lombarjan or English?

Leghorn is the English name for Livorno, a city and province in Tuscany. Its inhabitants speak a Pisano-Livornese variant of the Tuscan dialect.

<< So there is very little 'pure' Lombard conserved here nowadays. >>

That is sad to hear. I suppose the other Italian languages are headed for the same fate? (Although I have heard somewhere Neapolitan supposedly has 7,000,000 million speakers? However, those numbers sound a little bit more than exaggeration.)

<< That is sad to hear. I suppose the other Italian languages are headed for the same fate? (Although I have heard somewhere Neapolitan supposedly has 7,000,000 million speakers? However, those numbers sound a little bit more than exaggeration.) >>

I think it may well be exaggerated. Although I'm sure that even during the early twentieth century, more Neapolitans and Campanians could speak Napolitano than could speak Italian. For instance, the majority of Italians who emigrated to North America (New York, Boston, Philadelphia) probably spoke Napolitano and Siciliano but had never had much contact with Italian (especially the ones who were poorly- or uneducated).

Probably one of the biggest factors at play here was the state provision of public education.

One the eve of independence and unification in 1859, the Casati Act was passed by the Italian patriots to prepare subsequent generations for an Italianising school system. But in 1861, only 20% of the population was functionally literate. Up until that time, the Italian language (Florentine standard) was either the preserve of cultural elite throughout the peninsula or was occassionally employed by those Italians who had use for it in their commercial or diplomatic dealings with other regions. So it was a lingua franca, but one which was so far removed from the lives of the vast majority of the populace. So even an educated middle-class burgher in a small town, say, a doctor in Treviso, would use Italian when writing to a supplier, alumnus or patron from another region..but he may well then have not only spoken Venetian in his home and with his neighbours, but possibly have written it too in private correspondance with local friends from a similar social caste. Of course, for the majority of his (illiterate or barely-literate) neighbours at this time, language was a spoken practicality and so the written difusion of a regional language would've been truncated by this reality.

I've also read that functional literacy in Italy only reached 90% by the mid-1930s (no doubt gathered steam under Fascism's heavy hand in the educational sphere and the Legge Gentile provisions of 1923). Inevitably, Italian would have been the language of instruction in any prospective state system.. but since Northern Italian emigration to Brazil a reached a peak in the 1920s (the Veneto was devastated after WWI) and began to tail off thereafter, it's safe to assume that the vast majority of emigrants left Italy without having gone through State education...and thereby missing out on their one true chance of a formative exposure to Italian.

That is why for example, some Brazilian great-grandchildren of immigrants who return to North-Eastern Italy today are greeted with surprise when they ask "where is the 'cesa'" instead of 'chiesa'.

Ahhh....

extra information about the Legge Gentile of 1923..

it also prohibited the use of any language other than Italian in education.

I'm sure this didn't help the regional languages, but it's more likely that its motive was geopolitical; Mussolini was targeting Sloven speakers in Iulia, Croatian speakers in Trieste and German speakers in Tyrol.

Although it would be fascinating to know whether any teachers occassionally employed their native regional language in the classroom as a meta-language to instruct the kids through the lesson. i.e. saying (in Venetian, for example) "Right you lot, Zuan (Giovanni)...concentrate.... Zorzi (Giorgio); now we're going to learn the multiplication tables ...(in Italian, of course!).

<< Mussolini was targeting Sloven speakers in Iulia, Croatian speakers in Trieste and German speakers in Tyrol >>

-- And especially French speakers of the Aoste valley.
(I hope you didn't mention it just inadvertently. Italians are often in very bad faith when it comes about ethnical cleansing in that Alpine region)

<< I've also read that functional literacy in Italy only reached 90% by the mid-1930s (no doubt gathered steam under Fascism's heavy hand in the educational sphere and the Legge Gentile provisions of 1923). >>

Would you happen to know the name of the book? I would like to read it. :)

<< Although it would be fascinating to know whether any teachers occassionally employed their native regional language in the classroom as a meta-language to instruct the kids through the lesson. i.e. saying (in Venetian, for example) "Right you lot, Zuan (Giovanni)...concentrate.... Zorzi (Giorgio); now we're going to learn the multiplication tables ...(in Italian, of course!). >>

Ha, that would be interesting to know. More than likely it was the case because, as you had mentioned, most people spoke their 'regional language' as compared to standard Italian back in the day. On a similar note, I wonder if anybody teaches Neapolitan, Sicilian, Venetian, et cetera, outside of Italy? (For instance, as in a classroom environment?)

PARISIEN

I'm not Italian and so I've no agenda there!

Yes, I assume that Mussolini was also targeting French and Arpitan speakers in Valle D'Aoste.
The irony in this, was that the Italian royal family was Savoyard; so too was Count Cavour (born in Chamenoix), who wrote in Arpitan. Vittorio Emmanuele's French was said to be of a higher standard than his Italian!

@ Emmanuele

G. Tognon, Giovanni Gentile e la riforma della scuola, in Il parlamento italiano, Milano, Nuova Cei, 1990, vol. 11