Is Swiss Italian pronounciation German/French influenced?

I don't have much experience with the Italian language, but my Spanish has got to a resonable level and recently I've been listening to a few Italian radio stations to aqaint myself with the language and also to see what elements of it I can understand from my knowledge of Spanish.

I listened to Swiss Italian radio stations, and to me the pronounciation of Swiss Italian sounds really German/French-y, to the extent to the untrained ear it could be mistaken as either. I've never noticed this with Italian spoken in Italy, however, as I said I don't have much exposure to Italian either.

But judging from the pronounciation of Swiss Italian it sounds way more like German and French than it does Spanish. Its pronounciation sounds far removed from Spanish.

To answer your question: no, Italian spoken in Ticino retains all the sounds of Italian, although it is close to the northern varieties (e.g. béne instead of bène etc), especially as far as intonation is concerned. But it is still 100% Italian and can't be mistaken for either French or German.

!IF! they were speaking Ticinese instead, then yes it's a Gallo-Italic language closely related to the dialetti spoken in western Lumbardy and has phonemes found in French and German, such as ö and Ü.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Lombard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticinese

TSI Televisione Svizzera Italiana:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEGI329v8oU


Ticinese proverbs in Ticinese:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jjCDrduxMU&feature=related

I think you might have been hearing Romansch spoken instead of Italian. Like Lombard, it has some elements not uncommon to both Italian and Spanish though Venetian has a lot of elements in spoken form that compares to both Spanish and Catalan.

Spoken Romansch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Chce4VzcmU

Swiss Italian is close to Milan accent of Italian, standard Italian accent (halfway between Tuscany and Rome) is not desired nor enforced in Switzerland, the accent is apparently Lombard: témpo (instead of standard tèmpo), perchè (instead of standard perché), Cómo (instead of standard Còmo) and so on...

"I listened to Swiss Italian radio stations, and to me the pronounciation of Swiss Italian sounds really German/French-y"

I think indeed you have rather heard a romanch language than an swiss-italian one. Romansch language could be compared as a italian one with a german-swiss phonology (very harsh). Very interesting to observe (there is a romansch TV programm on the swiss network on sunday i think). This phonology is a kind of testimony of how could sound the languages of central or western europe before roman times.

I think you might have been hearing Ticinese? I think it's called that or something similar.

right Maire,

probably the Ticinese dialect of the Lombard language

Cleenah mah azz!