Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
How distinct are the Italian dialects from each other? Do they border on being seperate languages? Or, can any Italian speaker understand them once they spend a few days getting used to the accent and local vocabulary?
Some of them evolved separately from Latin, and do not descend from Italian. Therefore, they're not dialects of Italian, they're unique Romance languages, like the Romagna language we've been discussing here. Who knew there were all those additional Romance languages, besides the ones we normally see offered in schools and universities? This thread has been a pleasant surprise.
They are distinct Romance languages coming of course from mostly Latin with minor influences from others. If I being from Romangna region, traveled to Milan, Rome, Naples, Venice, (which I have done) I would not be able to understand hardly anything if anything at all that was being said by local people speaking their languages. They may as well almost be speaking Chinese, LOL. .
Wow, I had no idea that they were that distinct. Have you ever met an Italian who could not speak Italian. Rather, they only spoke their local language? I speak Spanish and was once able to understand some Italians to a pretty good degree, My guess is that they were speaking standard Italian?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
Some of them evolved separately from Latin, and do not descend from Italian. Therefore, they're not dialects of Italian, they're unique Romance languages, like the Romagna language we've been discussing here. Who knew there were all those additional Romance languages, besides the ones we normally see offered in schools and universities? This thread has been a pleasant surprise.
I had no idea either. I know that distinct local languages also exist in France. They might be rarer though. One time, in rural southern France, my mother (near native francophone) came back to our car and said she had no idea what the locals in a store were saying.
As a side note, there was a non Indo European language used in the Italian Alps until the late middle ages.
Romagnolo has a lot of words that sound like piemontese, it was funny!
I have the impression that the areas in Italy in which dialects are the least used are here in Piedmont and in Lombardy. I have the impression that it is because in those areas in the last 60-70 years arrived a lot of people from all the rest of Italy, and if everyone spoke in his own dialect it would have been impossible to understand something. In practice Italian become the normally spoken language also in informal situation, practically no one of the people that moved here tried to learn the local dialect.
In general this is much more evident in large cities. For example in Piedmont to find easily someone who speaks Piemontese you have to stay away from Turin. Among my friends from Turin a lot have parents and relatives from different regions, and so they ended up to don't speak (nor understand) any dialect. The dialect is instead still more used in the little towns and villages, in particular by middle aged-old people.
The situation is probably similar in Lombardy, with the complication that the local language changes a lot city by city (the "lombardo" used in Milan sounds completely different from the dialect from Bergamo, the one from Brescia or the one from the Como area for example.)
Here in North-western Italy also the case of Aosta Valley is really particular. They already speak both French and Italian as official languages, and they also speak a really difficult dialect (the Franco-Provençal, sometimes called patois) that is more like a dialect of French than one of Italian. This language is also spoken in the neighbor areas of France, of Switzerland and in some valleys of Piedmont. In the other valleys of Piedmont Occitan is spoken instead.
My place is a mess, because I live just next to the border line between Franco-Provençal, Occitan and Piemontese. Piemontese is spoken all over the region, but then in addition in a lot of villages is also spoken Franco-Provençal or Occitan in practice.
For example my grandparents can speak Italian, piemontese and the local patois (while I really can't understand it, it is too difficult. Too many close vowels and words that don't sound at all alike the italian, piemontese or neither french conterparts. for example how was I supposed to understand that "gneuf" means "carrot" and "nôhrë dzânn" = "our people" ?).
I don't know much about the other dialect of Italy. Some are quite easy to understand for me, while others are more difficult than Spanish of Portuguese. In the written form they can be quite similar (but the grammar rules and the lexicon can be quite different). Anyway the most difficult part for me is the phonology, sometimes the words are nearly the same but you don't recognize them because of the strange pronunciation.
If someone wants to try to listen Piemontese, this is a parody of a movie dubbed in our dialect.
I have been in Turin every Christmas since i was 5 and a few Summers as well and i must tell you that i havce never heard someone speak a word of Piedmontese. I couldn't understand what this Piedmontese Harry was saying throughout most of the video, i guess it may be because Apulian dialects are so different
By the way, it doesn't leave a great impression of my town but it isn't a great place by any means. That's why i want out of it. It's got a reputation and this is what this song talks about
How distinct are the Italian dialects from each other? Do they border on being seperate languages? Or, can any Italian speaker understand them once they spend a few days getting used to the accent and local vocabulary?
It depends.
My dialect is closely related to Venetian, although mine is heavily Germanised but I can fairly understand a Venetian, especially the ones close to me (up to 50-60km).
The farther you go, the harder it becomes, especially when colloquial terms and idioms are used and people speak fast.
For example, many comedians use dialects in their sketches (99% they use Southern dialects, especially either Neapolitan or Sicilian) and I can almost 90% understand them, so can most of the Italian audience.
As for understanding them, they are languages and as such they would require lots of time to stay here.
My brother is adopted (he is from Ecuador) and has been living with us here for 14 years, while he can understand some dialect (words here and there or expressions that entered into our local Italian) he can't speak dialect.
Wow, see that was very unfamiliar to me. If I visited your home town and no one spoke Italian only Cerignola, I would be totally lost and unable to communicate whatsoever, LOL. I occasionally heard a word here or there that sounded a little familiar but that was it.
My grandmothers cousin was born in 1898. I remember she had a difficult time speaking Italian and mixed up Romagnolo with Italian often when she spoke. The old timers that could only speak their local languages and very little Italian are long gone, I'm pretty certain.
I had no idea either. I know that distinct local languages also exist in France. They might be rarer though. One time, in rural southern France, my mother (near native francophone) came back to our car and said she had no idea what the locals in a store were saying.
As a side note, there was a non Indo European language used in the Italian Alps until the late middle ages.
Aquitanian was related to Basque, though said to have disappeared in the Middle Ages. I guess that couldn't have been what your mother heard, but there are dialects in the south that are different from the northern half of the country.
Do you have any info on that non-Indo-Euro language from northern Italy? I wonder if there were isolated remnants of the Vasconic languages that survived around Europe until then? It's believed that those were the main language or a main language of Europe before the arrival of the Indo-Euros.
I LOVE this thread, OP!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
for example how was I supposed to understand that "gneuf" means "carrot" and "nôhrë dzânn" = "our people" ?).
