Lombard language
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Lombard language (, Classical Milanese orthography, and . , Ticinese orthography. Modern Western orthography and Classical Cremish Orthography. or , Eastern unified orthography. depending on the orthography; pronunciation: ) belongs to the Gallo-Italic group within the
Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
. It is characterized by a Celtic linguistic substratum and a Lombardic linguistic superstratum and is a cluster of homogeneous dialects that are spoken by millions of speakers in Northern Italy and southern
Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
. These include most of
Lombardy The Lombardy Region (; ) is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in northern Italy and has a population of about 10 million people, constituting more than one-sixth of Italy's population. Lombardy is ...
and some areas of the neighbouring regions, notably the far eastern side of
Piedmont Piedmont ( ; ; ) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the northwest Italy, Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the ...
and the extreme western side of
Trentino Trentino (), officially the Autonomous Province of Trento (; ; ), is an Autonomous province#Italy, autonomous province of Italy in the Northern Italy, country's far north. Trentino and South Tyrol constitute the Regions of Italy, region of Tren ...
, and in Switzerland in the cantons of
Ticino Ticino ( ), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts ...
and Graubünden. The language is also spoken in Santa Catarina in
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
by Lombard immigrants from the Province of Bergamo, in
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
.


History


Origins

The most ancient linguistic substratum that has left a mark on the Lombard language is that of the ancient Ligures. However, available information about the ancient language and its influence on modern Lombard is extremely vague and limited. That is in sharp contrast to the influence left by the
Celts The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...
, who settled in Northern Italy and brought their
Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yve ...
and culturally and linguistically Celticised the Ligures. The Celtic substratum of modern Lombard and the neighbouring languages of Northern Italy is self-evident and so the Lombard language is classified as a Gallo-Italic language (from the ancient Roman name for the Celts,
Gauls The Gauls (; , ''Galátai'') were a group of Celts, Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age Europe, Iron Age and the Roman Gaul, Roman period (roughly 5th century BC to 5th century AD). Their homeland was known as Gaul (''Gallia''). Th ...
). Roman domination shaped the dialects spoken in the area, which is called
Cisalpine Gaul Cisalpine Gaul (, also called ''Gallia Citerior'' or ''Gallia Togata'') was the name given, especially during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, to a region of land inhabited by Celts (Gauls), corresponding to what is now most of northern Italy. Afte ...
("Gaul, this side of the mountains") by the Romans, and much of the
lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word () ...
and
grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
of the Lombard language have their origin in
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
. However, that influence was not homogeneous since idioms of different areas were influenced by previous linguistic substrata, and each area was marked by a stronger or weaker Latinisation or the preservation of ancient Celtic characteristics. The Germanic Lombardic language also left strong traces in modern Lombard, as it was the variety of Germanic that was spoken by the Germanic
Lombards The Lombards () or Longobards () were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774. The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the ''History of the Lombards'' (written betwee ...
(or Longobards), who settled in Northern Italy, which is called Greater Lombardy after them, and in other parts of the Italian Peninsula after the fall of the
Western Roman Empire In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire was the western provinces of the Roman Empire, collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. ...
. Lombardic acted as a linguistic superstratum on Lombard and neighboring Gallo-Italic languages since the Germanic Lombards did not impose their language by law on the Gallo-Roman population, but they rather acquired the Gallo-Italic language from the local population. Lombardic left traces, mostly in lexicon and phonetics, without Germanicising the local language in its structure and so Lombard preserved its Romance structure.


From the 15th to the 17th century

From the 15th century onwards, literary Tuscan began to supplant the use of northern vernaculars such as Lombard, even regardless of the fact that Lombard itself began to be heavily influenced by the Tuscan vernacular. Prior to that, the Lombard language was widely used in administrative spheres. Among those who favoured the strengthening of Tuscan influences over Lombard culture was the Duke of Milan Ludovico il Moro; during his reign he brought numerous men of culture from the Republic of Florence to the Sforza court, the most famous of whom was certainly Leonardo da Vinci. At the same time, however, Lancino Curzio still wrote some works in Milanese dialect at the Sforza court. Between the 15th and 16th centuries, the Lombard language was widely and actively discredited in Italian literary circles. Tuscan writers and humanists such as Luigi Pulci and Benedetto Dei recorded aspects of the language spoken in Milan in the form of parodies; similarly, the Asti-born writer Giorgio Alione parodied Milanese in his ''Commedia e farse carnovalesche nei dialetti astigiano, milanese e francese misti con latino barbaro'' (eng. "Comedy and carnival farces in the Asti, Milanese and French dialects mixed with barbaric Latin") composed at the end of the 15th century. The Florentine humanist Leonardo Salviati, one of the founders of the Accademia della Crusca, an important Italian linguistic academy operating to this day, published a series of translations of a Boccaccian tale into various vernaculars (including Bergamo and Milanese) explicitly in order to demonstrate how ugly and awkward they were compared to Tuscan. At the same time, the 15th century saw the first signs of a true Lombard literature: in the eastern parts of Lombardy, the Bergamo-born Giovanni Bressani composed numerous volumes of satirical poetry and the Brescia-born Galeazzo dagli Orzi wrote his ''Massera da bé'', a sort of theatrical dialogue; in the west of the region area, the Mannerist painter Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo lead the composition of the "arabesques" in the Accademia dei Facchini della Val di Blenio, a Milanese
academy An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...
founded in 1560. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Ossola native Giovanni Capis published the ''Varon milanes de la lengua de Milan'' (eng. "Varrone Milanese on the language of Milan"), a sort of etymological dictionary was published. An example of a text in ancient Milanese dialect is this excerpt from ''Il falso filosofo'' (1698), act III, scene XIV, where Meneghino, a traditional Milanese character from the
commedia dell'arte Commedia dell'arte was an early form of professional theatre, originating from Theatre of Italy, Italian theatre, that was popular throughout Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was formerly called Italian comedy in English and is a ...
, presents himself in court (Lombard on the left, Italian translation on the right): The 17th century also saw the rise of the figure of the playwright Carlo Maria Maggi, who normalised the spelling of the Milanese dialect and who created, among other things, the Milanese mask of Meneghino. A friend and correspondent of Maggi was Francesco De Lemene, author of La sposa Francesca (the first literary work in modern Lodi dialect) and of a translation of '' Gerusalemme liberata''. Moreover, the 17th century saw the emergence of the first bosinade: popular poems written on loose sheets and posted in the squares or read (or even sung) in public; they were widely diffused until the first decades of the 20th century.


In the modern era

Milanese literature in the 18th century was quickly developing: some important names which emerged in that period include Domenico Balestrieri, who was associated the famous poet Giuseppe Parini. The latter wrote some compositions in the Lombard language. One of the most important writers of the period was the Bergamo-based abbot Giuseppe Rota, author of a substantial (unpublished) Bergamo-Italian-Latin vocabulary and of several poetic works in the Orobic idiom, which he always called "lingua". In this period the linguistic characteristics of Lombard were well recognizable and comparable to the modern ones, except for some phonetic peculiarities and the presence of a remote past tense, replaced almost fully by the past perfect tense by 1875.Biondelli reports that the Milanese dialect was the first Lombard variant to lose this verb tense. Biondelli, Bernardino: ''Saggio sui dialetti Gallo-italici'', 1853. The beginning of the 19th century was dominated by the figure of Carlo Porta, recognized by many as the most important author of Lombard literature, also included among the greatest poets of Italian national literature. With him some of the highest peaks of expressiveness in the Lombard language were reached, which clearly emerged in works such as ''La Ninetta del Verzee, Desgrazzi de Giovannin Bongee'', ''La guerra di pret'' and ''Lament del Marchionn de gamb avert''. Milanese poetic production assumed such important dimensions that in 1815 the scholar Francesco Cherubini published an anthology of Lombard literature in four volumes, which included texts written from the seventeenth century to his day.


In the contemporary era

In the first part of the 20th century, the greatest exponent of Lombard literature was the Milanese lawyer Delio Tessa, who distanced himself from the Portian tradition by giving his texts a strong expressionist tone. In Bergamo, the most prominent advocate of Lombard language was Bortolo Belotti, a lawyer, historian and minister in the liberal governments of the time. The Lombard language became known outside its linguistic borders thanks to I Legnanesi, a theatre company that performed comedies in the Legnanese dialect and which is the most famous example of travesti theatre in Italy. In their comic shows the actors propose to the public satirical figures of the typical Lombard court; founded in Legnano in 1949 by Felice Musazzi, Tony Barlocco and Luigi Cavalleri, it is among the most famous companies in the European dialect theatre scene. The 21st century has also seen the use of Lombard in contemporary music, such as in the musical pieces of Davide Van De Sfroos and in the translations into Lombard of the works of Bob Dylan. There is no shortage of translations of great literary classics; in fact, there are numerous versions in Lombard of works such as Pinocchio, The Betrothed, The Little Prince, the Divine Comedy and – in religious literature – of the Gospels.


Status

Lombard is considered a minority language that is structurally separate from Italian by both
Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...
and the
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
''Red Book on Endangered Languages''. However,
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
and
Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
do not recognize Lombard-speakers as a linguistic minority. In Italy, that is the same as for most other minority languages, which have been for a long time incorrectly classed as corrupted regional dialects of Italian. However, Lombard and Italian belong to different subgroups of the Romance language family, and Lombard's historical development is not related to Standard Italian, which is derived from Tuscan.


Speakers

Historically, the vast majority of
Lombards The Lombards () or Longobards () were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774. The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the ''History of the Lombards'' (written betwee ...
spoke only Lombard, as "Italian" was merely a literary language, and most Italians were not able to read or write. After the Italian economic miracle, Standard Italian arose throughout Italy and Lombard-speaking Switzerland, wholly- monolingual Lombard-speakers became a rarity as time went by, but a small minority may still be uncomfortable speaking Standard Italian. Surveys in Italy find that all Lombard-speakers also speak Italian, and their command of both two languages varies according to their geographical position as well as their socio-
economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
situation. The most reliable predictor was found to be the speaker's age. Studies have found that young people are much less likely to speak Lombard as proficiently as their grandparents. In some areas, elderly people are more used to speaking Lombard than Italian even though they know both.


Classification

Lombard belongs to the Gallo-Italic (Cisalpine) group of
Gallo-Romance languages The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes in the narrowest sense the ''langues d'oïl'' and Franco-Provençal. However, other definitions are far broader and variously encompass the Occitan or Occitano-Romance, Gallo-Italic o ...
, which belongs to the Western Romance subdivision.


Varieties

Traditionally, the Lombard dialects have been classified into the Eastern, Western, Alpine and Southern Lombard dialects. The varieties of the Italian provinces of
Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
,
Varese Varese ( , ; or ; ; ; archaic ) is a city and ''comune'' in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, north-west of Milan. The population of Varese in 2018 was 80,559. It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or exurban part ...
, Como,
Lecco Lecco (, , ; ) is a city of approximately 47,000 inhabitants in Lombardy, Northern Italy, north of Milan. It lies at the end of the south-eastern branch of Lake Como (the branch is named ''Branch of Lecco'' / ''Ramo di Lecco''). The Bergamasqu ...
, Lodi, Monza and Brianza,
Pavia Pavia ( , ; ; ; ; ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy, in Northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino (river), Ticino near its confluence with the Po (river), Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was a major polit ...
and
Mantua Mantua ( ; ; Lombard language, Lombard and ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Italian region of Lombardy, and capital of the Province of Mantua, eponymous province. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the "Italian Capital of Culture". In 2 ...
belong to Western Lombard, and the provinces of Bergamo,
Brescia Brescia (, ; ; or ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the region of Lombardy, in Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Lake Garda, Garda and Lake Iseo, Iseo. With a population of 199,949, it is the se ...
and
Cremona Cremona ( , , ; ; ) is a city and (municipality) in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po (river), Po river in the middle of the Po Valley. It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local city a ...
are dialects of Eastern Lombard. All varieties spoken in the Swiss areas (both in the Canton of
Ticino Ticino ( ), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts ...
and the Canton of Graubünden) are Western, and both Western and Eastern varieties are found in the Italian areas. The varieties of the Alpine valleys of Valchiavenna and Valtellina ( Sondrio) and upper- Valcamonica (Brescia) and the four Lombard valleys of the Swiss canton of Graubünden have some peculiarities of their own and some traits in common with Eastern Lombard but should be considered Western. Also, dialects from the Piedmontese provinces of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and Novara, the Valsesia valley ( province of Vercelli), and the city of Tortona are closer to Western Lombard than to Piedmontese. Alternatively, following the traditional classification, the varieties spoken in parts of Sondrio,
Trentino Trentino (), officially the Autonomous Province of Trento (; ; ), is an Autonomous province#Italy, autonomous province of Italy in the Northern Italy, country's far north. Trentino and South Tyrol constitute the Regions of Italy, region of Tren ...
,
Ticino Ticino ( ), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts ...
and Grigioni can be considered as Alpine Lombard, and those spoken in southern Lombardy such as in Pavia, Lodi, Cremona and Mantova can be classified as Southern Lombard.


Literature

Lacking a standard language, authors in the 13th and 14th language created Franco-Lombard, a mixed language including
Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...
, for their literary works. The Lombard variety with the oldest literary tradition (from the 13th century) is that of Milan, but Milanese, the native Lombard variety of the area, has now almost completely been superseded by Italian from the heavy influx of migrants from other parts of Italy (especially from Apulia,
Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...
and
Campania Campania is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy located in Southern Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian Peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islan ...
) during the rapid industrialization after the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. Ticinese is a comprehensive denomination for the Lombard varieties that are spoken in Swiss canton
Ticino Ticino ( ), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts ...
(Tessin), and the ''Ticinese koiné'' is the Western Lombard koiné used by speakers of local dialects (particularly those diverging from the ''koiné'' itself) when they communicate with speakers of other Lombard dialects of
Ticino Ticino ( ), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts ...
, Grigioni or Italian
Lombardy The Lombardy Region (; ) is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in northern Italy and has a population of about 10 million people, constituting more than one-sixth of Italy's population. Lombardy is ...
. The koiné is similar to Milanese and the varieties of the neighbouring provinces on the Italian side of the border. There is extant literature in other varieties of Lombard like ''La masséra da bé'', a theatrical work in early Eastern Lombard, written by Galeazzo dagli Orzi (1492–?) presumably in 1554.


Usage

Standard Italian is widely used in Lombard-speaking areas. However, the status of Lombard is quite different in the Swiss and Italian areas and so the Swiss areas have now become the real strongholds of Lombard.


In Switzerland

In the Swiss areas, the local Lombard varieties are generally better preserved and more vital than in Italy. No negative feelings are associated with the use of Lombard in everyday life, even with complete strangers. Some radio and television programmes, particularly comedies, are occasionally broadcast by the Swiss Italian-speaking broadcasting company in Lombard. Moreover, it is common for people to answer in Lombard in spontaneous interviews. Even some television advertisements have been broadcast in Lombard. The major research institution working on Lombard dialects is in Bellinzona,
Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
(''CDE – Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia'', a governmental (cantonal) institution); there is no comparable institution in Italy. In December 2004, it released a dictionary in five volumes, covering all Lombard varieties spoken in the Swiss areas.


In Italy

Today, in most urban areas of Italian Lombardy, people under 40 years old speak almost exclusively Italian in their daily lives because of schooling and
television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
broadcasts in Italian. However, in rural areas, Lombard is still vital and used alongside Italian. Lombard is spoken in Campione d'Italia, an exclave of Italy that is surrounded by Swiss territory on Lake Lugano.


Phonology

The following tables show the sounds that are used in all Lombard dialects.


Consonants

In Eastern Lombard and Pavese dialect , and merge to and , and merge to . In Eastern Lombard, the last sound is often further debuccalized to .


Vowels

In Western varieties,
vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual length (phonetics), duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many ...
is contrastive ( Milanese "to go" and "gone"), but Eastern varieties normally use only short
allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...
s. Two repeating orthographic vowels are separated by a dash to prevent them from being confused with a long vowel: ''a-a'' in ''ca-àl'' "horse". Western long and short tend to be back and lower , respectively, and and may merge to .


Alternative spelling systems

There have been contemporary attempts to develop alternative spelling systems suitable for use by all variants of Lombard. Among these, there is the attempt to develop a unified spelling (lomb. urtugrafia ünificada), which has not taken root due to the excessive complexity and lack of intuitiveness (as well as the lack of adaptability to the Italian keyboard) of the system, which uses symbols such as ç for /z/ and /ʧ/, or ə for unstressed /a/, /ə/ and /e/, as well as the obligation to mark the vowel length, despite the elimination of the accents on the first grapheme of the digraph (aa and not àa).Claudio Beretta e Cesare Comoletti, ''Grafia lombarda semplificata'', 2003. In: Claudio Beretta (a c. di), ''Parlate e dialetti della Lombardia: lessico comparato'', Milano, Mondadori: pp. 23-24.Claudio Meneghin, ''Rebuilding the Rhaeto-Cisalpine written language: Guidelines and criteria'', 2007-2010. ''Part I: ORS-Orthography''. ''Part II: Morphology, I: noun, article and personal pronoun''. ''Part III. Morphology, II: adjectives, pronouns, invariables''. ''Part IV. Morphology, III: the verb''. ''Ianua'' 7 (2007): 37-72; 8 (2008): 113-152; 9 (2009): 37-94; 10 (2010): 33-72 Some examples are presented below:


See also

* Diachronics of plural inflection in the Gallo-Italian languages * Emilian-Romagnol language *
Gallo-Italic of Sicily The Gallo-Italic, Gallo-Italian, Gallo-Cisalpine or simply Cisalpine languages constitute the majority of the Romance languages Languages of Italy#Northern Italy, of northern Italy: Piedmontese language, Piedmontese, Lombard language, Lombard, Em ...
* La Spezia–Rimini Line *
Languages of Europe There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe, and most belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a demographics of Europe, total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European lang ...
* Ligurian language *
Piedmontese language Piedmontese ( ; autonym: or ; ) is a language spoken by some 2,000,000 people mostly in Piedmont, a region of Northwest Italy. Although considered by most linguists a separate Romance languages, language, in Italy it is often mistakenly regar ...
* Pierre Bec * Romance plurals *
Venetian language Venetian, also known as wider Venetian or Venetan ( or ), is a Romance languages, Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy,Ethnologue mostly in Veneto, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is som ...


Notes


References


Sources

* * * Bernard Comrie, Stephen Matthews, Maria Polinsky (eds.), The Atlas of languages: the origin and development of languages throughout the world. New York 2003, Facts On File. p. 40. * Brevini, Franco - Lo stile lombardo: la tradizione letteraria da Bonvesin da la Riva a Franco Loi / Franco Brevini - Pantarei, Lugan - 1984 (Lombard style: literary tradition from Bonvesin da la Riva to Franco Loi ) * Glauco Sanga: La lingua Lombarda, in Koiné in Italia, dalle origini al 500 (Koinés in Italy, from the origin to 1500), Lubrina publisher, Bèrghem. * Claudio Beretta: ''Letteratura dialettale milanese. Itinerario antologico-critico dalle origini ai nostri giorni'' - Hoepli, 2003. * G. Hull: "The linguistic Unity of Northern
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
and
Rhaetia Raetia or Rhaetia ( , ) was a Roman province, province of the Roman Empire named after the Rhaetian people. It bordered on the west with the country of the Helvetii, on the east with Noricum, on the north with Vindelicia, on the south-west wit ...
, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1982; published as ''The Linguistic Unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia: Historical Grammar of the Padanian Language'', 2 vols. Sydney: Beta Crucis Editions, 2017. * Jørgen G. Bosoni: ''«Una proposta di grafia unificata per le varietà linguistiche lombarde: regole per la trascrizione»'', in ''Bollettino della Società Storica dell’Alta Valtellina'' 6/2003, p. 195-298 (Società Storica Alta Valtellina: Bormio, 2003). A comprehensive description of a unified set of writing rules for all the Lombard varieties of Switzerland and Italy, with IPA transcriptions and examples. * Tamburelli, M. (2014). Uncovering the 'hidden' multilingualism of Europe: an Italian case study. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(3), 252-270. * NED Editori: ''I quatter Vangeli de Mattee, March, Luca E Gioann'' - 2002. * Stephen A. Wurm: Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Paris 2001,
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
Publishing, p. 29. * Studi di lingua e letteratura lombarda offerti a Maurizio Vitale, (Studies in Lombard language and literature) Pisa: Giardini, 1983 * A cura di Pierluigi Beltrami, Bruno Ferrari, Luciano Tibiletti, Giorgio D'Ilario: ''Canzoniere Lombardo'' - Varesina Grafica Editrice, 1970. * Sanga, Glauco. 1984. Dialettologia Lombarda. University of Pavia. 346pp.


External links


Far Lombard
This Lombard language association website is a place where you can learn Lombard through texts and audio visual materials.
Lombard language digital library

Learn Lombard online

Learn Lombard Italian site

Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia del Cantone Ticino

Repubblica e Cantone Ticino
Documenti orali della Svizzera italiana.
Istituto di dialettologia e di etnografia valtellinese e valchiavennasca
.
LSI - Lessico dialettale della Svizzera italiana

RTSI: Acquarelli popolari
some video and audio documents (interviews, recordings, etc. of writers from
Ticino Ticino ( ), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts ...
) in Ticinese varieties (the metalanguage of this site is Italian, and some of the interviews are in Italian rather than in Ticinese Lombard).
UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages: Europe. Potentially endangered languages
where Lombard is classified as a potentially endangered language.
VSI - Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana


website dedicated to the Lombard language (in English)
dizionari.lombard (monolingual Lombard online dictionary)

Lombard basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

Lombard Wiktionary
{{Authority control Languages of Italy Languages of Lombardy Languages of Piedmont Languages of Switzerland