Piedmontese language

Piedmontese (autonym: or , in it, piemontese) is a language spoken by some 2,000,000 people mostly in

Piedmont

, northwestern region of

Italy

. Although considered by many linguists a separate

language

, in Italy it is often regarded as an Italian dialect. It is linguistically included in the

Gallo-Italic languages

group of Northern Italy (with

Lombard

, Emilian, Ligurian and Romagnolo), which would make it part of the wider western group of Romance languages, which also includes

French

, Occitan, and Catalan. It is spoken in the core of

Piedmont

, in northwestern

Liguria

, near

Savona

and in Lombardy (some municipalities in the westernmost part of Lomellina near

Pavia

).

It has some support from the

Piedmont

regional government but is considered a dialect rather than a separate language by the Italian central government.

Due to the Italian diaspora Piedmontese has spread in the

Argentinian

Pampas

, where many immigrants from Piedmont settled. The Piedmontese language is also spoken in some states of Brazil, as well as the Venetian language.

History

The first documents in the Piedmontese language were written in the 12th century, the ''sermones subalpini'', when it was extremely close to Occitan. Literary Piedmontese developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it did not gain literary esteem comparable to that of French or Italian, other

language

s used in Piedmont. Nevertheless,

literature

in Piedmontese has never ceased to be produced: it includes

poetry

,

theatre

pieces,

novel

s, and scientific work.

Current status

In 2004, Piedmontese was recognised as Piedmont's regional language by the regional parliament,''Piemontèis d'amblé - Avviamento Modulare alla conoscenza della Lingua piemontese''; R. Capello, C. Comòli, M.M. Sánchez Martínez, R.J.M. Nové; Regione Piemonte/Gioventura Piemontèisa; Turin, 2001 although the Italian government has not yet recognised it as such. In theory, it is now supposed to be taught to children in school, but this is happening only to a limited extent.

The last decade has seen the publication of learning materials for schoolchildren, as well as general-public magazines. Courses for people already outside the education system have also been developed. In spite of these advances, the current state of Piedmontese is quite grave, as over the last 150 years the number of people with a written active knowledge of the language has shrunk to about 2% of native speakers, according to a recent survey.
Knowledge and Usage of the Piedmontese Language in Turin and its Province
'', carried out by ''Euromarket'', a Turin-based market research company on behalf of the ''Riformisti per l'Ulivo'' party in the Piedmontese Regional Parliament in 2003 . On the other hand, the same survey showed Piedmontese is still spoken by over half the population, alongside Italian. Authoritative sources confirm this result, putting the figure between 2 million (Assimil,F. Rubat Borel, M. Tosco, V. Bertolino. ''Il Piemontese in Tasca'', a Piedmontese basic language course and conversation guide, published by Assimil Italia (the Italian branch of ''Assimil'', the leading French producer of language courses) in 2006.
assimil.it
/ref> IRES Piemonte and 3 million speakers (EthnologueLewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL Internationa
ISO 639-3, pms (Piemontese)
Retrieved 13 June 2012) out of a population of 4.2 million people. Efforts to make it one of the official languages of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics were unsuccessful.

Regional variants

Piedmontese is divided into three major groups

* Western which include the dialects of

Turin

and

Cuneo

.
* Eastern which in turn is divided into south-eastern (Astigiano, Roero, Monregalese, High Montferrat, Langarolo, Alessandrino) and north-eastern (Low Montferrat, Biellese, Vercellese, Valsesiano).
* Canevese, spoken in the Canavese region in north-western Piedmont.

The variants can be detected in the variation of the accent and variation of words. It is sometimes difficult to understand a person that speaks a different Piedmontese from the one you are used to, as the words or accents are not the same.

Eastern and western group

Eastern Piedmontese is more phonological evolved than its western counterpart.

The words that in the west end with jt, jd or t in the east end with ʒe/o

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