Talian (or Brazilian Venetian,
, , but ) is a
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
of the
Venetian language
Venetian, wider Venetian or Venetan ( or ) is a Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy,Ethnologue mostly in the Veneto region, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and of ...
, spoken primarily in the
Serra Gaúcha region in the northeast of the state of
Rio Grande do Sul in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. It is also spoken in other parts of Rio Grande do Sul, as well as in parts of
Espirito Santo and of
Santa Catarina.
Despite the similar names, Talian is not derived from standard
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
(usually called or 'grammatical Italian' in Brazil), but is mainly a mix of
Venetian dialects influenced by other
Gallo-Italian languages
The Gallo-Italic, Gallo-Italian, Gallo-Cisalpine or simply Cisalpine languages constitute the majority of the Romance languages of northern Italy. They are Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian, and Romagnol. Although most publications de ...
as well as local
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
.
History
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
settlers first began arriving into these regions in a wave of immigration lasting from approximately 1875 to 1914.
These settlers were mainly from
Veneto
it, Veneto (man) it, Veneta (woman)
, population_note =
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, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 =
, demographics1_footnotes =
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, a region in
Northern Italy, where
Venetian was spoken, but also from
Trentino
Trentino ( lld, Trentin), officially the Autonomous Province of Trento, is an autonomous province of Italy, in the country's far north. The Trentino and South Tyrol constitute the region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, an autonomous region ...
and
Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
[ In the south of Brazil these immigrants settled as smallholders in the region of Encosta da Serra. There they created three settlements: Conde D'Eu (now, Garibaldi, Rio Grande do Sul), Dona Isabel (now ]Bento Gonçalves, Rio Grande do Sul
Bento Gonçalves () is a municipality located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Created in 1875, it is one of the centers of the Italian immigration in Brazil. It is also known as the 'wine capital of Brazil' due to its vineyards and win ...
), and Campo dos Bugres (now Caxias do Sul). As more people arrived, the Italian settlement expanded beyond these localities. Approximately 100,000 immigrants from Northern Italy arrived between 1875 and 1910. As time went by, a uniquely southern Brazilian dialect emerged. Veneto became the basis for Italian-Brazilian regionalism.
Talian has been very much influenced not only by other Italian languages but also Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
, the national language of Brazil; this can be seen in the employment of numerous non-Venetian loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s. It has been estimated that there have been 130 books published in Talian, including works of both poetry and prose.
Similar to Riograndenser Hunsrückisch (''hunsriqueano riograndense''), the main German dialect spoken by southern Brazilians of German origin, Talian has suffered great deprecation since the 1940s. At that time, President Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas (; 19 April 1882 – 24 August 1954) was a Brazilian lawyer and politician who served as the 14th and 17th president of Brazil, from 1930 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1954. Due to his long and controversial tenure as Brazi ...
started a campaign of nationalization (similar to the Nacionalismo of neighboring Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
) to try to force non-Portuguese speakers of Brazil to "better integrate" into the national mainstream culture. Speaking Talian or German in public, especially in education and press, was forbidden.
Current status
Talian has historically been spoken mainly in the southern Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná, as well as in Espirito Santo.[ Nowadays, there are approximately 3 million people of Italian ancestry in Rio Grande do Sul, about 30% of the local population,] and approximately 1.7 million people in Espirito Santo, which accounts for 65% of the local population. All Talians adopted in the past Portuguese as their mother tongue. According to some estimates, there are up to one million Italian descendants; Ethnologue reported 4,000,000 Italian descendants in the year 2006, but these numbers do not reflect absolutely the number of Talian speakers. During the " Estado Novo" period of the government of Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas (; 19 April 1882 – 24 August 1954) was a Brazilian lawyer and politician who served as the 14th and 17th president of Brazil, from 1930 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1954. Due to his long and controversial tenure as Brazi ...
, the use of Talian was declared illegal. As a result of the traumas of Vargas' policies, there is, even to this day, a stigma attached to speaking these languages. In fact, the vast majority do not even understand Talian and the few people who understand a little bit Talian have Portuguese as their mother tongue (the same thing happens with the Hunsrik language).
In 2009, the legislative assemblies of the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina approved laws declaring the Talian dialect to be an integral part of the historical heritage of their respective states. In 2009, the city of Serafina Corrêa, in Rio Grande do Sul, elected Talian as co-official language, alongside Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
. Finally, in 2014 Talian was declared to be part of the cultural heritage of Brazil (''Língua e referência cultural brasileira'') by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage
The National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (, IPHAN) is a heritage register of the federal government of Brazil. It is responsible for the preservation of buildings, monuments, structures, objects and sites, as well as the register and ...
.
Newspaper
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...
s in the Talian-speaking region feature articles written in the language. There are some radio programs broadcast in Talian.
Municipalities in Brazil that have co-official Talian language
* Antônio Prado, Rio Grande do Sul
* Bento Gonçalves, Rio Grande do Sul
* Camargo, Rio Grande do Sul[Línguas cooficializadas nos municípios brasileiros](_blank)
Instituto de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Política Linguística (IPOL)
* Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul
* Casca, Rio Grande do Sul
* Fagundes Varela, Rio Grande do Sul
* Farroupilha, Rio Grande do Sul
* Flores da Cunha, Rio Grande do Sul
*Garibaldi
Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi ( , ;In his native Ligurian language, he is known as ''Gioxeppe Gaibado''. In his particular Niçard dialect of Ligurian, he was known as ''Jousé'' or ''Josep''. 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, pat ...
, Rio Grande do Sul
*Guabiju
Guabiju is a municipality in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. As of 2020, the estimated population was 1,490.
See also
*List of municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul
This is a list of the municipalities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (R ...
, Rio Grande do Sul
* Ipumirim, Santa Catarina[Lei Nº 1.868, de 17 de dezembro de 2020](_blank)
- Dispõe sobre a cooficialização das línguas talian e hunsrückisch no município de Ipumirim - SC.
* Ivorá, Rio Grande do Sul
*Nova Bassano
Nova Bassano is a municipality and a city in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, south Brazil.
History
Nova Bassano was established by Italian immigrants around 1890. Among them was Padre Pedro Antônio Colbachini, a Catholic priest member of the Sc ...
, Rio Grande do Sul
* Nova Erechim, Santa Catarina
* Nova Pádua, Rio Grande do Sul
* Nova Roma do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul
* Ouro, Santa Catarina
* Paraí, Rio Grande do Sul
* Pinto Bandeira, Rio Grande do Sul
* Serafina Corrêa, Rio Grande do Sul
*Vila Flores
Vila Flores is a municipality in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. As of 2020, the estimated population was 3,396.
See also
*List of municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul
This is a list of the municipalities in the state of Rio Grande do S ...
, Rio Grande do Sul
Brazilian states with Talian as linguistic heritage officially approved statewide
* Rio Grande do Sul[Aprovado projeto que declara o Talian como patrimônio do RS](_blank)
, accessed on 21 August 2011
* Santa Catarina
See also
* Italian Brazilians
Italian Brazilians ( it, italo-brasiliani, pt, ítalo-brasileiros) are Brazilians of full or partial Italian descent. Italian Brazilians are the largest number of people with full or partial Italian ancestry outside Italy, with São Paulo bein ...
* Chipilo Venetian dialect
* Venetian language
Venetian, wider Venetian or Venetan ( or ) is a Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy,Ethnologue mostly in the Veneto region, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and of ...
* Languages of Brazil
Portuguese is the official and national language of Brazil being widely spoken by most of the population. Brazil is the most populous Portuguese-speaking country in the world, being the only country colonized by the Portuguese in the Americas. ...
* Languages of South America
The languages of South America can be divided into three broad groups:
* the languages of the (in most cases, former) colonial powers;
* many indigenous languages, some of which are co-official alongside the colonial languages;
* and various ...
References
External links
YouTube video interview about Talian with Talian speaker from the town of Monte Belo do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
YouTube video interview with a couple of Talian speakers from the town of Venda Nova do Imigrante, Espírito Santo, Brazil
YouTube video radio station broadcast in Talian in the town of Serafina Correa, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Portuguese essay, written by Bernardette Soldatelli Oliboni
''A estigmatização como fator determinante dos bloqueios de fala de descendentes de italianos no nordeste do Rio Grande do Sul'' ("Stigmatization as a determining impeding factor to the language of descendants of Italians in the northeast of Rio Grande do Sul")
Musibrasil
{{Romance languages
Venetian language
Languages of Brazil
Endangered diaspora languages
Italian language in the Americas
Italian-Brazilian culture