Bustocco and Legnanese (natively and ) are two dialects of
Western Lombard
Western Lombard is a group of varieties of the Lombard language, a Romance language of the Gallo-Italic subgroup. It is spoken primarily in Italy and Switzerland. Within Italy, it is prevalent in the Lombard provinces of Milan, Monza and Brianz ...
, spoken respectively in the cities of
Busto Arsizio
Busto Arsizio (; ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the south-easternmost part of the province of Varese, in the Italy, Italian region of Lombardy, north of Milan. The economy of Busto Arsizio is mainly based on industry and commerce. It is the ...
(
Province of Varese
The province of Varese () is a Provinces of Italy, province in the Lombardy region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Varese (population of 80,857 inhabitants), but its largest city is Busto Arsizio. The headquarters of AgustaWestland, the compa ...
) and
Legnano (
Province of Milan
The province of Milan () was a province in the Lombardy region of Italy. Its capital was the city of Milan. The area of the former province is highly urbanized, with more than 2,000 inhabitants/km2, the third-highest population density among Ital ...
),
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 ...
.
Although there is little evidence of Ligurian settlements in the area, they are widely thought to have been characterised by the
Ligurian substratum
Substrata, plural of substratum, may refer to:
*Earth's substrata, the geologic layering of the Earth
*''Hypokeimenon'', sometimes translated as ''substratum'', a concept in metaphysics
*Substrata (album), a 1997 ambient music album by Biosphere
* ...
. While Legnanese is closer to the
Milanese dialect
Milanese (endonym in traditional orthography , ) is the central variety of the Western dialect of the Lombard language spoken in Milan, the rest of its metropolitan city, and the northernmost part of the province of Pavia. Milanese, due to t ...
, Bustocco is especially considered very similar to the modern
Ligurian language
Ligurian ( ; endonym: ) or Genoese ( ; endonym: or ) is a Gallo-Italic language spoken primarily in the territories of the former Republic of Genoa, now comprising the area of Liguria in Northern Italy, parts of the Mediterranean coastal zone o ...
, for example for the frequent unstressed at the end of masculine nouns and other words is more frequent (e.g. Bustocco "cat", "dry", "hot", "glass", "when" = Legnanese , , , , ), as well as the elimination of some intervocalic consonants (e.g. Bustocco "to work" = Legnanese ). In both dialects stressed sounds like a mix between ''a'' and ''o''.
A comic theatrical group called ''I Legnanesi'' uses Legnanese (with simplified grammar and lexicon heavily based on Italian) in its shows.
References
{{Languages of Italy
Western Lombard language