The classical Milanese orthography is the

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mo ...

used for the

Western Lombard Western Lombard is a group of dialects of Lombard, a Romance language spoken in Italy. It is widespread in the Lombard provinces of Milan, Monza, Varese, Como, Lecco, Sondrio, a small part of Cremona (except Crema and its neighbours), ...

language, in particular for the Milanese dialect, by the major poets and writers of this literature, such as Carlo Porta,

Carlo Maria Maggi Carlo Maria Maggi (Milan, 1630 – Milan, 1699) was an Italian scholar, writer and poet. Despite being an Accademia della Crusca affiliate, he gained his fame as an author of "dialectal" works (poems and plays) in Milanese language, for which he ...

, Delio Tessa, etc. It was first used in the sixteenth century by Carlo Maria Maggi; Maggi first introduced the trigram ''oeu'', while previous authors, like Bonvesin de la Riva (thirteenth century), used Latinizing orthographies. In 1606 G. A. Biffi with his ''Prissian de Milan de la parnonzia milanesa'' began the first codification, incorporating vowel length and the use of ''ou'' to represent the sound . The classical orthography came as a compromise between the old Tuscan system and the French one; the characteristic that considerably differentiates this orthography from the effective pronunciation is the method for the distinction of long and short vowels. As of today, because it has become more archaic, it is often replaced by simpler methods that use signs ''ö'', ''ü'' for front rounded vowels and the redoubling of vowels for long vowels. The classical orthography was regularized in the 1990s by the ''Circolo Filologico Milanese'' for modern use. The classical Milanese orthography (as edited by ''Circolo Filologico Milanese'') has the following conventions that differ from

Italian alphabet Italian orthography (writing) uses a variant of the Latin alphabet consisting of 21 letters to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine dialect. Italian orthography ...

. General use of accents: * acute accent: indicates a closed sound in ''e'' or ''o'' ( and respectively, as in Italian) * grave accent: indicates an open sound in ''e'' or ''o'' ( and respectively, as in Italian) *

circumflex accent The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...

: indicates a stressed short ''o'' when otherwise would be unstressed ( ; the circumflex is not used in Italian) Pronunciation of vowels and false

diphthongs A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...

: *, , represent open and short vowels when followed by doubled consonants or if accented at the end of a word, and close and long when followed by single consonant. * represents * represents * represents ; may also represent after or in the diphthong . Use of consonants: *doubling: makes the preceding vowel short and open * represents either a voiced or voiceless sibilant; intervocalically, it is always voiced, and voiceless is represented with a double . Word-finally, it is always voiceless. * represents historical or * after a vowel and followed by consonant (or word-final) represents the nasalization of the preceding vowel; before another vowel or when written doubled, it represents . * represents the nasalization of the preceding vowel when followed by consonant or word-final; otherwise it represents . * represents that the preceding or are velar before a front vowel. * represents * represents * represents //

Table of pronunciation

*The stress is normally on the penultimate syllable for words ending in vowel, on the last syllable for these ending in consonant.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Classical Milanese Orthography Western Lombard language Indo-European Latin-script orthographies