Cremonese (Cremunés) is a dialect of the

Western Lombard dialect 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 ...

group spoken in the city and province of

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

, with the exception of Crema and the area of

Soresina Soresina ( Soresinese: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Cremona in the Italian region Lombardy, located about southeast of Milan and about northwest of Cremona. It received the honorary title of city with a presidential decree ...

, where an

Eastern Lombard Eastern Lombard is a group of closely related variants of Lombard, a Gallo-Italic language spoken in Lombardy, mainly in the provinces of Bergamo, Brescia and Mantua, in the area around Cremona and in parts of Trentino. Its main variants are ...

dialect is spoken, and the area of

Casalmaggiore Casalmaggiore ( Casalasco-Viadanese: ) is a ''comune'' in the province of Cremona, Lombardy, Italy, located on the Po River. It was the birthplace of Italian composers Ignazio Donati and Andrea Zani. Recently, its women's volleyball team Volleyb ...

, where a form of Emilian closely related to

Parmigiano Parmesan (, ) is an Italian hard, granular cheese produced from cow's milk and aged at least 12 months. It is a grana-type cheese, along with Grana Padano, the historic , and others. The term ''Parmesan'' may refer to either Parmigiano Re ...

is spoken. Being at the crossroad between the core areas of different Lombard varieties, Cremonese exhibits features from both

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 ...

and

, and a few which are typical of dialects spoken in the nearby region of

Emilia-Romagna Emilia-Romagna (, , both , ; or ; ) is an Regions of Italy, administrative region of northern Italy, comprising the historical regions of Emilia (region), Emilia and Romagna. Its capital is Bologna. It has an area of , and a population of 4.4 m ...

. It is best classified within the Southwestern Lombard group of dialects. Mappa Dialetti lombardi

Phonology

Vowels

The Cremonese dialect of the Lombard language has 9 vowel qualities, which can be either phonemically long or short, without any difference in quality. The following 18 phonemes occur in stressed environments: /i/ /iː/ /y/ /yː/ /e/ /eː/ /ø/ /øː/ /ɛ/ /ɛː/ /a/ /aː/ /ɔ/ /ɔː/ /o/ /oː/ /u/ /uː/. Vowel length is contrastive in stressed syllables. For example, /'veːder/ ''glass'' with a long /eː/ differs from /'veder/ ''to see'', with a short /e/. This is a reflex of the

Proto-Romance Proto-Romance is the result of applying the comparative method to reconstruct the latest common ancestor of the Romance languages. To what extent, if any, such a reconstruction reflects a real ''état de langue'' is controversial. The closest real ...

rule of lengthening open syllables, which in Cremonese, has led to phonemic vowel length also being contrastive in penultimate-stressed words, as well as in monosyllabic words. In unstressed position, only the following 6 vowels occur: /i/ /e/ /ø/ /ɛ/ /a/ /u/.

Orthography

The publication of the ''Dizionario del dialetto cremonese'' in 1976 by the ''Comitato promotore di studi e ricerche di dialettologia, storia e folklore cremonese'' outlined an orthography for Cremonese. The orthography is a follows: * ''a'' as in Italian (and''àa'': to go, Italian: ''andare'') * ''è'' for open /ɛ/ (pulèer: Italian: pollaio) * ''é'' for closed /e/ (fradél: Italian: fratello) * ''i'' as in Italian (finìi: Italian: finire) * ''ò'' for open /ɔ/ (bòon: Italian: buono) * ''ó'' for closed /o/ (fióol: Italian: ragazzo) * ''u'' as in Italian (pùl: Italian: pollo) * ''ö'' as in French "eu" and German "ö" (nisöön: Italian: nessuno) * ''ü'' as in French "u" and German "ü" (paüüra: Italian: paura) Vowel length is represented by doubling the vowel letter, with the acute or grave diacritic removed for the second and letters. The umlaut diacritic however is retained across both letters, thus <öö> for /øː/ and <üü> for /yː/.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cremunes dialect Western Lombard language