Ossolano is the

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 ...

dialect spoken in the

Ossola The Ossola (; ), also Valle Ossola or Val d'Ossola (; ), is an area of Northwest Italy situated to the north of Lago Maggiore. It lies within the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola. Its principal river is the Toce, and its most important town Do ...

valley,

Northwest Italy Northwest Italy ( or just ) is one of the five official statistical regions of Italy used by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), a first level NUTS region and a European Parliament constituency. Northwest encompasses four of the ...

. It is an umbrella name for a number of dialects spoken in the main Ossola valley and the other seven valleys and their subvalley that spread from it. As the territory is very mountainous, many different variations exist. They are mostly intelligible to one another, save for some specific words that seem to have arisen only in some villages and not others. For instance, "cat" in mainstream Ossolano is , but in Mozziese it is (the "cinder-one", due to domesticated mountain cats' habit to roll up in front of the fire in mountain huts). Perhaps the most famous poet in Ossolano is

Giovanni Leoni Giovanni Leoni (born 21 December 2006) is an Italian professional footballer who plays as a centre-back for club Parma. Club career Leoni was born in Rome and moved to Padua at the age of 5. He began playing football with Vigontina before m ...

(affectionately known as , "the Bard"), a merchant, sea farer and alpinist who is still known among the locals.

References

{{Languages of Italy Western Lombard language