|
 |
About Italian dialects | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6834 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes  Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 1 of 65 01 April 2006 at 8:20am | IP Logged | ||
|
I've read many posts about Standard Italian and Italian dialects,some of them a bit confused so ,as a native Italian speaker,i'd like to give my two cents on the topic.
1)Northern Dialects are generally closer to Standard Italian than the Southern ones. 2)Young people generally use Standard Italian and not their dialects however there are exceptions:in the north-east (Veneto for instance) and in the South young people are much more likely to use dialect when speaking with familiars and friends,this is not the case of North-West and Central Italy.However in all formal and semi-informal situations everyone speaks ONLY Standard Italian. 3)Most people don't speak a proper dialect but simply speak Italian with a regional accent and some dialectal words.In this form all dialects are mutually intelligible,even the trickiest southern ones . 4)Venetian,Molisan ecc.. ARE NOT languages:they're dialects. SARDINIAN on the contrary is a language and no one doubts about this in Italy. FRIULAN now is regarded as a language of the Rheto-Romance group along with Ladin and Romansch (and i agree) but many Italians are not aware it is a language,considering it more as a north-west dialect. Sicilian is a particular case:someone think it is a language (and in its proper form is absolutely NOT intelligible with Italian) ,other think it is dialect.However it is generally considered as a dialect by Italians.I think the realtion between Italian and Sicilian is the same between English and Scots. Yes,dialects have their written forms,this is to write down the dialectal poetry and literature but this is not an element to consider them languages. About Ladin-Romansch: i don't consider them dialects of Italian because they're not mutually intelligible with the standard language. Finally Standard Italian "was born" in the XIX century based on the kind of Italian spoken in Florence (and the symbol of this "Unified Italian" is the novel "I Promessi sposi"("The Bethroted") by Alessandro Manzoni,that we study page by page at high school here in Italy and I think is a must for every intermediate-advanced Italian learner :) ) but its pronounciation (that used in radio and tv broadcasting) is different both from the "florentine accent" and from the accent of Rome which are two very characterized accents immediately recognizable. We could say that no one in real life speak Italian the very same way RAI radio speakers do (and indeed actors,speakers etc take diction courses) however the language spoken by every educated person is very close to this "received pronounciation" :) My English teacher always said : an English-speaker who learnt Italian and go to Naples or Palermo to practice is going to cry a lot ,just like an Italian who learnt English at school in Glasgow (She completed her English language training in Glasgow when she was young and she told us that after managing to understand Scottish people she felt sure she could understand every english-speaker in every corner of the world :)) LOL If you have any question i'll be glad to answer the better I can :) Edited by easyboy82 on 02 August 2006 at 5:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 65 31 July 2006 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Thanks for this admirable post which I found by accident. With the Ethnologue and other sources trying to make every dialect in every country into a language I'm glad to see that you only accept Sardinian and the Romansch dialects (Frulian and Ladin) and maybe Sicilian as languages, contrary to for instance http://www.ethnologue.com who counts as separate languages everything from Piemontese and Ligurian over standard "Italian" (with all sorts of dialects) to Napoletano-Calabrese and Sicilian, - it's enough to make any aspiring polyglot very very tired with so many languages yet to learn.
I find it interesting that you cannot define the dialect of the RAI speakers. My preferred source of spoken Italian is the news broadcasts of Rai Uno, because most of the other stuff on that channel is rubbish (except when I by accident stumble upon the only good non fiction show in RAI Uno: Quark). The conclusion must be that by listening to the news you learn a good non-regional standard version of Italian. I'm happy to hear that. On the other hand: it is understandable that the Italian media and the Italian administration try to downplay the linguistic diversity of Italy; with so many dialects and so short a history as a unified country (apart from the Vatican and San Marino) it is a logical reaction. But it also means that there is preciously little support for some of the 'real' languages, such as Sardinian and Friulian/Ladino. As far as I know they are hardly taught in schools, and there are almost no TV or radio stations supporting them. Would it be a reasonable guess that they are gone or totally mixed up with Rai-Italian in a generation or two? Edited by Iversen on 31 July 2006 at 6:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6913 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 65 01 August 2006 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||
|
I've heard about a dialect which is said to be a blend of Italian and Greek (Italian with a lot of Greek words, I suppose) - where is that spoken?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6748 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 65 01 August 2006 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | ||
Iversen, it's not clear what your problem is with there being a large number of languages in Italy, apart from the 'difficulties' for the polyglot who, of course, is under no obligation to learn any of them! Many posters seem to be under the illusion that a dialect is linguistically somehow less of a thing than a language -- whereas in fact they're the same thing. Easyboy's comments are highly subjective, certainly more so than Ethnologue's. Venetian, for example, is a very old language, and doesn't even belong to the same subgroup of languages as Italian. Sometimes even native speakers don't know what they're talking about ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6834 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 5 of 65 02 August 2006 at 4:57am | IP Logged | ||
What you're talking about is not a blend of Italian and Greek but a variety of Greek spoken by little communities in some parts of Calabria and Puglia and called "Grico" (in Puglia) or "Grecanico" (in Calabria) : it is somewhat different from Modern Greek spoken in Greece because of its isolation and it's declining today above all in Calabria (2000 speakers,mostly old people) while the popolation of the "Grecia Salentina" in Puglia is of 50.000 people (but not all hellenophones). You can find more informations on the site Euromosaic of the European Union where there is an exhaustive article about Greek language minorities in Italy. Edited by easyboy82 on 02 August 2006 at 5:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6834 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 6 of 65 02 August 2006 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||
First I'd like to underline that I don't speak without knowing what I'm saying since ,even if I'm far from claiming to be a linguist, I study at the fac of Litterature at University so I have a knowledge of these subjects,I'm aware of the socio-linguistic scenario of my country and what I wrote reflect the common feelings of Italian people towards this subject.But after that there is the common sense. I don't want to enter the discussion on the distinction between language and dialect (I have my opinions on this matter but they are indeed opinions). But it's important to know that what ethnologue (I find they're site very approssimative from many points of view) reports as languages are only regional varieties of Italian:at least as they're spoken today and as they're perceived by those who speak them!Venetians (I know the origin of this dialect but this don't change the situation) or Molisans will tell you that they speak a dialect of Italian and only few fanatics will say it is a distinct language.This also because few (and fewer) speak these dialects in their pure form but they speak a form of regional italian with a regional accent and some dialectal words. If a Ligurian or a Roman goes to Molise or to Naples and begins talking in Molisan or Neapolitan (dialects he learnt), locals will think he's funny and weird ,if not ridiculous.I say that because I read on this forum of people from abroad wanting to learn Neapolitan or Sicilian:it is a good thing for sake of knowledge, but it is important to know that it is not such a good idea in order to communicate. One thing is the theory,another is the reality and we must be aware of both. Edited by easyboy82 on 02 August 2006 at 5:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6913 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 65 02 August 2006 at 5:28am | IP Logged | ||
|
Thanks for that, easyboy82!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6834 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 8 of 65 02 August 2006 at 5:47am | IP Logged | ||
You're welcome! You can also read the articles on Wikipedia: I found the English article "Griko" somewhat confused and inaccurate so yo should go to the Italian Wiki articles "Greco di Calabria","Grecia Salentina" and "Isola linguistica greca" (you could try to translate them with an automatic web translator such as Babelfish in order to catch the essential information). 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
