Natisone Valley dialect
nedìško narèčje
Pronunciation	[nɛˈdiːʃkɔnaˈɾɛt͡ʃjɛ]
Native to	Italy,Slovenia
Region	Natisone valley (Venetian Slovenia)
Ethnicity	Slovenes
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic South Slavic Western South Slavic Slovenian Littoral dialect group Natisone Valley dialect
Dialects	Western microdialects Eastern microdialects
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Italy
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
IETF	sl-nedis
Natisone Valley dialect

TheNatisone Valley dialect (Natisone Valley:nedìško narèčje;Slovene:nadiško narečje[naˈdíːʃkɔnaˈɾéːt͡ʃjɛ],^[1]nadiščina;^[2]Italian:dialetto natisoniano^[3]), orNadiža dialect, is aSlovene dialect spoken mainly inVenetian Slovenia, but also in a small part of Slovenia. It is one of the two dialects in theLittoral dialect group to have its own written form, along withResian. It is closely related to theTorre Valley dialect, which has a higher degree of vowel reduction but shares practically the same accented vowel system.^[4] It borders theTorre Valley dialect to the northwest, theSoča dialect to the northeast, theKarst dialect to the southeast, theBrda dialect to the south, andFriulian to the west.^[5] The dialect belongs to theLittoral dialect group, and it evolved from Venetian–Karst dialect base.^[5][6]

The Natisone Valley dialect is a dialect of Slovene, anIndo-European language belonging to the western subgroup of theSouth Slavic branch of theSlavic languages. It is quite different from standard Slovene because the standard language is based on theLower Carniolan andUpper Carniolan dialects,^[7] which formed from the southeastern proto-dialect, whereas the Natisone Valley dialect formed from the northwestern proto-dialect and shows many similarities with other dialects in the Littoral dialect group.^[8]

Nonetheless, the Natisone Valley dialect and standard Slovene are easilymutually intelligible. Even though the dialect has many words derived fromFriulian, it can still be quite easily understood by most Slovene speakers, unlike theTorre Valley dialect andResian.^[9]

The dialect is mainly spoken in northeasternItaly, inVenetian Slovenia. It is spoken along four rivers: theNatisone (Slovene:Nadiža) and its three tributaries: theAlberone (Aborna),Cosizza (Kozica), andErbezzo (Arbeč), up toSan Pietro al Natisone (Špeter Slovenov).^[10] In Slovenia, it encompasses the area west of theKolovrat range, with villages includingUkanje and Kostanjevica (part ofLig), as well as villages aroundLivek. Larger towns can only be found in Italy, such asSan Pietro al Natisone,Sanguarzo (Šenčur),Purgessimo (Prešnje),San Leonardo (Podutana), andMasseris (Mašere).^[5]

The Natisone Valley dialect is rather uniform. The easternmost microdialects are the most different, having the phonemes/ə/ and/ʎ/, which are unknown to the other microdialects, and/m/ is sometimes used instead of/n/ at the end of a word. The biggest differences between the microdialects are the reflexes forAlpine Slovene*t’, which has almost merged with*č in the west, merging into/t͡ʃ/, with the first one usually being more palatalized. In the east, however,*t’ is still distinct and even pronounced as/t͡s/ at the end of a word.^[11]

The Natisone Valley dialect haspitch accent on long syllables. It also differentiates between long and short syllables, both can occur anywhere in a word. There is, however, tendency to lengthen historically short vowels. Accent is on the same syllable as in Alpine Slavic, which is different from Standard Slovene, which has undergone*ženȁ →*žèna and optionally*məglȁ →*mə̀gla shifts (e. g. NV žená, SS žéna 'wife').^[12]

Similarly to standard Slovene, the Natisone Valley dialect also has diacritics to denote accent. The accent is free and therefore it must be denoted with a diacritic. Three standard diacritics are used; however, they do not show tonal oppositions.

The three diacritics are:^[3][13]

• Thegrave ( ` ) indicates a long vowel:à è ì ò ù (IPA/aːɛːiːɔːuː/).
• Theacute ( ´ ) indicates a short vowel:á é í ó ú (IPA/aɛiɔu/).
• Thedot above ( ˙ ) indicates an extra-short vowel:ȧ ė ȯ u̇ (IPA/ăɛ̆ɔ̆ŭ/).

In addition, there is also thecaron ( ˇ ), which indicates that a vowel can be either long or short.

The phonology of the Natisone Valley dialect is similar to that of standard Slovene. Two major exceptions are the presence of diphthongs and the existence ofpalatal consonants. However, the dialect is not uniform, and differences exist between eastern and western microdialects.^[11]

The Natisone Valley dialect has 24 (in the east 25) distinct phonemes, in comparison to 22 in standard Slovene. This is mostly due to the fact that it still has palatal/ɲ/,/ʎ/, and/tɕ/, which depalatalized in standard Slovene, merging with the hard consonants.^[14]

• Palatal/ʎ/ exists only in the eastern microdialects; in the western microdialects, it merged with/j/.
• The consonants/dʒ/ and/g/ are rare and only found in loanwords.
• Similarly to/l/ in standard Slovene, both/v/ and/l/ can undergo morphophonemic change into[u̯]; e.g.,tràva 'grass' →tràunik 'grassland'.
• The consonant/tɕ/ has the allophone[ts] at the end of a word and[tsj] between vowels in the east. In the west, the difference between/tɕ/ and/tʃ/ is barely noticeable.

The phonology of the Natisone Valley dialect is similar to that of standard Slovene, but it has a seven-vowel^[15] (eastern microdialects eight-vowel)^[16] system; two of those are diphthongs.

The Natisone Valley dialect still has neuter gender in the singular, but it feminized in the plural. It still has the masculine and neutero-stem declension, as well as the femininea-stem andi-stem declension. There is also a masculinej-stem, as well as the remains of the femininev-stem and neuters-,t-, andn-stems. These are mostly limited to single words. However, the dialect has more archaic declension patterns that differ considerably from standard Slovene:^[17]

The infinitive has lost the final -i, but it has the same accent as the long infinitive.

Many loanwords are borrowed fromFriulian andItalian, but not as much as in theTorre Valley dialect. Lexemes from Proto-Slavic developed relatively similarly to those in Standard Slovene, and so both varieties aremutually intelligible.

The dialect's orthography is mainly based on western microdialects. It has 26 letters; 25 of them are the same as in the Slovene alphabet, and⟨ǧ⟩ has been added for the phoneme/dʒ/, which is written⟨dž⟩ in Standard Slovene.

Standard orthography, used in almost all situations, uses only the letters of theISO basic Latin alphabet plus⟨č⟩,⟨š⟩,⟨ž⟩, and⟨ǧ⟩:^[19]

The orthography thus underdifferentiates several phonemic distinctions:

• Stress, vowel length, and tone are not distinguished, except with optional diacritics when it is necessary to distinguish between similar words with a different meaning.
• The consonant/g/ is not differentiated from itsspirantized version,/ɣ/, and both are written as⟨g⟩.
• The consonants/t͡ʃ/ and/t͡ɕ/ also are not differentiated, both being written as⟨č⟩.
• The letter⟨u⟩ is used to write syllabic/u/ as well as non-syllabic "false u"/u̯/.

The Natisone Valley dialect is unregulated, and thus a fair degree of variation is common in both pronunciation and writing. The eastern microdialects are completely unstandardized, like most other Slovene dialects. In contrast, the western microdialects have their own dictionary and grammar, written by Nino Špehonja in 2012.^[3][20] The dictionary still allows many variations in writing, and consequently pronunciation. The main reason for different spellings isakanye, which is more common in some microdialects and less in others; e.g., the word for 'bonfire' can either be written askries orkrias.

• Logar, Tine (1996). Kenda-Jež, Karmen (ed.).Dialektološke in jezikovnozgodovinske razprave [Dialectological and etymological discussions] (in Slovenian).Ljubljana: Znanstvenoraziskovalni centerSAZU, Inštitut za slovenski jezik Frana Ramovša.ISBN 961-6182-18-8.
• Šekli, Matej (2007).Fonološki opis govora vasi Jevšček pri Livku nadiškega narečja slovenščine (in Slovenian). Vol. 1–2.Ljubljana: Založba ZRC. pp. 409–427.
• Šekli, Matej (2018). Legan Ravnikar, Andreja (ed.).Tipologija lingvogenez slovanskih jezikov. Collection Linguistica et philologica (in Slovenian). Translated by Plotnikova, Anastasija.Ljubljana: Znanstvenoraziskovalni centerSAZU.ISBN 978-961-05-0137-4.
• Špehonja, Nino (2012b).Nediška gramatika (in Italian). Poligrafice San Marco.
• Zuljan Kumar, Danila (27–29 September 2018). "Slovenski jezik v Nadiških dolinah". In Žele, Andreja; Šekli, Matej (eds.).Slovenistika in slavistika v zamejstvu – Videm / Slovenski slavistični kongres (in Slovenian). Ljubljana: Zveza društev Slavistično društvo Slovenije. pp. 108–121.ISBN 978-961-6715-27-0. Retrieved9 August 2022.

• Nino Špehonja,Nediška gramatika, grammar of Natisone Valley dialect (in Italian).
• Nino Špehonja,Vocabolario Italiano-Nediško, Italian-Natisone Valley dialect dictionary (in Italian).

• Slovene dialects
• Languages of Friuli-Venezia Giulia

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