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Regional Italian (Italian:italiano regionale,pronounced[itaˈljaːnoredʒoˈnaːle]) is any regional[note 1]variety of theItalian language.
Suchvernacular varieties and standard Italian exist along asociolectcontinuum, and are not to be confused with the local non-immigrantlanguages of Italy[note 2] that predate the national tongue or any regional variety thereof. Among these languages, the variousTuscan,Corsican and someCentral Italian lects are, to some extent, the closest ones to standard Italian in terms of linguistic features, since the latter is based on a somewhat polished form ofFlorentine.
The various forms of Regional Italian have phonological,morphological,syntactic,prosodic andlexical features which originate from the underlyingsubstrate of the original language of the locale.
The difference between Regional Italian and the actuallanguages of Italy, often imprecisely referred to asdialects, is exemplified by the following: inVenetian, the language spoken inVeneto, "we are arriving" would be translated intosémo drio rivàr, which is quite distinct from the Standard Italianstiamo arrivando. In the regional Italian of Veneto, the same expression would bestémo rivando orsiamo dietro ad arrivare. The same relationship holds throughout the rest of Italy: the local version of standard Italian is usually influenced by the underlying local language, which can be very different from Italian with regard tophonology,morphology,syntax, andvocabulary.[1][2] Anyone who knows Standard Italian well can usually understand Regional Italian quite well, while not managing to grasp the regional languages.[3]
Many contemporary Italian regions already had differentsubstrates before the conquest of Italy and the islands by the ancient Romans:Northern Italy had aLigurian,Venetic,Rhaetic andCeltic substrate in the areas once known asCisalpine Gaul ("Gaul on this side of the Alps");Central Italy had anUmbrian andEtruscan substrate;Southern Italy andSicily had anOscan andItalic-Greek substrate respectively; and finally,Sardinia had anindigenous (Nuragic) andPunic substrate. These languages in their respective territories contributed increolising Latin, the official language of theRoman Empire.[4]
Even though theSicilian School, using theSicilian language, had been prominent earlier, by the 14th century theTuscan dialect ofFlorence had gained prestige onceDante Alighieri,Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) andGiovanni Boccaccio all wrote major works in it: theDivine Comedy, theCanzoniere and theDecameron. Italian, defined as such, began to spread and be used as a literary and prestigious means of expression across the whole peninsula, Sicily andCorsica in the lateMiddle Ages;[5] on the other hand, it would be introduced to Sardinia by a specific order only in the second half of the 18th century (1760), when the island's ownership passed over to theHouse of Savoy.[6] It was up toPietro Bembo, a Venetian, to identify Florentine asthe language for the peninsula in theProse nelle quali si ragiona della volgar lingua (1525), in which he set up Petrarch as the perfect model.[7] Italian, however, was a literary language and so was a written rather than spoken language, except in Tuscany and Corsica.[8]
The popular diffusion of a unified Italian language was the main goal ofAlessandro Manzoni, who advocated for a single national language mainly derived from "cultured" Florentine language.[9] Having lived in Paris for many years, Manzoni had noticed thatFrench (defined as the capital's dialect) was a very lively language, spoken by ordinary people in the city's streets.[10] On the other hand, the only Italian city where even the commoners spoke something similar to literary Italian was Florence, so he thought that Italians should choose Florentine as the basis for the national language.[10]
TheItalian Peninsula's history of fragmentation and colonization by foreign powers (especiallyFrance,Spain and theAustrian Empire) between the fall of theWestern Roman Empire and its unification in 1861 played a considerable role in further jeopardizing the linguistic situation. When the unification process took place, the newly founded country used Italian mainly as a literary language.[11] ManyRomance and non-Romanceregional languages were spoken throughout the Italian Peninsula and the islands, each with their own local dialects.
Italian as a spoken language was born in two "linguistic labs"[12] consisting of the metropolitan areas inMilan andRome, which functioned as magnets for internal migration. Immigrants were only left with the national language as alingua franca to communicate with both the locals and other immigrants. After unification, Italian started to be taught at primary schools and its use by ordinary people increased considerably, along with massliteracy.[13] The regional varieties of Italian, as a product of standard Italian mixing with the regional languages, were also born.[14]
The variousregional languages would be retained by the population as their normal means of expression until the 1950s, when breakthroughs in literacy and the advent of TV broadcasting made Italian become more and more widespread, usually in its regional varieties.[15]
Establishing precise boundaries is very difficult in linguistics, and this operation at the limit can be accomplished for individual phenomena (such as the realization of a sound), but not for all of them: it is necessary to proceed in part by abstractions. In general, anisogloss is an imaginary line that marks the boundary of a linguistic phenomenon. The line traditionally referred to asLa Spezia-Rimini (though it is currently moving to the Massa-Senigallia line) is an important isogloss for Southern Europe, which delimits a continuum of languages and dialects characterized by similar phenomena that differ from others for these same phenomena.[16]
This imaginary line is used here to define not only a boundary between dialect groups, but also between Northern regional Italian on the one hand and Central and Southern regional Italian on the other.[16] Other well-defined areas are the Tuscan, theExtreme Southern Italian (comprising the peninsular part ofCalabria,Salento andSicily), and finally the Sardinian ones.[16]
Based on borders like La Spezia-Rimini, here are the most well-identified groups of regional Italian.
Northern regional Italian is characterized by a different distribution of the open and closede ando ([e,ɛ,o,ɔ]) compared to the Florentine model, particularly evident inMilan, where the opene is pronounced at the end of the word (perché[perˈkɛ]) or in the word body in closed syllable (i.e. followed by consonant:stesso[ˈstɛsso]) and the closede in word body in open syllable (i.e. not followed by consonant:bene[ˈbeːne]). Except for the extremeLigurian Levante, inLiguria, and especially in the capital, there is the opposite phenomenon: there is a tendency to close all thee even where the Italian standard does not exhibit it. InGenoa andBologna for example the namesMattèo,Irène,Emanuèle and the name of the city itself are pronounced with the closede; moreover, there is no difference in the pronunciation of the wordpesca either to mean "peach" (standard[ˈpɛska]) and "fishing" (standard[ˈpeska]), both pronounced[ˈpeska].
There is also a strong tendency to pronounce all the e's before anasal consonant as closed (usually when the nasal consonant is in the samesyllable of the e) so that /ɛ/ becomes /e/. Sempre (always) is pronounced as[ˈsempre] in Northern Italy while the standard pronunciation is[ˈsɛmpre], The only exceptions being the words that end in -enne and -emmeA characteristic of the North in opposition to the South is the almost always voiced ([z]) consonant in intervocalic position, whereas in the south it is always voiceless:[ˈkɔːza] vs.[ˈkɔːsa]. Also in opposition to the south, the north is characterized by the reduction of phonosyntactic doubling at the beginning of the word (after vowels) and the almost total abandonment of the preterite tense in verb forms as it is not present in the majority of Gallo-italic languages (they are replaced by the present perfect).
Sometimes, for older speakers, northern varieties lack geminated consonants (seegemination), especially inVeneto. The lack of the gemination standardly found in combinations of prepositions + articles (e.g. alla, dello, sull' etc.) is very widespread in casual speech, resulting in "sull'albero" sounding like[suˈlalbero] in contrast with the standard pronunciation[sulˈlalbero].
The consonants /ʃ, tʃ, dʒ/ arelabialized in standard Italian ([ʃʷ, tʃʷ, dʒʷ]), but in northern varieties they're not.
Final N's (even though they're not usually found in words with an Italian origin) are usually pronounced asvelars in northern varieties, so the typical Venetian surname "Martin" is pronounced as[marˈtiŋ] in Northern Italy but[marˈtin] in Central and Southern Italy.
In some cases, certain unstressed vowels may be pronounced more subtly or reduced in Northern Italian varieties compared to standard Italian. One example is the pronunciation of the suffix -ano for conjugating a first conjugation verb (-are) to a third plural person (they), which most of the time is phonetically realized as[-ɐno]
Widespread use ofdeterminers before feminine names (la Giulia) is also noted in almost all the north while the determiner coupled with male names (il Carlo) is typical of thePo Valley.
In the northern vocabulary words likeanguria (also common in Sardinia and Sicily), which means "watermelon", instead ofcocomero,bologna formortadella (but not everywhere),piuttosto che ("rather than") in the sense of "or" and not "instead", etc. are in use. The last, in particular, is a custom that has begun to spread also in other areas of Italy, stirring up linguistic concern,[17] as it is used with a semantic sense in contrast to that of standard Italian.
In Tuscany and especially inFlorence, theTuscan gorgia is very well known. That is, thelenition of the occlusive consonants in the post-vocalic position, including at the beginning of the word if the previous word ends up by vowel:la casa "the house"[laˈhaːsa], even to its total disappearance. Also phonological in nature are forms without the diphthonguo of Standard Italian (ova,scola,bona,foco instead ofuova,scuola,buona,fuoco), while in the syntax a tripartite system of demonstrative adjectives is in use:questo ("this") to indicate something close to the speaker (first person),codesto (lost in other varieties) for something close to the contact person (second person), orquello "that" for something far from both (third person). A Tuscan stereotype is use of forms resembling the impersonal for the first person plural:(noi) si va instead ofnoi andiamo ("we are going"), past tense(noi) si è andati, and use ofte rather thantu as second person singular subject pronoun:Te che fai stasera? rather thanTu che fai stasera? ("What are you doing tonight?"). Also typical of several areas including Tuscany is the use of the article before a female given name (la Elena,la Giulia); such use passed from Tuscany to other regions when used before the surname of well-known people, particularly of the past (ilManzoni). In the vocabulary there is the use ofspenge instead ofspegne ("extinguishes") or words likebalocco instead ofgiocattolo ("toy"),busse instead ofpercosse orbotte ("beatings"),rena instead ofsabbia ("sand"),cencio instead ofpanno ("cloth").
The Tuscan historical dialects (includingCorsican) belong to the same linguistic system as Italian, with few substantial morphological, syntactic or lexical differences compared to the standard language. As a result, unlike further from Tuscany in Italy, there are no major obstacles to mutual intelligibility of the local Romance languages and Regional Italian.
Central and Southern regional Italian is characterized by the usage of theaffricate consonants in place offricatives afternasal consonants (insolito[inˈtsɔːlito] instead of[inˈsɔːlito]), and by the doubling of thegs andbs (abile[ˈabbile] instead of[ˈaːbile],regina[redˈdʒiːna] instead of[reˈdʒiːna]). A popular trait in the everyday southern speech is the usage of theapocope of the final syllable of the words, (ma' formamma "mom",professo' forprofessore "professor",compa' forcompare "buddy, homie" etc.).
In continental Southern Italy there is a different distribution of closed and open vowels (The pronunciation "giòrno" with an openo is very widespread inCampania for example), while in Calabria, Salento and Sicily closed vowels are completely missing and speakers just pronounce open vowels ([ɛ,ɔ]), while in the other regions the discrepancies with the pronunciation Standards are minor (albeit relevant) and non-homogeneous; on the Adriatic side is more evident, as in certain areas of central-eastAbruzzo (Chieti-Sulmona), largely in central-northernApulia (Foggia-Bari-Taranto), and in easternBasilicata (Matera) where it is present The so-called "syllabic isocronism": free syllable vowels are all pronounced closed and those in close syllables all open (see the well-known exampleun póco di pòllo instead ofun pòco di póllo "a bit of chicken"); Even in theTeramo area (northern Abruzzo), and up to Pescara, the vowels are pronounced with a single open sound (for exampledove volete andare stasera?[ˈdɔːvɛvɔˈlɛːtɛanˈdaːrɛstaˈsɛːra], Thus showing an inexplicable coincidence with the phonetic outcomes of Sicily and Calabria, although there is no direct link with them. As already mentioned here, the intervocalic s is always voiceless, and the use of thepreterite is also frequent instead of the use of thepresent perfect. In continental southern Italy, fromRome down to Calabria, possessive pronouns often are placed after the noun: for exampleil libro mio instead ofil mio libro ("my book").
Another characteristic of regional Italian varieties in central and southern Italy isdeaffrication of /tʃ/ between vowels, both word-internally and across word boundaries. In almost all peninsular Italy from Tuscany to Sicilyluce is pronounced[ˈluːʃe] rather than[ˈluːtʃe],la cena is pronounced[laˈʃeːna] instead of[laˈtʃeːna] as it is pronounced in northern Italy and in standard Italian.
Based on the significant linguistic distance between theSardinian language (andany other traditionally spoken bythe islanders) and Italian, the Sardinian-influenced Italian emerging from thecontact between such languages is to be considered anethnolect andsociolect of its own, as features divergent from Italian are local in origin, not attributable to more widespread Northern or Southern Italian varieties.[18] While Sardinian phonetics and the introduction of Sardinian words in a full Italian conversation are prevalent, especially if they are Italianised in the process (e.g.tzurpu "blind" andscimpru "dumb" becomingciurpo andscimpro), the regional Sardinian variety of Italian embracing the most diverging syntactic and morphological changes is situated at the low end of the diastratic spectrum, and its usage, though relatively common among the less educated, is not positively valued by either bilingual Sardinian speakers, who regard it as neither Sardinian nor Italian and nickname ititalianu porcheddìnu ("piggy Italian", standing for "broken Italian"), or Italian monolinguals from Sardinia and other parts of the country.
Sardinianised Italian is marked by the prevalence, even in common speech, of the verb's inversion, following rules of Sardinian (and Latin) but not Italian, which uses asubject-verb-object structure. The (often auxiliary) verb usually ends up at the end of the sentence, especially in exclamatory and interrogative sentences (e.g.Uscendo stai?, literally "Going out are you?", from the SardinianEssinde ses?, instead ofStai uscendo?;Studiando stavo! "Been studying have I!", fromIstudiende fia!, instead ofStavo studiando!;Legna vi serve? "In need of some wood are you?" fromLinna bos serbit?, instead ofAvete bisogno di un po' di legna?). It is also common for interrogative sentences to use a pleonastictutto "all", from the Sardiniantotu, as inCosa tutto hai visto? "What all have you seen?" fromIte totu as bidu? compared with the standard ItalianCosa hai visto?. The present continuous makes use of the verbessere "to be" as in English rather thanstare (e.g.Sempre andando e venendo è! "Always walking up and down she/he is!" fromSemper/Sempri andande e beninde est! compared with the standard ItalianSta sempre andando e venendo!): that is because the present continuous built with verbstare does not, in such regional variety, express the idea of an action ongoing at a certain point, but rather something that will take place in the very near future, almost on the point of happening (e.g.Sto andando a scuola with the meaning of "I'm about to go to school" rather than "Right now as we speak, I'm going to school"). It is also common to useantiphrastic formulas which are alien to Italian,[19] by means of the particlegià (Sard.jai /giai) which is similar to theGerman use ofja... schon especially for ironic purposes, in order to convey sardonic remarks (e.g.Già sei tutto studiato, tu! "You're so well educated!" fromJai ses totu istudiatu, tue! which roughly stands for "You are so ignorant and full of yourself!", orGià è poco bello! "He/It is not so beautiful!" fromJai est pacu bellu! meaning actually "He/It is so beautiful!"). One also needs to take into consideration the presence of a number of other Sardinian-specific idiomatic phrases being literally translated into Italian (likeCosa sembra? "What does it look like?" fromIte paret? meaning "How do you do?" compared to the standard ItalianCome stai?,Mi dice sempre cosa! "She/He's always scolding me!" from the SardinianSemper cosa mi narat! compared to the standard ItalianMi rimprovera sempre!, or againNon fa! "No chance!" fromNon fachet! /Non fait! compared to standard ItalianNon si può!), that would make little sense to an Italian speaker from another region.
As mentioned earlier, a significant number of Sardinian and other local loanwords (be they Italianised or not) are also present in regional varieties of Italian (e.g.porcetto from the Sardinianporcheddu /porceddu,scacciacqua from the Sardinianparabba /paracua "raincoat",continente "Mainland" andcontinentale "Mainlander" with reference to the rest of the country and its people as well,[20][21] etc.).
Some words may even reflect ignorance of the original language on the speaker's part when referring to a singular noun in Italian with Sardinian plurals, due to a lack of understanding of how singular and plurals nouns are formed in Sardinian: common mistakes are "unaseadas", "untenores", etc.
Regarding phonology, the regional Italian spoken in Sardinia follows the same five-vowel system of the Sardinian language without length differentiation, rather than the standard Italian seven-vowel system.Metaphony has also been observed: tonice ando ([e,o]) have a closed sound whenever they are followed by a closed vowel (i,u), and they have it open if they are followed by an open one (a,e,o).Hypercorrection is also common when applying the Italian rule ofsyntactic gemination; intervocalict,p,v,c are usually elongated. Intervocalic/s/ voicing is the same as in Northern Italy, that is[z].
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