Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

[en] Dutch - Language of a Fairytale Land

21 views
Skip to first unread message

Patrick Ahrer

unread,
Jan 20, 2002, 5:17:58 AM1/20/02
to
[Followup-To header set to europa.linguas]


Source: http://www.rnw.nl/holland/html/calvincollege011212.html


Language of a Fairytale Land
by Lotte van Doorn, 12 December 2001

Back in the 17th century The Netherlands was a world power, with
colonies all over the globe. But for some reason the Dutch language
never really caught on anywhere else. Certain Dutch words were adopted
by other languages, mostly maritime lingo, but that's as far as the
influence went. Today, many Dutch even fear their language won't
survive, and will be eventually traded off for English.

But maybe the Dutch needn't worry so much. Many would be surprised to
learn that their language is still being taught in hundreds of schools
and universities all over the world. One of them is Calvin College in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Ever since Dutch immigrants founded the
school in 1876, Dutch has been taught as an optional course. Two groups
of students, 99% of whom have Dutch roots, spend more than three hours a
week striving hard to get a grip on the language.

The classroom is hushed, everyone is concentrating intensely. Teacher
Herman de Vries, an American with Dutch ancestry, has just asked a
question. 21-year-old Priscilla stares at the objects on her desk. Of
course she knows they're eggs but what's the darned word again in Dutch:
"Errrrr, uieren?" she suggest, rather hesitantly. "No, ei, ei-e-ren",
corrects De Vries exaggeratedly.


Rasping and Guttural

A little later he explains: "Dutch is a Germanic language, just like
English, but it sounds really different. Combined sounds like ‘ei' and
‘ui' are really difficult to pronounce for the students. And then there
is the ‘g' of course. That takes the vocal cords some time to get used
to." He looks around at his students rasping their throats as they
practice the guttural ‘g' and ‘ch' sounds.


Old Cows in Canal

"Dutch is a very picturesque language," enthuses Herman. "Take the
proverbs and sayings for example: with a humoristic comparison an
awkward situation gets trivialised. Like ‘don't drag old cows out of the
canal', which means don't bring up old problems. We don't know
expressions like that. And what I especially like is the use of –je and
–tje. There is no other language that works with diminutives so
frequently. It sounds so sweet. I just love it."


Dutchify

At the moment in the States, it's considered fashionable to learn more
about your ancestors, and so recent years have seen an increased
interest in the course. "The path to the past is through the language,"
says Herman, somewhat cryptically. "If they realise that, it then
becomes much easier to get in touch with relatives who still live in The
Netherlands. And some students still have their Dutch grandparents in
the States, so talking to them will become easier, especially as a lot
of elderly immigrants ‘dutchify' over the years."


Business Courtesy

"Besides satisfying this need for nostalgia, some knowledge of the Dutch
language is very useful in the business community over here as well. In
this area there are many factories that are Dutch or deal with The
Netherlands. And, don't misunderstand me, even though most Dutch speak
perfect English, it is still a way of expressing courtesy to show some
knowledge of their language."


Polder Model Thinking

Learning Dutch also provides a good entrance into Dutch society. "The
Netherlands knows a very free culture, at least compared to the United
States. Pulling together is a keyword, whereas in the States the
individual has a central place in society. It is truly fascinating to
see students become more open-minded by learning the language. They
learn to think according to the ‘polder model', on which the Dutch way
of life is based. It's just such a great country," says de Vries.


Fairytale with Clogs and Tulips

Rob Prince, another of the students, has really enjoyed the flavour of
the Dutch classes. He's hooked. He even feels more Dutch than American.
"My bloodlines are pure Dutch, from my great-grandparents on both
sides," he says. However, his passport still says he's American. "True,
true," confirms Rob, "but eventually I'm planning to live in The
Netherlands. I see it as some kind of fairytale land, with beautiful old
architecture. Where people are nice to each other, and everybody knows
one another. And of course there is no violent crime or violence." Rob
will visit The Netherlands for the first time next year. Hopefully he
won't be too disappointed.

--
[de], [en], [es]

andy roberts

unread,
Jan 20, 2002, 5:41:33 AM1/20/02
to
Patrick Ahrer <ah...@gmx.at> <a2e5gl$101pui$3...@ID-634.news.dfncis.de> :


>Back in the 17th century The Netherlands was a world power, with
>colonies all over the globe. But for some reason the Dutch language
>never really caught on anywhere else. Certain Dutch words were adopted
>by other languages, mostly maritime lingo, but that's as far as the
>influence went.

Surely it was a major influence in southern Africa, and would have been
the official language of a few countries there if the war before the
first world war had turned out differently.


Andy R [en,fr]
--
http://www.europa.usenet.eu.org

Europa.* is the usenet hierarchy for europe wide
topics without language restrictions.

Marcel Querubini

unread,
Jan 20, 2002, 9:10:47 PM1/20/02
to
Patrick Ahrer escreveu na mensagem
news:a2e5gl$101pui$3...@ID-634.news.dfncis.de...

> [Followup-To header set to europa.linguas]
>
>
> Source:
http://www.rnw.nl/holland/html/calvincollege011212.html
>
>
> Language of a Fairytale Land
> by Lotte van Doorn, 12 December 2001
>
> And what I especially like is the use of –je and
> –tje. There is no other language that works with diminutives
so
> frequently. It sounds so sweet. I just love it."

Hey, this Herman guy has never studied Portuguese, has he? :)
I've seen foreigners getting mad with the idea of diminutives
being employed so much in Portuguese, even with adverbs,
numerals and verbs.

Ernie Ramaker

unread,
Jan 21, 2002, 6:07:21 AM1/21/02
to
"Marcel Querubini" <marcelq...@uol.com.br>:

>Hey, this Herman guy has never studied Portuguese, has he? :)
>I've seen foreigners getting mad with the idea of diminutives
>being employed so much in Portuguese, even with adverbs,
>numerals and verbs.

Really?
But we use it on prepositions. Beat that! :)

--
Ernie Ramaker
nl,no,da,en,de,[sv,is,fo]

Marco Cimarosti

unread,
Jan 21, 2002, 12:21:54 PM1/21/02
to
Ernie Ramaker wrote:
> "Marcel Querubini" <marcelq...@uol.com.br>:
>
> >Hey, this Herman guy has never studied Portuguese, has he? :)
> >I've seen foreigners getting mad with the idea of diminutives
> >being employed so much in Portuguese, even with adverbs,
> >numerals and verbs.
>
> Really?
> But we use it on prepositions. Beat that! :)

You called for it... In Italian we use it *neat*. :-)

In the colloquial language, the diminutive suffix "-ino" is sometimes
used stand-alone, as a adjective meaning "little".

Ciao.
Marchino

Mardy

unread,
Jan 21, 2002, 1:47:45 PM1/21/02
to
Marco Cimarosti <marco.c...@europe.com> ha scribite:

>In the colloquial language, the diminutive suffix "-ino" is sometimes
>used stand-alone, as a adjective meaning "little".

[ia] Io non lo ha unquam audite, forsan isto es un uso
dialectal/regional?

--
Saluti,
Mardy
http://castellina.org/interlingua

Marcel Querubini

unread,
Jan 22, 2002, 1:49:10 AM1/22/02
to
Marco Cimarosti escreveu na mensagem
news:1604968.02012...@posting.google.com...
> Ernie Ramaker wrote:
> > Marcel Querubini:

> >
> > >Hey, this Herman guy has never studied Portuguese, has he?
:)
> > >I've seen foreigners getting mad with the idea of
diminutives
> > >being employed so much in Portuguese, even with adverbs,
> > >numerals and verbs.
> >
> > Really?
> > But we use it on prepositions. Beat that! :)
>
> You called for it... In Italian we use it *neat*. :-)
>
> In the colloquial language, the diminutive suffix "-ino" is
sometimes
> used stand-alone, as a adjective meaning "little".

Okay, guys -- I'm impressed. I really am! :) That's what I get
for using English as a comparison point! :P But er... how
exactly do you do it with prepositions? I'm curious now...

Marcel Querubini,
Londrina, PR, BRAZIL

Ernie Ramaker

unread,
Jan 22, 2002, 5:19:39 AM1/22/02
to
"Marcel Querubini" <marcelq...@uol.com.br>:

[diminutive]

>> > But we use it on prepositions. Beat that! :)

>Okay, guys -- I'm impressed. I really am! :) That's what I get


>for using English as a comparison point! :P But er... how
>exactly do you do it with prepositions? I'm curious now...

Well, you take a preposition meaning "around" (om), you give it a
diminutive ending (ommetje), and then it means "a walk". "Een ommetje
maken" means "go for a walk".
Or you take the preposition "out" (uit), which becomes uitje in
diminutive, and then it means "daytrip".

Marco Cimarosti

unread,
Jan 22, 2002, 6:24:47 AM1/22/02
to
Mardy ha scripte:

> Marco Cimarosti <marco.c...@europe.com> ha scribite:
> >In the colloquial language, the diminutive suffix "-ino" is sometimes
> >used stand-alone, as a adjective meaning "little".
>
> [ia] Io non lo ha unquam audite,

Totevia, il ha sur le "Garzanti on-line" (www.garzanti.it):

« Lemma: ino
Etimologia: Dal suff. dim. -ino
Definizione: agg. (fam.) si dice di cosa o persona precedentemente
menzionata in forma diminutiva, di cui si voglia ribadire la
piccolezza (anche ripetuto): una stazioncina proprio ina; un ragazzino
ino ino. »

> forsan isto es un uso dialectal/regional?

Io non sape. Certemente illo non veni de un del dialectos parlate in
le mie familia, perque le suffixos diminutive son differente del
italiano: in lombardo on dice "-itt", in friuliano "-ute", e in
siciliano "-iddu".

Ciao.
Marco

P.S.: excusa mi grammatica, ma isto es mi prime tentativa con
interlingua...

Mardy

unread,
Jan 22, 2002, 2:33:34 PM1/22/02
to
Marcel Querubini <marcelq...@uol.com.br> ha scribite:
[diminutivos]

>Okay, guys -- I'm impressed. I really am! :) That's what I get
>for using English as a comparison point! :P But er... how
>exactly do you do it with prepositions? I'm curious now...

[ia] Obviemente illos es semper invariate; etiam perque io non saperea
qual significato attribuer los.

Mardy

unread,
Jan 23, 2002, 12:38:37 PM1/23/02
to
Marco Cimarosti <marco.c...@europe.com> ha scribite:
>« Lemma: ino
>Etimologia: Dal suff. dim. -ino
>Definizione: agg. (fam.) si dice di cosa o persona precedentemente
>menzionata in forma diminutiva, di cui si voglia ribadire la
>piccolezza (anche ripetuto): una stazioncina proprio ina; un ragazzino
>ino ino. »

Ah, io errava. :-) Mais tu lo ha audite/legite alicubi (="da qualche
parte")?
Illo me sembla un expression infantil, mais io non sa de ubi veni iste mi
impression.

>> forsan isto es un uso dialectal/regional?
>
>Io non sape. Certemente illo non veni de un del dialectos parlate in
>le mie familia, perque le suffixos diminutive son differente del

"mie" es un pronomine, si tu non vole emphatisar le facto que le familia
es tue, tu pote usar le adjectivo (que totevia non vole le articulo
antea): "in mi familia".

>italiano: in lombardo on dice "-itt", in friuliano "-ute", e in
>siciliano "-iddu".

Tu ha origine de tres regiones differente, o tu los scribeva solmente
pro facer un exemplo?

>P.S.: excusa mi grammatica, ma isto es mi prime tentativa con
>interlingua...

Infortunatemente il ha nihil a pardonar! ;-)

Josef

unread,
Jan 29, 2002, 5:26:31 PM1/29/02
to
On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 11:19:39 +0100, Ernie Ramaker <eram...@radio.fm>
wrote:

Knowing both languages I have to say that both in Portuguese and in
Dutch diminutive are used a lot.
Let's find some of those diminutives.

Peer Mankpoot

unread,
Jan 30, 2002, 5:16:16 PM1/30/02
to
Ernie Ramaker schreef/citeerde op Tue, 22 Jan 2002 11:19:39 +0100:

> Or you take the preposition "out" (uit), which becomes uitje in
> diminutive, and then it means "daytrip".

[nl]
Nee nee nee.

"Naar de bollen".... herinnert u zich die nog? Welaan, die bollen, dat
waren uiebollen*. In de wandeling: uien. "Naar de bollen gaan" was
"naar de uien gaan", werd "naar de uitjes" gaan, wat uiteindelijk**
weer evolueerde in "uitje". Zo is het.

*: uieNbollen, zo u wilt.
**: ui-eindelijk, zo u wilt.

--
Peer (geen ui)

Peer Mankpoot

unread,
Jan 30, 2002, 5:16:17 PM1/30/02
to
Josef schreef/citeerde op Tue, 29 Jan 2002 22:26:31 GMT:

> Knowing both languages I have to say that both in Portuguese and in
> Dutch diminutive are used a lot.
> Let's find some of those diminutives.

[en]
What do you mean by "Let's find some of those diminutives"? You mean
pairs that are the same in word or meaning in Portuguese as well as
Dutch?

--
There's a special trick I do with fat-free food: I throw it away.

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 1, 2002, 6:22:12 AM2/1/02
to
"Marco Cimarosti" <marco.c...@europe.com> wrote in message
news:1604968.02012...@posting.google.com...

> Io non sape. Certemente illo non veni de un del dialectos parlate in
> le mie familia, perque le suffixos diminutive son differente del
> italiano: in lombardo on dice "-itt", in friuliano "-ute", e in
> siciliano "-iddu".
>

[lo] Gh'hoo de corregg: in lombard el se dis "-in". "-itt" ghe l'hann i
pluraj.

[ct] Tinc que remarcar: el llombard té la forma "-in", tot que "-itt" és
el plural.

Andrea

P.S. D'eixa manera, també el llombard i el català van cap a la llista de
le llengües de europa.linguas :-)


--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Gianni

unread,
Feb 1, 2002, 9:09:43 AM2/1/02
to
"Andrea De Vecchi" <deve...@pansid.it> wrote in message
news:9d24f0ba9edd5ce91a...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> [lo] Gh'hoo de corregg: in lombard el se dis "-in". "-itt" ghe l'hann i
> pluraj.

[lo]... ué, parli laoziano?
;-)

Gianni

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 1, 2002, 9:57:33 AM2/1/02
to
"Gianni" <sal...@virgilio.it> wrote in message
news:b7f9672509b4d3b6e80...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> "Andrea De Vecchi" <deve...@pansid.it> wrote in message
> news:9d24f0ba9edd5ce91a...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> > [lo] Gh'hoo de corregg: in lombard el se dis "-in". "-itt" ghe l'hann i
> > pluraj.
>
> [lo]... ué, parli laoziano?
> ;-)
>
> Gianni

[lmb] Eh, ma 'l lombard gh'ha nanca el codes iso :-((((
(Quand se dis "lengua minoritaria"....)

Roberto Waha

unread,
Feb 1, 2002, 10:11:44 AM2/1/02
to
Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> wrote:
> [lo] Gh'hoo de corregg: in lombard el se dis "-in". "-itt" ghe l'hann i
> pluraj.

[it-lom] Me rincrèss, car el mè amis Andrea, ma per i variant locaj di
lingu el còdes el parla ciar: se gh'ha de mett la lingua principal (in
del nòst cas l'è l'Italian) cont on grupp de trè lètter per indicà la
variant. Per nòstra sfortuna, el Lombard gh'hemm de codificall inscì.

[it] Mi dispiace, caro il mio amico Andrea, ma per le varianti locali
delle lingue il codice parla chiaro: bisogna mettere la lingua
principale (nel nostro caso l'Italiano) con un gruppo di tre lettere per
indicare la variante. Per nostra sfortuna, il Lombardo dobbiamo
codificarlo così.

[en] I'm very sorry, my dear friend Andrea, but in these cases of local
variants of languages the code is very precise: we need to specify the
main language (in our case Italian) followed by a three-letter group to
show the variant. Unfortunately, Lombard needs to be codified in that
way.

--
Ciao!
Walla

-----------------=* Roberto Waha - walla(at)mac.com *=-----------------
El Senyor és la meva força, el Senyor el meu cant
Ell m'ha estat la salvació. En Ell confío, i no tinc por.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PGP Fingerprint: A6C8 4BD6 06D0 D51F 0F41 B69F 2530 FB6A 6442 627B
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dennis SCP

unread,
Feb 1, 2002, 10:12:48 AM2/1/02
to
Peer Mankpoot <peer.m...@euronet.nl> wrote:

> Josef schreef/citeerde op Tue, 29 Jan 2002 22:26:31 GMT:
>
> > Knowing both languages I have to say that both in Portuguese and in
> > Dutch diminutive are used a lot.
> > Let's find some of those diminutives.
>
> [en]
> What do you mean by "Let's find some of those diminutives"? You mean
> pairs that are the same in word or meaning in Portuguese as well as
> Dutch?

Don't know Portuguese:
Banknote bankbiljet
Notes: Briefjes
A 5 euro note: Een bankbiljet van vijf euro
A 5 euro note: Briefje van vijf
Fiver: Vijfje (slang: vijfie)
Vijfjes
Same goes for a tener, "tientje", and a hundred, "hondertje".
But a 20 Euro note (or 50) is never "twintigtje" but only "twintigie",
however that looks like slang so no-one writes it down. You'd write
"briefje van twintig". :-)
--
Dennis SCP [nl,en,(de)] Kuyichi
Je sponsort nu TV reclames van je merkkleding, waarom geen merkkleding
kopen waarbij jouw geld arbo verbetering in arme landen eist?
Kuyichi - Trendy jeansware & fair trade - Rotterdam: Yep Lifestyle

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 3, 2002, 7:51:37 AM2/3/02
to
"Roberto Waha" <wa...@mac.com> wrote in message
news:1f6xomc.1ell3i514weon4N%wa...@mac.com...

> Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> wrote:
> > [lo] Gh'hoo de corregg: in lombard el se dis "-in". "-itt" ghe l'hann i
> > pluraj.
>
> [it-lom] Me rincrèss, car el mè amis Andrea, ma per i variant locaj di
> lingu el còdes el parla ciar: se gh'ha de mett la lingua principal (in
> del nòst cas l'è l'Italian) cont on grupp de trè lètter per indicà la
> variant. Per nòstra sfortuna, el Lombard gh'hemm de codificall inscì.
>

[xx-lom] Eh, allora pensi che it-lom l'è minga giusta.... (el lombard
l'è minga on dialett de l'italian). Podariom anca fregà el codes del
lao, che 'l parla men gent ;-)

[en] I guess that it-lom is wrong, then, since it isn't an Italian
dialect at all. We could steal the lao iso-code, since it's less spoken
;-)

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 3, 2002, 3:09:48 PM2/3/02
to
On Sun, 3 Feb 2002 12:51:37 +0000 (UTC), "Andrea De Vecchi"
<deve...@pansid.it> wrote:

>[en] I guess that it-lom is wrong, then, since it isn't an Italian
>dialect at all.

Well, of course it is a dialect of Italian. How would you prove it
isn't ? :)

Mardy

unread,
Feb 3, 2002, 4:13:31 PM2/3/02
to
Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> ha scribite:

>
>[xx-lom] Eh, allora pensi che it-lom l'è minga giusta.... (el lombard
>l'è minga on dialett de l'italian). Podariom anca fregà el codes del
>lao, che 'l parla men gent ;-)

[ia] Perque tu dice que illo non es un dialecto italian? Io non cognosce
le lombardo, mais io lo pote comprender bastantemente ben (io es de
Treviso).

Guillaume Toussaint

unread,
Feb 3, 2002, 5:15:18 PM2/3/02
to

"Mardy" <ma...@vene.dave.it> a écrit dans le message news:
20020203173156....@pupilla.local...

> Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> ha scribite:
> >
> >[xx-lom] Eh, allora pensi che it-lom l'è minga giusta.... (el lombard
> >l'è minga on dialett de l'italian). Podariom anca fregà el codes del
> >lao, che 'l parla men gent ;-)
>
> [ia] Perque tu dice que illo non es un dialecto italian? Io non cognosce
> le lombardo, mais io lo pote comprender bastantemente ben (io es de
> Treviso).

[it]
perché nemmeno il tuo dialetto è italiano!

Alcuni (vedi ad es. il sito di Gianni,
http://perso.infonie.fr/giannieanna/lero/index.html) classificano i dialetti
dell'Italia del Nord, "gallo-italiani", a parte rispetto ai dialetti del
centro-sud al quale è legato l'italiano standard.

Comunque, rimane che geograficamente, il lombardo è un dialetto italiano e
che da tempi immemorabili, i locutori del lombardo hanno l'italiano come
lingua di cultura.
Forse, possiamo comparare questa situazione a quella dei dialetti
franco-provenzali (rispetto al francese) o basso-tedeschi.

Ciao,
Guillaume

PS. Mi spiegate "minga", perché a me fa più pensare al siciliano e allo
spagnolo :-)
D'altronde, Il tuo [ia/it-lom] è un po' ambiguo, il lombardo non è mica un
dialetto interlingua!

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 2:48:49 AM2/4/02
to
On Sun, 3 Feb 2002 23:15:18 +0100, "Guillaume Toussaint"
<guill...@katamail.com> wrote:

>Alcuni (vedi ad es. il sito di Gianni,
>http://perso.infonie.fr/giannieanna/lero/index.html) classificano i dialetti
>dell'Italia del Nord, "gallo-italiani", a parte rispetto ai dialetti del

>centro-sud al quale č legato l'italiano standard.

Contro tale interpretazione date un'occhiata:
http://www.mauriziopistone.it/discussioni/dialetti.html

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 3:24:24 AM2/4/02
to
"Fabio Parri" <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c5e3cc...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

> On Sun, 3 Feb 2002 23:15:18 +0100, "Guillaume Toussaint"
> <guill...@katamail.com> wrote:
>
> >Alcuni (vedi ad es. il sito di Gianni,
> >http://perso.infonie.fr/giannieanna/lero/index.html) classificano i dialetti
> >dell'Italia del Nord, "gallo-italiani", a parte rispetto ai dialetti del

> >centro-sud al quale è legato l'italiano standard.


>
> Contro tale interpretazione date un'occhiata:
> http://www.mauriziopistone.it/discussioni/dialetti.html


Do una risposta unica perchè spezzettarla in quattro post è
antieconomico :-)

La pagina di Pistone è semplicemente ridicola. Avrebbe potuto dimostrare
nello stesso modo che lo spagnolo è un dialetto dell'italiano (magari
dicendoglielo se ne convincerebbe....)
Il lombardo ha una struttura fonetica, grammaticale e lessicale diversa
da quella italiana. E' sufficiente?

Andrea

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 4:54:34 AM2/4/02
to
"Mardy" <ma...@vene.dave.it> wrote in message
news:20020203173156....@pupilla.local...

> Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> ha scribite:
> >
> >[xx-lom] Eh, allora pensi che it-lom l'è minga giusta.... (el lombard
> >l'è minga on dialett de l'italian). Podariom anca fregà el codes del
> >lao, che 'l parla men gent ;-)
>
> [ia] Perque tu dice que illo non es un dialecto italian? Io non cognosce
> le lombardo, mais io lo pote comprender bastantemente ben (io es de
> Treviso).

[en] So what? I never studied Castillian, but I can understand it fairly
well, especially if written (becuse that's your knowledge of Lombard:
when spoken, I don't think you could understand it unless you have a
basic formation in it).
Does it mean Castillian is a dialect of Italian.
Or, better again, is Dutch a dialect of German? By your standards,
surely yes!

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 5:08:41 AM2/4/02
to
On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 08:24:24 +0000 (UTC), "Andrea De Vecchi"
<deve...@pansid.it> wrote:

>Il lombardo ha una struttura fonetica, grammaticale e lessicale diversa
>da quella italiana. E' sufficiente?

Be, direi di no :)

Qualsiasi dialetto italiano, a parte il toscano, ha una struttura
grammaticale, fonetica e lessicale diversa da quella dell'italiano
standard. Ma non per questo possiamo dire che ogni regione d'Italia
parli una propria lingua, non trovi ?

In ogni caso, non ho pregiudizi al riguardo. Esistono studi su tali
tematiche ?

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 5:16:51 AM2/4/02
to
On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 09:54:34 +0000 (UTC), "Andrea De Vecchi"
<deve...@pansid.it> wrote:

>Does it mean Castillian is a dialect of Italian.
>Or, better again, is Dutch a dialect of German? By your standards,
>surely yes!

I understand your points. The problem is you seem to undervaluate the
sociolinguistical aspect of the language <> dialects problem.
Dutch is not a dialect of German, just as Swedish, Norwegian and
Danish are different languages, even though very similiar.
A dialect stops to be a dialect when it gets recognized and 'felt' by
a majority of people as a language. The same happened with Latin and
'sermo vulgaris', when it began being felt like a language in the
Middle Age (cfr. Dante's De Vulgari Eloquentia which, accidentally,
talks about Italian dialects).
As of now, Lumbard is not felt by people in Lombardia as a language,
but just as a dialect. Maybe things will change in future, or maybe
not, as media are progressively making all of italian dialects more
and more homogeneous (at least, lexically).

This is a very interesting discussion :)

Ciao,

Fabio

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 6:07:10 AM2/4/02
to
"Fabio Parri" <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c5e5dcb...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...


> I understand your points. The problem is you seem to undervaluate the
> sociolinguistical aspect of the language <> dialects problem.
> Dutch is not a dialect of German, just as Swedish, Norwegian and
> Danish are different languages, even though very similiar.
> A dialect stops to be a dialect when it gets recognized and 'felt' by
> a majority of people as a language. The same happened with Latin and
> 'sermo vulgaris', when it began being felt like a language in the
> Middle Age (cfr. Dante's De Vulgari Eloquentia which, accidentally,
> talks about Italian dialects).
> As of now, Lumbard is not felt by people in Lombardia as a language,
> but just as a dialect. Maybe things will change in future, or maybe
> not, as media are progressively making all of italian dialects more
> and more homogeneous (at least, lexically).
>

That's true: there are two distincts aspects.
Firstly, no one can deny that - in any case - Italian has always been
the cultural and governmental favourite language throughout the history
of the Italian State (I mean, long before the political unity).
Thus, Italian has gained a prestige no other language in the peninsula
can match. And that's way Lombard (or for that matter a host of other
languages, including Friulian, Sardinian or even Alguerese Catalan) are
or were felt as dialects.
Presently, who can deny that Sardinian is a language? I guess, no one.
The sociological perception is very important (I even read - I do not
remember where - about how Alsatian used to consider their dialect a
French one!)

On the other hand, there is a set of evaluations that cannot be put
aside, else we could really risk to consider a German dialect as an
Italian one.
In the case of Lombard, the matter is that it's a Romance language so it
will always have a lot of points in common with every other "sister"
language.
Just think about Spanish: what could prevent you to think it's an
Italian dialect? It's close enough to our language by any point of view
to raise at least a question. Yet, clearly you could easily demonstrate
it is a separate language (putting aside every sociological
consideration).
With Lombard (and others) it's just the same matter.

One final question: is it fair to discriminate between languages and
dialects on the sole basis of political status, in the same way African
languages (which have been called "dialects" fror eons) have passed
through?

> This is a very interesting discussion :)
>

Yes it is :)) Its interesting side is that no one (me included) ever
changes his mind, but it is nevertheless interesting to keep the
contacts with "the other side of the barricade" :))))


> Ciao,
>
> Fabio

Ciao,

Andrea

Peter Kleiweg

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 6:11:23 AM2/4/02
to
Andrea De Vecchi scribeva...

> Or, better again, is Dutch a dialect of German? By your standards,
> surely yes!

Actually, German is a Dutch dialect.

--
Peter Kleiweg [nl,en(,ia,af,de,da,no,sv,fr,it)]
http://www.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/

andy roberts

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 7:58:34 AM2/4/02
to
Peter Kleiweg <kle...@let.rug.nl>
<Pine.LNX.4.33.02020...@kleigh.nl> :


>Andrea De Vecchi scribeva...
>
>> Or, better again, is Dutch a dialect of German? By your standards,
>> surely yes!
>
>Actually, German is a Dutch dialect.

So was English, until the Normans came over and turned it into the hybrid we
have today.

Andy R [en,fr]
--
http://www.europa.usenet.eu.org

Europa.* is the usenet hierarchy for europe wide
topics without language restrictions.

Marco Cimarosti

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 8:15:47 AM2/4/02
to
Guillaume Toussaint ha scritto:

> "Mardy" <ma...@vene.dave.it> a écrit dans le message news:
> 20020203173156....@pupilla.local...
> > Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> ha scribite:
> > >
> > >[xx-lom] Eh, allora pensi che it-lom l'è minga giusta.... (el lombard
> > >l'è minga on dialett de l'italian). Podariom anca fregà el codes del
> > >lao, che 'l parla men gent ;-)
> >
> > [ia] Perque tu dice que illo non es un dialecto italian? Io non cognosce
> > le lombardo, mais io lo pote comprender bastantemente ben (io es de
> > Treviso).
>
> [it]
> perché nemmeno il tuo dialetto è italiano!
>
> Alcuni (vedi ad es. il sito di Gianni,
> http://perso.infonie.fr/giannieanna/lero/index.html) classificano i dialetti
> dell'Italia del Nord, "gallo-italiani", a parte rispetto ai dialetti del
> centro-sud al quale è legato l'italiano standard.

La suddivisione che si fa normalmente dei dialetti italiani è un po'
più articolata:

- Dialetti "non" italiani: sardo, ladino, friulano (nonché,
ovviamente, le lingue delle minoranze etniche).

- Dialetti gallo-italici: piemontese, lombardo, ligure, emiliano,
marchigiano settentrionale, alcuni dialetti siciliani (li cosiddette
"enclave gallo-italiche", appunto);

- Veneto: veneto, trentino, triestino, dalmata;

- Dialetti centro-italiani: toscano, umbro, marchigiano meridionale,
laziale;

- Dialetti meridionali: campano (napoletano), abruzzese, pugliese,
lucano, calabrese settentrionale;

- Dialetti siciliani: calabrese settentrionale, siciliano.

> Comunque, rimane che geograficamente, il lombardo è un dialetto italiano e
> che da tempi immemorabili, i locutori del lombardo hanno l'italiano come
> lingua di cultura.

Non è solo per questo dato "socio-politico": se, dal punto di vista
fonetico, i dialetti gallo italici potrebbero rientrare nella sfera
franco-provenzale, da quello morfologico sono invece squisitamente
italiani.

Ad esempio, il plurale dei nomi si fa (o si faceva, in origine) con il
suffisso -i tipico del romanzo orientale (Italia, Romania), anziché
con il suffisso -s tipico del romanzo occidentale (Francia, Penisola
iberica).

Guardando al milanese e al francese moderni, può sembrare che nelle
due lingue il plurale si faccia nello stesso modo (almeno al
maschile), cioè senza nessuna desinenza: fr., "l'oeuf" e "les oeufs"
([l-øf] e [lez-øf]), mil. "l'oeuf" e "i oeuf" ([l-øf] e [j-øf]).

In realtà, però, sappiamo che questa apparente identità è solo
l'effetto del deterioramento fonetico: un tempo, il plurale francese
era [les 'Oves] (ancor prima [los 'ovos]) e quello milanese era [li
'wOvi].

La principale ragione per cui alcuni considerano sardo, ladino e
friulano come non italiani è proprio che fanno il plurale in -s.

Ciao.
Marco

Marco Cimarosti

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 8:23:45 AM2/4/02
to
Io (Marco Cimarosti) ho scritto un po' di stupidaggini:

> - Dialetti centro-italiani: toscano, umbro, marchigiano meridionale,
> laziale;

"laziale" -> laziale settentrionale

> - Dialetti meridionali: campano (napoletano), abruzzese, pugliese,
> lucano, calabrese settentrionale;

aggiungere: laziale meridionale

> - Dialetti siciliani: calabrese settentrionale, siciliano.

"calabrese settentrionale" -> calabrese meridionale

Ciao.
Marco

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 8:59:42 AM2/4/02
to
"Marco Cimarosti" <marco.c...@europe.com> wrote in message
news:1604968.02020...@posting.google.com...

> In realtà, però, sappiamo che questa apparente identità è solo
> l'effetto del deterioramento fonetico: un tempo, il plurale francese
> era [les 'Oves] (ancor prima [los 'ovos]) e quello milanese era [li
> 'wOvi].
>

Sei sicuro? A me risulta che un tempo il plurale in milanese si
ottenesse per metafonia.



> La principale ragione per cui alcuni considerano sardo, ladino e
> friulano come non italiani è proprio che fanno il plurale in -s.
>

Come sarebbe a dire "alcuni considerano"? Siamo ancora a questo punto?
Andiamo bene...
(Magari alcuni considerano anche l'Algherese come non italiano. Pensa un
po' te! :-) )

Jardar Eggesbø Abrahamsen

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 10:17:06 AM2/4/02
to
I artikkel <20020203173156....@pupilla.local>
skreiv Mardy <ma...@vene.dave.it>:

> [ia] Perque tu dice que illo non es un dialecto italian?

Lombard is a Gallo-Romance language, whereas Italian is an Italo-Dalmatian
language. In fact, this means that Lombard is a Western Romance language
(together with French, Spanish, Rheto Romance, Provençal etc.), while
Italian is an Eastern Romance language (together with Sicilian, Napolitan,
Romanian etc.). The border between the two groups is the Spezia-Rimini
line (or Linia gotica).

Also, Italian really is Tuscan, and Lombardy is not in Toscana, so Lombard
cannot be a Tuscan dialect.

However, it is important to note that the term dialetto in Italian
everyday speech often denotes not a spoken variety of some language, but
rather any variety without a commonly known standardised counterpart. In
this respect one can understand the claims that Lombard is only a
dialetto. But then it wouyld have to be a «dialect of Italy», not a
«dialect of Italian».

There are clearly political reasons to claim that Lombard, for example, is
only a dialect of Italian and not a separate language. The controversial
political nature of this issue was demonstrated one evening at a dinner
table in Lombardy: When I, as a linguist, made the point that Lombard is
not a dialect of Italian, I was immediately accused of wanting to split up
Italy. I was accused of agreeing with Umberto Bossi, a politician whom I
as a Norwegian had barely heard of. The whole discussion and all the
accusations had begun when I, unaware of the sociolinguistic situation,
asked in Lombard: A pödi avę l vin? (May I have the wine?) Unfortunately,
I do not speak Italian.

Lombard and standard Italian are mutually unintelligible, they differ
considerably both in grammar and vocabulary.

Linguistically speaking there is no doubt that Lombard is a separate
language from Italian: Lombard has rounded front vowels (ü and ö), it
extensively displays vowel alternations based on stress patterns (like
vurę 'to want' and vöri 'I want', the underlying root vowel is /ö/), it
has final devoicing (e.g. lumbarda adj. f. 'Lombard', but lumbaart m.), as
well as distinctive vowel length (like finí 'to end' and finii past
participle).

In Lombard there are also quite a lot of common words unknown in Italian,
such as bagái instead of ragazzo 'boy', scjatt instead of rospo 'toad',
pomm instead of mela 'apple' etc. Also, many Lombard words not existing in
Italian are of Germanic origin, e.g. biott instead of nudo 'naked', cf.
German bloß and Danish blott 'naked'; sbrujá instead of scottare 'to
scald', cf. German brühen 'scald'. Even the inflection of nouns,
adjectives and verbs differ significantly from Italian, for instance in
that Lombard has non-segmental affixes (the normal way of making a plural
of a feminine noun is to add a mora, which is then associated to either
the vowel or the consonant of the rhyme of the final syllable of the
root, according to special phonological rules: plural of strada is
straat, plural of rana is rann).

Jardar

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 11:13:52 AM2/4/02
to
On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 15:17:06 +0000 (UTC),
jardarab+n...@pvv.ntnu.no (Jardar =?iso-8859-1?Q?Eggesb=F8?=
Abrahamsen) wrote:

>I artikkel <20020203173156....@pupilla.local>
>skreiv Mardy <ma...@vene.dave.it>:
>
>> [ia] Perque tu dice que illo non es un dialecto italian?
>
>Lombard is a Gallo-Romance language, whereas Italian is an Italo-Dalmatian
>language. In fact, this means that Lombard is a Western Romance language
>(together with French, Spanish, Rheto Romance, Provençal etc.), while
>Italian is an Eastern Romance language (together with Sicilian, Napolitan,
>Romanian etc.).

Uhm, I could even agree but, were the dialect spoken in Lumbardy a
western romance language, shouldn't it have the usual plural in -s ?

Don't want to sound polemic, just genuinely curious about this.

Fabio

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 11:55:50 AM2/4/02
to
"Fabio Parri" <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c5eb14a...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

Well, let alone the fact that there is another language that doesn't use
the plural -s (Provençal, that builds plurals exactly in the same way of
Lombard), I guess we cannot rely only on this feature, that is clearly
your favourite.
Else, we could also ask ourselves why Spanish - for example - has not a
postponed negation (and I think that's a good point!) while others
(Lombard included) have.
I think we have to look at the languages as a whole, without being
mislead by one feature.

Andrea

Paolo

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 11:58:43 AM2/4/02
to

Fabio Parri <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
3c5eb14a...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

Un tempo forse l'aveva.

Ciao,
Paolo


Paolo

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 12:11:14 PM2/4/02
to

Fabio Parri <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
3c5e5ae5...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

> On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 08:24:24 +0000 (UTC), "Andrea De Vecchi"
> <deve...@pansid.it> wrote:
>
> >Il lombardo ha una struttura fonetica, grammaticale e lessicale diversa
> >da quella italiana. E' sufficiente?
>
> Be, direi di no :)
>
> Qualsiasi dialetto italiano, a parte il toscano, ha una struttura
> grammaticale, fonetica e lessicale diversa da quella dell'italiano
> standard. Ma non per questo possiamo dire che ogni regione d'Italia
> parli una propria lingua, non trovi ?

Certo che no. Ma nessuno può negare che esistano certi *sistemi dialettali*
distinti in italia, all'interno dei quali le differenze sono relativamente
basse e sono invece più accentuate con i gruppi "esterni".

Quelli comunemente definiti "dialetti italiani" sono suddivisi in cinque
gruppi ben distinti e difficilmente assimilabili oltre che pressoché privi
di intercomprensibilità:

GALLO-ITALICO (che si collega con il gallo romanzo: occitano, francese,
vallone, catalano &c)
- piemontese
- lombardo (compreso il novarese)
- emiliano (compreso il lunigiano)
- romagnolo (compreso il pesarese)
- ligure

VENETO
- veneto
- trentino
- giuliano

CENTRALE (o ITALIANO propriamente detto)
- toscano
- umbro
- romanesco
- laziale (reatino, aquilano)
- marchigiano

APPENNINICO

- abruzzese
- molisano
- campano
- lucano
- pugliese

SICILIANO

- calabrese
- siciliano
- salentino

Volete chiamarle lingue? Fate pure.
L'importante è riconoscere che un *sistema dialettale italiano* tout court
non esiste.

Ciao,
Paolo


Guillaume Toussaint

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 1:19:39 PM2/4/02
to
"Jardar Eggesbø Abrahamsen" <jardarab+n...@pvv.ntnu.no> a écrit dans
le message news: slrna5t9fi.3hr.ja...@tyrell.nvg.ntnu.no...

> I artikkel <20020203173156....@pupilla.local>
> skreiv Mardy <ma...@vene.dave.it>:
>
> > [ia] Perque tu dice que illo non es un dialecto italian?
>
> Lombard is a Gallo-Romance language, whereas Italian is an Italo-Dalmatian
> language. In fact, this means that Lombard is a Western Romance language
> (together with French, Spanish, Rheto Romance, Provençal etc.), while
> Italian is an Eastern Romance language (together with Sicilian, Napolitan,
> Romanian etc.). The border between the two groups is the Spezia-Rimini
> line (or Linia gotica).
>
> Also, Italian really is Tuscan, and Lombardy is not in Toscana, so Lombard
> cannot be a Tuscan dialect.

I don't agree, "standard Italian" derivates from one of the tuscan dialects,
Florence's one, but it's not scrictly the Tuscan.


> table in Lombardy: When I, as a linguist, made the point that Lombard is
> not a dialect of Italian, I was immediately accused of wanting to split up
> Italy. I was accused of agreeing with Umberto Bossi, a politician whom I
> as a Norwegian had barely heard of. The whole discussion and all the
> accusations had begun when I, unaware of the sociolinguistic situation,

> asked in Lombard: A pödi avê l vin? (May I have the wine?) Unfortunately,


> I do not speak Italian.

Just a curiosity, how is it possible for a norwegian, to know lombard and
not italian?

Guillaume


Jardar Eggesbø Abrahamsen

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 2:09:45 PM2/4/02
to
I artikkel <a3mktp$19f4i8$1...@ID-128714.news.dfncis.de>
skreiv Guillaume Toussaint <guill...@katamail.com>:

> > Also, Italian really is Tuscan, and Lombardy is not in Toscana, so Lombard
> > cannot be a Tuscan dialect.
>
> I don't agree, "standard Italian" derivates from one of the tuscan dialects,
> Florence's one, but it's not scrictly the Tuscan.

You are of course right. Still, Lombard cannot be a dialect of Italian, as
standard Italian is derived from Tuscan, while Lombard is not spoken in
Tuscany.

> Just a curiosity, how is it possible for a norwegian, to know lombard and
> not italian?

A ghu amich dë la Lumbardía. :) (Or something like that.)

I work at the Linguistics Department at the University of Trondheim, and a
close friend of mine is my colleague at the Telecommunications Department,
phonetician Jørgen Gjòorc Bosoni (and his family, of course). Jørgen is
originally from Lècch (Lecco), and as a member of the Cunsêi Lumbaart për
la Lengua he has been responsible for the development of the new,
supradialectal orthography of Western Lombard. (The methods used do
resemle the ones used by Ivar Aasen when he first defined a Norwegian
orthography.)

Honestly, I have tried to learn some Italian (but only know how to say
«dove sono le ferrovie?»), but found that Lombard was easier. Maybe
because I like its phonology... I am a generative phonologist by training.

Jardar
--
[no,sv,da,eo,de,en,(is)]

Mardy

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 3:39:25 PM2/4/02
to
Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> ha scribite:
>> [ia] Perque tu dice que illo non es un dialecto italian? Io non cognosce
>> le lombardo, mais io lo pote comprender bastantemente ben (io es de
>> Treviso).
>
>[en] So what? I never studied Castillian, but I can understand it fairly

Ah, in Treviso on non parla in anglese. ;-)

>well, especially if written (becuse that's your knowledge of Lombard:
>when spoken, I don't think you could understand it unless you have a
>basic formation in it).

Io videva le videos de "Le Iene", ubi un false Bin Laden parlava in
lombardo (al minus, io crede que illo esseva lombardo), e io lo
comprendeva ben. :-)

>Does it mean Castillian is a dialect of Italian.

Non, mais si tu exi del confines italian iste discurso non face plus
senso: le influentia del italiano (o florentino) ultra su confines es
trascurabile.

>Or, better again, is Dutch a dialect of German? By your standards,
>surely yes!

Io non los cognosce.

Mardy

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 3:39:29 PM2/4/02
to
Jardar Eggesbų Abrahamsen <jardarab+n...@pvv.ntnu.no> ha scribite:

>this respect one can understand the claims that Lombard is only a
>dialetto. But then it wouyld have to be a «dialect of Italy», not a
>«dialect of Italian».

Tu es correcte: io confundeva le duo significatos. Comocunque, como tu
scribe, il non ha multo senso discuter super "dialectos del italiano",
vidite que, de facto, illos practicamente non existe, in iste
signifcato.

Mardy

unread,
Feb 4, 2002, 3:39:31 PM2/4/02
to
Guillaume Toussaint <guill...@katamail.com> ha scribite:
>D'altronde, Il tuo [ia/it-lom] č un po' ambiguo, il lombardo non č mica un
>dialetto interlingua!

Io esseva ambigue: io pensava "(ia)/(it-lom)".

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 2:46:34 AM2/5/02
to
On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 17:58:43 +0100, "Paolo" <pao...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>Un tempo forse l'aveva.

Be', certo. Però in Romagna, dove vivo, non abbiamo plurali in 'esse'.
Anzi, le parole di genere femminile formano il loro plurale con
alternanza a/i es. burdela/burdeli bambina/bambine
Certo, il Lombardo potrebbe anche differenziarsi all'interno dei
dialetti della medesima famiglia, ma mi pare poco probabile...

Sarebbe interessante trovare delle attestazioni antiche del dialetto,
chissà a quando risalgono.

Ciao :)

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 3:18:01 AM2/5/02
to
On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 18:11:14 +0100, "Paolo" <pao...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>Volete chiamarle lingue? Fate pure.
>L'importante è riconoscere che un *sistema dialettale italiano* tout court
>non esiste.

Non ho mai affermato il contrario, infatti. :)
Quello che intendevo dire, invece, era che in ogni caso parlate quali
il lombardo sono da considerarsi, almeno attualmente, dialetti, e non
lingue. Chiamo "dialetto" qualsiasi parlata percepita come non
ufficiale dalle popolazioni che la parlano, usando il termine certo in
senso un po' troppo allargato, ma comunque secondo l'uso comune
invalso tra i parlanti.
Il lombardo non è sentito dai Lombardi (o almeno, dalla maggioranza
dei Lombardi), come una lingua a tutti gli effetti, come lo è invece
l'italiano.
Quindi mi sembrava che it-lom andasse benissimo per i tag del
newsgroup. Benchè probabilmente abbia tutte le carte in tavola,
linguisticamente, per essere una lingua, gli manca una cosa
altrettanto importante, ossia il riconoscimento di lingua, e questo da
parte dei suoi stessi parlanti. La mia non è una presa di posizione,
per carità. Solo una constatazione della situazione, così come è
adesso. E' possibile che le cose in futuro cambino.

Ciao :)

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 3:20:17 AM2/5/02
to
On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 19:19:39 +0100, "Guillaume Toussaint"
<guill...@katamail.com> wrote:

>> Also, Italian really is Tuscan, and Lombardy is not in Toscana, so Lombard
>> cannot be a Tuscan dialect.
>
>I don't agree, "standard Italian" derivates from one of the tuscan dialects,
>Florence's one, but it's not scrictly the Tuscan.

Yes, while it's clear that standard Italian originates from Tuscan,
this doesn't mean anymore that Tuscans "surely" speak a better or less
dialectal standard italian than any other educated Italian.

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 3:53:22 AM2/5/02
to
On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 16:55:50 +0000 (UTC), "Andrea De Vecchi"
<deve...@pansid.it> wrote:

>Well, let alone the fact that there is another language that doesn't use
>the plural -s (Provençal, that builds plurals exactly in the same way of
>Lombard)

If by Provençal you mean the language spoken in Southern France, part
of the Occitan group spoken in Southern France, well it has normal -s
plurals

See:

http://www.ac-toulouse.fr/occitan/trobadors/trobvidas.html
and
http://www.mnet.fr/sabaud/gb_bib.html

It seems the words have normal plurals. Look here also:

Provençal Occitan

Aqueu jorn que vos parli, apres una matinada cauda pèr la sason, aquí
que lei niulas se metèron a far de castèus. Sus d'auçadas a donar lo
lordum, de pelotassas blancas s'amolonavan coma de caulets-flors
gigants. Puèi, aquelei niulassas se toquèron, tapèron tot lo cèu e
venguèron negras coma lo cuòu d'una sartan. E lo tròn comencèt son
estampèu! Totei lei ulhauç amagats dins lo nivolum amavan bèn venir
sus aqueu païs. La montanha fòrça auta porgiá un bòn sèti ai niulas.
De barras de sièis cènts mètres d'aplomb acompanhavan sus sei doas
ribas un riu cascarelant e, entre barras e montanha, un vilatjon
quilhava seis ostaus pròchi d'un gran prat totjorn verdejant e clafit
de pibolas.

>I think we have to look at the languages as a whole, without being
>mislead by one feature.

I agree, but I also have to say that the formation of plural words is
a well established category in the definition of the western and
eastern branches of Neo-Latin languages. This said, I found many
references to Northern Italy speeches as belonging to the
gallo-romance subgroup, as here:
http://www.orbilat.com/Modern_Romance/index.html

So, this discussion gets more and more interesting... ;)

Ciao :)))

Fabio

Paolo

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 4:40:39 AM2/5/02
to

Fabio Parri <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
3c5f8cb...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

> On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 17:58:43 +0100, "Paolo" <pao...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Un tempo forse l'aveva.
>
> Be', certo. Però in Romagna, dove vivo, non abbiamo plurali in 'esse'.
> Anzi, le parole di genere femminile formano il loro plurale con
> alternanza a/i es. burdela/burdeli bambina/bambine

Certo: nessun dialetto galloitalico né veneto oggi ha plurali in -s, a parte
forse qualche forma di transizione coll'occitano, il romancio o il friulano.

In passato (prima del XI-XII sec) in testi milanesi e veneti si trovano
(raramente) plurali in /-s/ e (frequentemente) gruppi /Cl/ intatti: es
"blancheza" in Bonvesin (= Buonvicino) de la Riva.
Originariamente sembra che esistesse una coinè padana pienamente romanza
occidentale progressivamente "centralizzatasi": l'origine dell'intacco
palatale di /Cl/ è tradizionalmente fissato nell'Italia mediana (Umbria?).

Per questo oggi è difficile stabilire se l'italiano sia una lingua romanza
occidentale o orientale, dal momento che i dialetti che fanno capo
all'italiano appartengono sia all'uno che all'altro gruppo.
Io resto dell'idea che l'italiano odierno è (ancora) la variante "illustre"
del toscano e quindi è lingua romanza orientale. Ma che dire della grande
influenza che l'Italia padana ha avuto fin dall'inizio dello scorso
millennio? Parole come "spiga", "strada" e praticamente tutto il lessico
religioso e cortese hanno vistose caratteristiche padane (lenizione &c) e
non solo nella lingua corrente, ma anche nei dialetti toscani. Pensiamo solo
all'affinità tra il francese "toi tu dis", il veneto "ti te dizi"e il
fiorentino "te tu dici".

Ciao,
Paolo


Gianni

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 4:56:21 AM2/5/02
to
"Andrea De Vecchi" <deve...@pansid.it> wrote in message
news:50864ecacb6757a092...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> > Uhm, I could even agree but, were the dialect spoken in Lumbardy a
> > western romance language, shouldn't it have the usual plural in -s ?
> Well, let alone the fact that there is another language that doesn't use
> the plural -s (Provençal, that builds plurals exactly in the same way of
> Lombard)

Wrong. Provençal *does* build plural with -s. The fact is that the -s is
not pronounced, but it *does* re-appear before vowels.

[li fremO] = the women
[lizautr0 frem0] = the other women

BTW if the "Felibrencs" do indeed write these phrases as
li fremo
lis autro fremo
the "Occitanists" write them as
lis fremas
lis autras fremas

Gianni

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 5:13:30 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 5 Feb 2002 09:56:21 +0000 (UTC), "Gianni"
<sal...@virgilio.it> wrote:

>BTW if the "Felibrencs" do indeed write these phrases as
> li fremo
> lis autro fremo
>the "Occitanists" write them as
> lis fremas
> lis autras fremas

Hi Gianni, what do you mean by Felibrencs ? Are they related with
Mistral's movement for resurrecting Occitan as a language ?

Just my curiosity :)

Fabio

Gianni

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 6:09:32 AM2/5/02
to
"Fabio Parri" <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c5fafe3...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

> Hi Gianni, what do you mean by Felibrencs ? Are they related with
> Mistral's movement for resurrecting Occitan as a language ?

La storia è lunga... Sì, Frederic Mistral, quando lanciò il Felibrige,
il grande movimento culturale per la rinascita dell'occitano, esitò a
lungo tra la grafia classica dell'occitano (quella dei trovatori) e
quella propostagli da Joseph Roumanille che, in pratica, usava i valori
fonetici francesi.
Purtroppo (secondo me) prevalse la scelta del sistema di Roumanille che,
essendo più o meno fonetico, fa sì che ogni dialetto occitanico si
ritrova con una sua grafia. Ad esempio, la parola <vin> (in grafia
classica) viene scritta <vi>, <vin>, <bi>, <bin> a seconda del dialetto
(e quindi della pronuncia).

Dalla fine della 2da guerra mondiale è invece tornato di moda l'uso
della grafia classica in tutta l'Occitania, tranne in Provenza ove
vigono entrambe le grafie. Come tutto, il problema divenne politico
negli anni '70... la destra preferiva la grafia "felibrenca" mentre la
sinistra preferiva la grafia "occitanista". Oggi per fortuna la guerra è
finita: nel 1998, il Felibrige e l'Institut d'Estudis Occitans hanno
firmato un documento in cui ognuno riconosceva la validità di entrambe
le grafie sul territorio della Provenza.

--
Gianni [fr,it,en,oc,hu,de,ca(,es,ru,ro)]
nassuu a Milan (IT-MI)
crescut a Tolosa (FR-31)
habitant le Vexin (FR-95)
_______________________________________________________________________

Ne te mets pas Martel en tête
Pour nous Poitiers fut une défaite
(Fabulous Trobadors)

Guillaume Toussaint

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 5:24:55 AM2/5/02
to
"Gianni" <sal...@virgilio.it> a écrit dans le message news:
20386fc358b8a0d285f...@mygate.mailgate.org...

>
> Wrong. Provençal *does* build plural with -s. The fact is that the -s is
> not pronounced, but it *does* re-appear before vowels.
>
> [li fremO] = the women
> [lizautr0 frem0] = the other women

c'est-à-dire exactement comme en français.
Est-ce que cela ne concerne que le provençal ou les autres dialectes
occitans suivent le même principe?

>
> BTW if the "Felibrencs" do indeed write these phrases as
> li fremo
> lis autro fremo
> the "Occitanists" write them as
> lis fremas
> lis autras fremas

Ancore un point à mettre du coté de l'orthographe occitaniste.

Guillaume
[fr, it / en, es, pt]

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 6:35:03 AM2/5/02
to
"Fabio Parri" <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c5f8cb...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

Guarda, attestazioni non così antiche del plurale metafonico lombardo
esistono e sono del secolo scorso:
quell/quij
quest/quist
asen/esen

Tra l'altro mi pare che sia nache la metodologia corrente romagnola
(burdel/burdil), no?

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 6:39:28 AM2/5/02
to
"Mardy" <ma...@vene.dave.it> wrote in message
news:20020204203335....@pupilla.local...


> Tu es correcte: io confundeva le duo significatos. Comocunque, como tu
> scribe, il non ha multo senso discuter super "dialectos del italiano",
> vidite que, de facto, illos practicamente non existe, in iste
> signifcato.

I think you are wrong: Italian dialects are, namely, Roman, Umbrian,
Corsican and (of couse) Tuscanian; moreover, the Milanese variety of
Italian (the one which only uses composite past, that pronounces -én-
instead of -čn- and so on) is, for example, and likewise every other
regional variety.

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 6:45:19 AM2/5/02
to
"Gianni" <sal...@virgilio.it> wrote in message
news:20386fc358b8a0d285f...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> BTW if the "Felibrencs" do indeed write these phrases as
> li fremo
> lis autro fremo

I guess it'd be "lei autro fremo" or do I remember wrong.
Surely, I remember the opposition "Lou casteu/lei casteu", but I don't
remember clearly if it was also the case with feminine nouns.

Andrea

Gianni

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 7:26:34 AM2/5/02
to
"Andrea De Vecchi" <deve...@pansid.it> wrote in message
news:70163e3ebb5a06464f...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> > li fremo
> > lis autro fremo
> I guess it'd be "lei autro fremo" or do I remember wrong.

Ti sbagli, ti sbagli... Si scrive <l(e)is autro fremo> (<leis> è una
variante di <lis>)

> Surely, I remember the opposition "Lou casteu/lei casteu", but I don't
> remember clearly if it was also the case with feminine nouns.

In provenzale (e solo in provenzale) gli articoli fanno:
masc. sg. lo / lou [grafia classica / grafia felibrenca]
femm. sg. la
masc. e femm. pl. l(e)is / l(e)i davanti consonante, l(e)is davanti
vocale

--
Gianni [fr,it,en,oc,hu,de,ca(,es,ru,ro)]
nassuu a Milan (IT-MI)
crescut a Tolosa (FR-31)
habitant le Vexin (FR-95)
_______________________________________________________________________

Pau entre pobles, guerra entre classes

Gianni

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 7:31:56 AM2/5/02
to
salut Guillaume

> > [li fremO] = the women
> > [lizautr0 frem0] = the other women

> Est-ce que cela ne concerne que le provençal ou les autres dialectes
> occitans suivent le même principe?

Non, cela ne concerne que le provençal. Les autres dialectes prononcent
toujours le -s final [mais j'ai un doute quant à l'auvergnat et au
vivaro-alpin que je connais mal].

En général, en occitan*, l'article suit ce schéma :
masc. sing. lo
fém. sing. la
masc. pl. los
fém. pl. las

À ma connaissance, seul le provençal a neutralisé l'opposition
masc./fem., au pluriel. Même le niçois, très proche du provençal, l'a
conservée.

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 7:34:04 AM2/5/02
to
"Gianni" <sal...@virgilio.it> wrote in message
news:4e5d7f17f1bf3e4095c...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> "Andrea De Vecchi" <deve...@pansid.it> wrote in message
> news:70163e3ebb5a06464f...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> In provenzale (e solo in provenzale) gli articoli fanno:


> masc. sg. lo / lou [grafia classica / grafia felibrenca]
> femm. sg. la
> masc. e femm. pl. l(e)is / l(e)i davanti consonante, l(e)is davanti
> vocale


Grazie! Un ripassino fa sempre bene :)

Marco Cimarosti

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 7:48:17 AM2/5/02
to
Andrea De Vecchi ha scritto:
>
> > In realtà, però, sappiamo che questa apparente identità è solo
> > l'effetto del deterioramento fonetico: un tempo, il plurale francese
> > era [les 'Oves] (ancor prima [los 'ovos]) e quello milanese era [li
> > 'wOvi].
>
> Sei sicuro? A me risulta che un tempo il plurale in milanese si
> ottenesse per metafonia.

Certo. E questo vale, in parte, anche oggi: es. "quel" ('quello'),
"quij" ('quelli').

Esiste inoltre un fenomeno simile alla metafonia, che prevede la
palatalizzazione della consonante finale. In milanese questo è
sistematico solo per la consonante /l/: "cavàl" ('cavallo'), "cavàj"
('cavalli'). Ma, in casi rari, il fenomeno esiste anche per altre
consonanti: "tutt" (/tyt/, 'tutto'), "tucc" (/tytS/, 'tutti').

In altre aree (ad es. la Brianza meridionale) il fenomeno della
palatalizzazione è molto più esteso, e riguarda tutte le consonanti
dentali: "dent" (/de~nt/, 'dente'), "dencc" (/deñtS/, denti).

Ma tutti questi fenomeni di metafonia e di palatalizzazione si
attribuiscono appunto all'antica vocale finale '-i', che è sparita
lasciando però traccia di sè sui suoni che la precedevano. Si suppone
(o si sa?) che i plurali di cui abbiamo parlato dovevano un tempo
essere: "*quelli", "*cavalli", "*tutti", "*denti". Probabilmente,
prima della sparizione della "-i", ci sarà stata una fase intermedia
di dittongazione e palatalizzazione: "*quiegli", "*cavagli", "*tucci",
"*denci".

> > La principale ragione per cui alcuni considerano sardo, ladino e
> > friulano come non italiani è proprio che fanno il plurale in -s.
> >
>
> Come sarebbe a dire "alcuni considerano"? Siamo ancora a questo punto?
> Andiamo bene...

Be', come parecchi altri stanno dicendo in questo thread, affermazioni
come "il friulano è/non è un dialetto italiano" o che "l'olandese
è/non è un dialetto tedesco" hanno dubbio valore scientifico.

In buona misura, si tratta di affermazioni politiche mascherate da
fatti linguistici e, dunque, non stupisce che ci siano opinioni
diverse in proposito.

> (Magari alcuni considerano anche l'Algherese come non italiano. Pensa un
> po' te! :-) )

Appunto: caso emblematico... Il catalano era un "dialetto spagnolo"
nella Spagna fascista, ma prima e dopo la dittatura era ed è una
"lingua di Spagna". E se una variante dello stesso idionma si parla in
Sardegna, allora ecco che può anche essere un "dialetto italiano"...

Forse c'è del vero nella celebre battuta di Weinreich (se una lingua
non ha esercito e una marina militare, allora è un dialetto).

Ciao.
Marco

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 8:09:13 AM2/5/02
to
Actually, I think the main problem in not so much whether Lombard is
or is not a dialect, but rather whether the Lombards care about their
language (and, for that matter, about their cultural identity).

Lombard is a dialect of Italy since Lombard dialects are spoken within
the borders of a State called Italy (please notice that I'm speaking
about 'a State', which does not necessarily mean or imply 'a Nation').
Lombard is also a dialect of Switzerland, since Lombard dialects are
spoken within the borders of the Swiss Confederation.
Lombard is not a dialect of Italian, e.g as (dialects of) the two
languages are not mutually intelligible.

It shouldn't be forgotten that the Lombard-speaking community is found
on both sides of the Swiss-Italian border, and that most of the
efforts done in order to preserve these languages are located on the
Swiss side. Some Lombard is spoken weekly on radio and TV (Swiss RTSI,
Rete 1, on Sunday morning 9:30-12:00 am and some TV programs). At the
moment TSI1 broadcasts TV entertainment programs in Lombard for about
1 hour a week.

Jørgen G.
Trondheim, Norway
[en] [no] [de] [fr] [it] [ld]

Paolo

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 8:10:57 AM2/5/02
to

Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> wrote in message
9a20acf709fb5aee87...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> "Mardy" <ma...@vene.dave.it> wrote in message
> news:20020204203335....@pupilla.local...
>
>
> > Tu es correcte: io confundeva le duo significatos. Comocunque, como tu
> > scribe, il non ha multo senso discuter super "dialectos del italiano",
> > vidite que, de facto, illos practicamente non existe, in iste
> > signifcato.
>
> I think you are wrong: Italian dialects are, namely, Roman

Actually, all central-northern Lazio (plus L'Aquila) belongs to "Italian"
dialectal system.

> Umbrian,
> Corsican and (of couse) Tuscanian;

you forgot Marchigiano (the central part of the region Marche, between
Senigallia and Fermo).

> moreover, the Milanese variety of
> Italian (the one which only uses composite past, that pronounces -én-
> instead of -čn- and so on) is, for example, and likewise every other
> regional variety.

Yes: every part of Italy has its own regional variant of Italian. But these
are not "dialects".

Ciao,
Paolo

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 8:48:14 AM2/5/02
to
On Mon, 04 Feb 2002 16:13:52 GMT, XXXparri...@yahoo.com (Fabio
Parri) wrote:


>Uhm, I could even agree but, were the dialect spoken in Lumbardy a
>western romance language, shouldn't it have the usual plural in -s ?
>

>Don't want to sound polemic, just genuinely curious about this.
>
>Fabio


Actually some Lombard dialects do show a surviving s (not in the
plural but in verb forms):
e.g. in Upper Veltlin (Valtellina): parlasc "(you) speak", where the
the ending has changed fro -s to S (SAMPA phonetic symbols)

s = alveolar voiceless fricative
S = postalveolar voiceless fricative

Anyway, the way most Lombard dialects form the plural, even if
different from other West Romance languages, is clearly different from
Italian, too.

Jørgen G.Bosoni
NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 9:22:08 AM2/5/02
to
"Paolo" <pao...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:a3oluv$19ntml$1...@ID-29361.news.dfncis.de...

>
> Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> wrote in message
> 9a20acf709fb5aee87...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> > moreover, the Milanese variety of
> > Italian (the one which only uses composite past, that pronounces -én-
> > instead of -čn- and so on) is, for example, and likewise every other
> > regional variety.
>
> Yes: every part of Italy has its own regional variant of Italian. But these
> are not "dialects".
>

Why not? Don't forget that, if spoken by not-so-learned people, they are
distant enough (though always mutually intelligible, of course):
just think about the use of verbs, the different pronounciation and even
the word order (I'm thinking about the Sardinian postposition of verbs,
that is not only confined to jokes).
It's obvious they don't comply the sociological definition of dialects
(just because everybody just call 'em "Italian"), but I feel they are,
from a linguistic standpoint.

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 9:25:09 AM2/5/02
to
I have found an interesting quotation from a rather modern text:

From: Martin Maiden and Mair Parry (eds.), The Dialects of Italy,
London and New York 1997, page 2.

******start******
The often used term 'Italian dialects' may create the false
impression that the dialects are varieties of the standard Italian
language. In fact, the Italian language represents the continuation of
one of the dialects (a Florentine variety of Tuscan) which achieved
national and international prestige from the fourteeth century onwards
as a literary language and later (principally in the twentieth
century) as a spoken language.
[...] The other 'dialects of Italy' are 'sisters' of Italian, locally
divergent developments of the Latin originally spoken in Italy [...].
[...]
[...] We have chosen to restrict the scope of this volume, partly
for reasons of space, to those speech varieties which are generally,
if improperly, labelled 'Italian dialects'; namely, the Romance
varieties specific to Italy, excluding French, Occitan and
Franco-Provençal, but including the Alpine Lombard dialects of Canton
Ticino, in southern Switzerland, the dialects of Corsica
(linguistically Italo-Romance, but politically French [...]), and also
Sardinian, Ladin and Friulian. Of the last three, it should be said
that Sardinian is often regarded as constituting a separate branch of
the Romance languages, whilst Ladin and Friulian (together with a
third branch, Romansh) are commonly assigned to a Rhaeto-Romance group
[...]). It is a striking reflection of the linguistic diversity of
Italy that, even if we were to exclude from our analysis Sardinian,
Ladin and Friulian, we should still be left with a heterogeneous array
of dialects. There is simply no linguistic feature which characterizes
all and only the 'dialects of Italy', however we define them. The
distinguishing feature -- now unique to Italy -- of preservation of
Latin consonant length is found only south of the 'La Spezia--Rimini
Line' [...].
******end******

Please notice the following points.:
1. "the false impression that the dialects are varieties of the
standard Italian language".
2. "The other 'dialects of Italy' are 'sisters' of Italian,
locally divergent developments"
3. "generally, if improperly, labelled 'Italian dialects'"
4. "There is simply no linguistic feature which characterizes all
and only the 'dialects of Italy', however we define them."


Jørgen G. B., Trondheim, Norway

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 9:26:43 AM2/5/02
to
"Marco Cimarosti" <marco.c...@europe.com> wrote in message
news:1604968.02020...@posting.google.com...

> > (Magari alcuni considerano anche l'Algherese come non italiano. Pensa un
> > po' te! :-) )
>
> Appunto: caso emblematico... Il catalano era un "dialetto spagnolo"
> nella Spagna fascista, ma prima e dopo la dittatura era ed è una
> "lingua di Spagna". E se una variante dello stesso idionma si parla in
> Sardegna, allora ecco che può anche essere un "dialetto italiano"...
>
> Forse c'è del vero nella celebre battuta di Weinreich (se una lingua
> non ha esercito e una marina militare, allora è un dialetto).
>

O forse è vero ciò che ho letto su un libro valenciano, che se il
catalano è un dialetto dello spagnolo, il tedesco è un dialetto del
francese, visto che si parla in Alsazia.
A parte il fatto che è ovvio, aggiungo io, che il tedesco è un dialetto
italiano, dato che si parla in Alto Adige (sia mai detto Suedtyrol, no?)

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 9:31:52 AM2/5/02
to
Btw.: have a look at how the Romance languages are classified in the
UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages

http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html#class

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 9:56:47 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 5 Feb 2002 11:35:03 +0000 (UTC), "Andrea De Vecchi"
<deve...@pansid.it> wrote:

>Guarda, attestazioni non cosě antiche del plurale metafonico lombardo


>esistono e sono del secolo scorso:
>quell/quij
>quest/quist
>asen/esen

Non mi sono spiegato bene, scusa. Certo che i plurali si formano per
metafonia, ma essa non deriva dalla scomparsa della -s, quanto, come
scrive anche Marco Cimarrosti in un suo post in questo thread:

"(...) tutti questi fenomeni di metafonia e di palatalizzazione si
attribuiscono appunto all'antica vocale finale '-i', che č sparita
lasciando perň traccia di sč sui suoni che la precedevano. Si suppone


(o si sa?) che i plurali di cui abbiamo parlato dovevano un tempo
essere: "*quelli", "*cavalli", "*tutti", "*denti". Probabilmente,

prima della sparizione della "-i", ci sarŕ stata una fase intermedia


di dittongazione e palatalizzazione: "*quiegli", "*cavagli", "*tucci",
"*denci".

>Tra l'altro mi pare che sia anche la metodologia corrente romagnola
>(burdel/burdil), no?

In riminese la cosa č estremizzata ancora di piů, in realtŕ:

Si sente sia burdčl/burděl che burdčl/burdčl, con plurale invariabile
quindi. Non so se tale fenomeno sia un tratto caratteristico del
romagnolo riminese, o sia dovuto alla progressiva semplificazione del
dialetto, usato dai parlanti piů giovani solo come 2a lingua, dopo
l'italiano. Il riminese giovanile si sta forse "creolizzando" ;)
(ovviamente uso il termine in maniera semplicistica e scherzosa, so
che con lingue creole si intende altro ;)

Tuttavia, tornando alla presenza della metafonia anche nel romagnolo,
parrebbe alquanto strano che questo formasse i plurali maschili per
metafonia da una precedente -s e quelli femminili usando invece
l'alternanza a-i, non trovi ? Secondo me questa č un'ulteriore prova
che conferma quanto detto sopra, e cioč che la metafonia derivia
probabilmente dalla caduta dell'antica vocale finale *-i

Ovviamente č possibilissimo che mi sbagli, sono qui per imparare :)

Ciao :)))

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 10:06:25 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:25:09 GMT, jorg...@netcom.no (Jørgen G.B.)
wrote:

> 4. "There is simply no linguistic feature which characterizes all
>and only the 'dialects of Italy', however we define them."

Wouldn't the formation of plurals be one ;) ?
This said, I, too, think that northern Gallo-Romance, or Venetian,
speeches are not variants of Italian.

Ciao

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 10:08:00 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 13:48:14 GMT, jorg...@netcom.no (Jørgen G.B.)
wrote:

>Anyway, the way most Lombard dialects form the plural, even if


>different from other West Romance languages, is clearly different from
>Italian, too.

Yes, it's different, but as others pointed out, it seems that this
differnce was born from the dropping of the final -i in plurals, which
is typical of East Romance languages. May this be becuase of a central
Italian influence, as someone suggested ?

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 10:13:59 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:31:52 GMT, jorg...@netcom.no (Jørgen G.B.)
wrote:

>Btw.: have a look at how the Romance languages are classified in the


>UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages
>
>http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html#class

Nice page, thanks. I didn't know Iwas capable of speaking an
endangered language :)

Gianni

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 10:40:17 AM2/5/02
to
"Jørgen G.B." <jorg...@netcom.no> wrote in message
news:3c5feca1...@news.ntnu.no...

> http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html#class

Not bad. Gallurese and Sassarese are Tuscan dialects, though, not
Sardinian ones.

G.

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 11:18:52 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 15:08:00 GMT, XXXparri...@yahoo.com (Fabio
Parri) wrote:


>differnce was born from the dropping of the final -i in plurals,

dropping of final -is rather than of final -i, I presume.


JørgenGB

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 11:23:29 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 5 Feb 2002 15:40:17 +0000 (UTC), "Gianni"
<sal...@virgilio.it> wrote:

>"Jørgen G.B." <jorg...@netcom.no> wrote in message
>news:3c5feca1...@news.ntnu.no...
>
>> http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html#class
>
>Not bad. Gallurese and Sassarese are Tuscan dialects, though, not
>Sardinian ones.
>
>G.
>


??? Why Tuscan ???

I don't know very much about Sardinian, but this sounds strange to me.

JørgenGB

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 11:30:26 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 15:06:25 GMT, XXXparri...@yahoo.com (Fabio
Parri) wrote:

>On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:25:09 GMT, jorg...@netcom.no (Jørgen G.B.)
>wrote:
>
>> 4. "There is simply no linguistic feature which characterizes all
>>and only the 'dialects of Italy', however we define them."
>
>Wouldn't the formation of plurals be one ;) ?

No, it wouldn't, since - as already pointed out - the plurals are
_not_ formed in the same way.

Btw: just think of the way plurals are formed in certain ld-speaking
valleys of Graubünden.


JørgenGB

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 11:46:09 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 16:23:29 GMT, jorg...@netcom.no (Jørgen G.B.)
wrote:

>??? Why Tuscan ???


>I don't know very much about Sardinian, but this sounds strange to me.

Found this on google:

"il gallurese e il sassarese
Nella zona intorno a Sassari e in Gallura sono presenti altri due
dialetti: il sassarese e il gallurese, molto simili al dialetto corso
imparentato col toscano. Nelle zone in questione, si parlava il
logudorese fino al XVI sec. circa e ancora oggi alcuni anziani della
Gallura parlano quel dialetto.
Si è spesso discusso sulla opportunità o meno di considerare le
varianti gallurese e sassarese come appartenenti al sardo. I documenti
più antichi provenienti da questa zona, sono scritti in logudorese;
dal XII secolo, invece, influssi "italiani", in particolare toscani,
ma anche genovesi, iniziarono a intaccare fortemente gli usi
linguistici della zona. Il Wagner stesso parlò del sassarese come di
un "dialetto ibrido che oggi si parla a Sassari, Porto Torres ed a
Sorso, la cui base è un toscano corrotto con qualche traccia genovese,
e con non pochi vocaboli sardi"; il gallurese fu affiancato al còrso
molto vicino al toscano antico"

Shortly, it seems that Gallurese and Sassarese are Tuscan dialects
with some influence of Genovese and lots of Sardinian words.

Ciao,

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 11:57:05 AM2/5/02
to
also, found this online:

"83% lexical similarity with Standard Italian; 81% with Sassarese; 70%
with Logudorese, 66% with Cagliare. A growing movement to recognize
Sard as an important part of their cultural and linguistic heritage.
Influenced by Corsican and Tuscan (Standard Italian).

"They call Campidanese and Logudorese 'Sard', and the people 'Sards',
but do not include themselves or their language in those terms. Bible
portions 1861-1862."

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SDC
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SDN

These sources document Gallurese and Sassarese as Sardinian dialects,
though.

Other info about this ?

Ciao

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 11:57:33 AM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 16:30:26 GMT, jorg...@netcom.no (Jørgen G.B.)
wrote:

>Btw: just think of the way plurals are formed in certain ld-speaking
>valleys of Graubünden.

ld-speaking ? what does it mean ? Could you tell me more about this ?
Are you referring to Walser people ? I'm very curious :)

Ciao

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 12:02:16 PM2/5/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 16:18:52 GMT, jorg...@netcom.no (Jørgen G.B.)
wrote:

>dropping of final -is rather than of final -i, I presume.

Maybe, but maybe not. For instance, as a speaker of Romagnolo, a
speech related to Lombard, I must say that our plural, in the feminine
form, is constructed by switching between "a" and "i". I presume the
same were occurring with male forms, too, before the vowels were
dropped in pronunciation. That'd be very unnatural for a language to
use two different ways to make plurals, wouldn't it ? And it'd be the
only case in Romance languages, also.

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 12:21:10 PM2/5/02
to
In fact, this is what I found on Ethnologue:
(btw., I suggest you to use the url's listed below, if you want the
charts and trees to appear with the correct format)

from
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SDN

**********quote****************
SARDINIAN, GALLURESE: a language of Italy
SIL code: SDN
ISO 639-1: sc
ISO 639-2: srd

Population No estimate available.
Region Gallurese is in northeastern Sardinia.
Alternate names NORTHEASTERN SARDINIAN, GALLURESE
Classification Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Southern, Sardinian.
Comments 83% lexical similarity with Standard Italian; 81% with


Sassarese; 70% with Logudorese, 66% with Cagliare. A growing movement
to recognize Sard as an important part of their cultural and
linguistic heritage. Influenced by Corsican and Tuscan (Standard
Italian). They call Campidanese and Logudorese 'Sard', and the people
'Sards', but do not include themselves or their language in those
terms. Bible portions 1861-1862.

******************end***********************

from
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SRD

**********quote****************
SARDINIAN, LOGUDORESE: a language of Italy
SIL code: SRD
ISO 639-1: sc
ISO 639-2: srd

Population 1,500,000 including all Sardinian languages (1977 M. Ibba,
Rutgers University).
Region Central Sardinia.
Alternate names SARD, SARDARESE, LOGUDORESE, CENTRAL SARDINIAN
Dialects NUORESE, NORTHERN LOGUDORESE, BARBARICINO, SOUTHWESTERN
LOGUDORESE.
Classification Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Southern, Sardinian.
Comments No one form of Sardinian is selected as standard for literary
purposes. Logudorese is quite different from other Sardinian
varieties. 68% lexical similarity with Standard Italian, 73% with
Sassarese and Cagliarese, 70% with Gallurese. 'Sardinian' has 85%
lexical similarity with Italian, 80% with French, 78% with Portuguese,
76% with Spanish, 74% with Rumanian and Rheto-Romance. Italian is used
for literary and teaching purposes. Farmers and housewives over 35 use
almost no Italian. Sardinian is in general use in central and southern
areas. It has prestige equal to Italian in some contexts including
writing. There is a growing movement to recognize Sard as an important
part of their linguistic and cultural heritage. Christian. Bible
portions 1858-1861.
******************end***********************


but nevertheless, the classification is as follows:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=819

**********quote****************
Language Family Trees
Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Southern, Sardinian
Indo-European (443)
Italic (48)
Romance (47)
Southern (5)
Sardinian (4)
SARDINIAN, SASSARESE [SDC] (Italy)
SARDINIAN, GALLURESE [SDN] (Italy)
SARDINIAN, LOGUDORESE [SRD] (Italy)
SARDINIAN, CAMPIDANESE [SRO] (Italy)
******************end***********************

cf. also:

from
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=723

where they introduce the definition of Italo-Western, thus grouping
Italian and western together (but Italian still being defined as a
non-Western language. The La Spezia-Rimini line (or Gothic line) is
thus the border between Italo-Dalmatian and Western instead of being
beween Eastern and Western).

******************quote***********************
Language Family Trees
Indo-European, Italic, Romance
Indo-European (443)
Italic (48)
Romance (47)
Eastern (4)
ROMANIAN [RUM] (Romania)
ROMANIAN, ISTRO [RUO] (Croatia)
ROMANIAN, MACEDO [RUP] (Greece)
ROMANIAN, MEGLENO [RUQ] (Greece)
Italo-Western (38)
Italo-Dalmatian (6)
DALMATIAN [DLM] (Croatia)
ISTRIOT [IST] (Croatia)
JUDEO-ITALIAN [ITK] (Italy)
ITALIAN [ITN] (Italy)
NAPOLETANO-CALABRESE [NPL] (Italy)
SICILIAN [SCN] (Italy)
Western (32)
Gallo-Iberian (30)
Gallo-Romance (13)
Ibero-Romance (17)
Pyrenean-Mozarabic (2)
Mozarabic (1)
Pyrenean (1)
Southern (5)
Corsican (1)
CORSICAN [COI] (France)
Sardinian (4)
SARDINIAN, SASSARESE [SDC] (Italy)
SARDINIAN, GALLURESE [SDN] (Italy)
SARDINIAN, LOGUDORESE [SRD] (Italy)
SARDINIAN, CAMPIDANESE [SRO] (Italy)
******************end***********************

Notice that Lombard, Emilian, etc. are grouped as Gallo-Romance (What,
on the other hand, seems rather strange to me is that 1) Rhaetian is
considered as Gallo-Romance; 2) The definition of Gallo-Rhaetian is
introduced, comprising Oïl (with French) and Rhaetian !!!)

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=753

******************quote***********************
Language Family Trees
Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Italo-Western, Western, Gallo-Iberian,
Gallo-Romance
Indo-European (443)
Italic (48)
Romance (47)
Italo-Western (38)
Western (32)
Gallo-Iberian (30)
Gallo-Romance (13)
Gallo-Italian (5)
EMILIANO-ROMAGNOLO [EML] (Italy)
LIGURIAN [LIJ] (Italy)
LOMBARD [LMO] (Italy)
PIEMONTESE [PMS] (Italy)
VENETIAN [VEC] (Italy)
Gallo-Rhaetian (8)
Oïl (5)
French (4)
FRENCH, CAJUN [FRC] (USA)
FRENCH [FRN] (France)
PICARD [PCD] (France)
ZARPHATIC [ZRP] (France)
Southeastern (1)
FRANCO-PROVENÇAL [FRA] (France)
Rhaetian (3)
FRIULIAN [FRL] (Italy)
LADIN [LLD] (Italy)
ROMANSCH [RHE] (Switzerland)
******************end***********************

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 12:28:18 PM2/5/02
to

>ld-speaking ? what does it mean ? Could you tell me more about this ?
>Are you referring to Walser people ? I'm very curious :)
>
>

Shorthand for Lombard-speaking. I was thinking of the three valleys
Mesolcina/Misox, Bregaglia/Bregell, Poschiavo/Puschlav

JørgenGB

btw: I'm a phonetician and a speech technologist and I've been doing
research on some prosodic features of certain Lombard dialects.
I'm not an expert of Romance linguistics, and I guess that if we had
one in this list she/he would have made the issue of the plurals much
clearer.
I'll try to post some stuff abt. Lombard pronouns, plese give me some
time.

JørgenGB

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 12:41:00 PM2/5/02
to
By the way:
http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/introduction.asp

*************quote***********

Dialects. Speech varieties which are functionally intelligible to each
other's speakers because of linguistic similarity are considered
dialects of one language and listed under that language, with
alternate names of individual dialects in parentheses. Until we
receive evidence to the contrary, we assume all dialects listed under
a single language can use the same literature and educational
materials.

************end**************

Since Lombard and Italian are not mutually intelligible, as also
(correctly) stated by Ethnologue, then they cannot be dialects of the
same language.

JørgenGB

Paolo

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 1:03:19 PM2/5/02
to

Andrea De Vecchi <deve...@pansid.it> wrote in message
2f0d641b49c9947869...@mygate.mailgate.org...

> "Paolo" <pao...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> Don't forget that, if spoken by not-so-learned people, they are
> distant enough (though always mutually intelligible, of course):
> just think about the use of verbs, the different pronounciation and even
> the word order (I'm thinking about the Sardinian postposition of verbs,
> that is not only confined to jokes).
> It's obvious they don't comply the sociological definition of dialects
> (just because everybody just call 'em "Italian"), but I feel they are,
> from a linguistic standpoint.

[it] Potremmo allora considerare i vari "italiani regionali" tra i "veri"
dialetti dell'italiano, insieme al toscano, all'umbro, al marchigiano, al
laziale.

[en] We may consider the regional variants of standard Italian as dialects
of Italian, together with Tuscan, Umbrian, Marchigiano and Laziale.

Ciao,
Paolo


Gianni

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 2:56:13 PM2/5/02
to
"Fabio Parri" <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c600e00...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SDC
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SDN
>
> These sources document Gallurese and Sassarese as Sardinian dialects,
> though.

WARNING - WARNING - WARNING

The 'Ethnologue' is *not* reliable when it comes to linguistics. It is
maintained by Protestant missionaries, *not* by linguists.

Gianni

Gianni

unread,
Feb 5, 2002, 3:03:12 PM2/5/02
to
"Jørgen G.B." <jorg...@netcom.no> wrote in message
news:3c601896...@news.ntnu.no...

> Dialects. Speech varieties which are functionally intelligible to each
> other's speakers because of linguistic similarity are considered
> dialects of one language

[it]
È una delle scorciatoie esagerate dell'Ethnologue. Allora il bokmål, lo
svedese e il danese sono dialetti di un'unica lingua, con questo
ragionamento. E il francese parlato nel Quebec è un'altra lingua
rispetto al francese parlato in Francia perché in Francia in tivù per
capire uno della gaspésie abbiamo bisogno dei sottotitoli.
Vi prego, evitate quel sito!

[fr]
C'est une des simplifications exagérées d'Ethnologue. À ce compte-là, il
faudrait considérer que le bokmål, le suédois et le danois sont des
dialectes d'une seule et même langue. Et que le français de certains
coins paumés du Québec n'est pas la même langue que le français de
France. La preuve, des fois ils sont obligés de sous-titrer.
Je vous en prie... cessez de faire référence à ce site !

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 3:02:01 AM2/6/02
to
On Tue, 5 Feb 2002 19:56:13 +0000 (UTC), "Gianni"
<sal...@virgilio.it> wrote:

>The 'Ethnologue' is *not* reliable when it comes to linguistics. It is
>maintained by Protestant missionaries, *not* by linguists.

Ah... now I see the reason for the mistakes about Gallurese and
Sassarese. Anyways the note about these speakers not calling
themselves Sards was interesting, wasn't it ? :)

Ciao,

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 3:13:51 AM2/6/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 17:41:00 GMT, jorg...@netcom.no (Jørgen G.B.)
wrote:

>Dialects. Speech varieties which are functionally intelligible to each


>other's speakers because of linguistic similarity are considered
>dialects of one language

This is an over-semplification. This way Spanish and Italian, or
Spanish and Catalan, would be dialects of the same language, which
they are not.

>Since Lombard and Italian are not mutually intelligible, as also
>(correctly) stated by Ethnologue, then they cannot be dialects of the
>same language.

I agree with this, nevertheless I would like to find some more
evidence about their belonging to the Gallo-Romance family of dialects
of Italy, of which I'm unsure (probably because of my ignorance on
that subject).
Even though they Lombard and Piedmontese show a lot of proximity to
French, other speeches, like Emilian, or Romagnolo, don't (at least,
not as much).

Ciao and thanks for the interesting discussion :)

Fabio

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 3:29:34 AM2/6/02
to
On Tue, 05 Feb 2002 17:28:18 GMT, jorg...@netcom.no (Jørgen G.B.)
wrote:

>I'm not an expert of Romance linguistics, and I guess that if we had


>one in this list she/he would have made the issue of the plurals much
>clearer.

Yes, that'd absolutely be useful :)

>I'll try to post some stuff abt. Lombard pronouns, plese give me some
>time.

Really ? Thank you so much :) Take all the time you need, and thanks
for your interesting contributions.

Ciao

Fabio

Paolo

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 5:22:09 AM2/6/02
to

Gianni <sal...@virgilio.it> wrote in message
b2f3d4585bcf3c2244f...@mygate.mailgate.org...
[...]

> > http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html#class
>
> Not bad. Gallurese and Sassarese are Tuscan dialects, though, not
> Sardinian ones.

????

Paolo


Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 6:27:32 AM2/6/02
to
On Wed, 6 Feb 2002 11:22:09 +0100, "Paolo" <pao...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>????

Da:
http://www.sardiniapoint.it/33.html

Il gallurese e il sassarese


Nella zona intorno a Sassari e in Gallura sono presenti altri due
dialetti: il sassarese e il gallurese, molto simili al dialetto corso
imparentato col toscano. Nelle zone in questione, si parlava il
logudorese fino al XVI sec. circa e ancora oggi alcuni anziani della
Gallura parlano quel dialetto.
Si è spesso discusso sulla opportunità o meno di considerare le
varianti gallurese e sassarese come appartenenti al sardo. I documenti
più antichi provenienti da questa zona, sono scritti in logudorese;
dal XII secolo, invece, influssi "italiani", in particolare toscani,
ma anche genovesi, iniziarono a intaccare fortemente gli usi
linguistici della zona. Il Wagner stesso parlò del sassarese come di
un "dialetto ibrido che oggi si parla a Sassari, Porto Torres ed a
Sorso, la cui base è un toscano corrotto con qualche traccia genovese,
e con non pochi vocaboli sardi"; il gallurese fu affiancato al còrso

molto vicino al toscano antico.

Da:
http://www.uniud.it/cip/min_tutelate_scheda.htm

Diversa è la situazione di due gruppi dialettali parlati nella parte
settentrionale della Sardegna, il gallurese e il sassarese: essi
riflettono condizioni più simili all’area còrsa e al toscano, e si
considerano il frutto di un consistente influsso continentale
risalente al periodo del predominio pisano e genovese (secc. XII-XIV,
per il sassarese), o di una massiccia immigrazione proveniente dalla
Corsica (per il gallurese): la toponomastica e la documentazione
storica rivelano che in passato le condizioni dell’area settentrionale
erano tipologicamente affini a quelle del logudorese. In particolare,
è di tipo schiettamente còrso, con fortissimi influssi liguri, il
dialetto parlato sull’isola della Maddalena.

E soprattutto da:
http://eiha.crs4.it/cultura/opereWord/lingua/lingua.doc

Che non riporto, ma di cui consiglio la lettura

Ciao :)

Fabio

Marco Cimarosti

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 6:53:08 AM2/6/02
to
JørgenGB wrote:
> Since Lombard and Italian are not mutually intelligible, as also
> (correctly) stated by Ethnologue, then they cannot be dialects of the
> same language.

In the past, I have had bitter arguments with some SIL people (the
editors of The Ethnologue) about this SIL-ly criterium of theirs.

First of all, they seem to have no method apart (possibly misinformed)
personal impressions to determine the degree "mutual intelligibility".

As a native speaker of romance language(s), my impression is that
*all* romance languages (apart Rumanian, maybe) are mutually
intelligible to a great degree. So are they all dialects of a
super-romance language? Perhaps yes, OK, but what's the usefulness of
such a concept?

Moreover, SILL seem to not fully understand the situation of
widespread *bilinguism* and *alphabetization* which is the daily
reality for most people in Europe. Perhaps they are influenced by the
relatively dialectal uniformity of the English speaking world (what
English speakers call "a dialect", would be called "a slight regional
accent" by Italians or Germans). Or they use criteria that work well
only for their on-field experience in Africa and Asia, where they are
in contact with people in rural areas, who often are illitterate, and
have few possibilities of being exposed to languages other than their
village's dialect.

In order to determine whether "Lombard" and "Italian" are mutually
intelligible or not, as a minimum, you should put together monolingual
speakers of Lombard and Italian, and see whether they understand each
other.

But there is no such thing in the world as a "monolingual Lombard
speaker"! All Lombards can speak Italian, and freely mix it with
Lombard. If the "monolingual Italian speaker" does not understand an
expression, the Lombard speaker would immediately switch to Italian
or, however, to a more "Italianized" Lombard, whithout evern realizing
he is doing so.

But I also question that there exist a "monolingual Italian speaker".
All Italians speak and/or understand a local dialect, to some degree.
This causes that we are quite ready to the kind of language variations
that can be expected between the standard languages and a dialect.
This implies that we are quite ready in grasping words and phrases in
other dialects.

Another aspect that the Ethnologue people did not quite understand, is
that Italian dialects are by no means minority languages excluded from
the social life. The major dialects have an impressive literature, and
are used extensively on the media (cinema, TV, pop music). E.g., it is
hard to measure how much Neapolitan is intelligible to northern
Italians, because the dialect is so common in pop music that everybody
knows the basics of it.

All my objections about the Ethnologue's perception of Italian
dialects have been made almost identically about German dialects. And
I strongly suspect that the same would be true for Spain, France, and
the rest of Europe.

This is not to say, however, that the Ethnologue database is all
garbage. On the contrary: the strength of this database is the
information it delivers about the lesser known language of Africa,
America, Asia, Australia. Their focus is on ethnology, and my
impression is that their data for these areas are *much* more
reliable, and based on serious research on the field.

Moreover, I must say the people behind Ethnologue have a positive
attitude toward criticism. After the (sometimes bitter) comments they
received about Italy and Germany, they have extensively reviewed these
areas. In the latest version of the Ethnologue, the Italian part has
gone very much in the direction suggested by the criticism.

For instance, they have implicitly acknowledged that there are no (or
few) monolingual speakers of dialects: summing up the speakers of all
dialects and the speakers of Italian, the total is now approximately
the double of the population of Italy. This is OK, because most people
speak Italian *and* a dialect. In the previous version, the sum
approximated to the population, implicitly assuming that every Italian
speaks *either* Italian *or* a dialect.

Ciao.
Marco

Gianni

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 7:11:46 AM2/6/02
to
"Marco Cimarosti" <marco.c...@europe.com> wrote in message
news:1604968.02020...@posting.google.com...

> Moreover, I must say the people behind Ethnologue have a positive
> attitude toward criticism. After the (sometimes bitter) comments they
> received about Italy and Germany, they have extensively reviewed these
> areas.

Lucky you. It is not the experience I had with them. I (and also people
who are way more authoritative than myself) have repeatedly written to
the Ethnologue to complain about the crap they wrote about Occitan and
its dialects. Their answer was -- more or less -- 'we know better than
you'.

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 7:26:59 AM2/6/02
to
"Fabio Parri" <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c60e36b...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

That is probably due to the fact that Emilian and Romagnolo have lost in
many areas their rounded vowels and to the development of different
features.
After all, there have been several centuries of separate development and
enhancement of different features that have all contributed to give them
such a different "complexion".
Anyway, a lot of traits have been kept in common: the lenition and the
use of prostethic pronouns, for example can still be counted among the
"family" features

Andrea De Vecchi

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 8:30:01 AM2/6/02
to
"Fabio Parri" <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c60e90c...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

On the same subject, I can also give you all the address of an
English-written Milanese grammar.
That's it:

http://mago.crema.unimi.it/milanese.html

I hope this can point out some of the distinctive feature of the ....
(fill the dots with the favourite term, be it language or dialect!)

Andrea

Jørgen G.B.

unread,
Feb 6, 2002, 1:36:34 PM2/6/02
to
On Wed, 06 Feb 2002 08:29:34 GMT, XXXparri...@yahoo.com (Fabio
Parri) wrote:


>
>>I'll try to post some stuff abt. Lombard pronouns, plese give me some
>>time.
>
>Really ? Thank you so much :) Take all the time you need, and thanks
>for your interesting contributions.
>
>

Here is the book:
Laura Vanelli,
I dialetti italiani settentrionali nel panorama romanzo
Studi di sintassi e morfologia
Roma, 1998
Bulzoni editore
ISBN 88-8319-206-0

[...] un fenomeno linguistico di vasta portata e di notevoli
implicazioni teoriche, il cosiddetto 'parametro del soggetto nullo'.
Si tratta della possibilità o meno, da parte di una determinata
lingua, di esprimere il soggetto senza ricorrerere alla presenza
obbligatoria di un pronome, o, detto in altri termini, della
possibilità o meno di avere una categoria vuota al posto del SN
soggetto, che viene identificato mediante la sola flessione verbale
[...]
Sulla base di questa proprietà, sono lingue a soggetto nullo ad es.
l'italiano, lo spagnolo, il portoghese, le lingue slave, l'ungherese,
ecc., mentre sono lingue a soggetto non nullo ad es. il francese,
l'inglese, il tedesco, ecc.
A un primo esame del loro comportamento sintattico, i d. it.
sett. [dialetti italiani settentrionali] sembrano da assegnare al tipo
delle lingue a soggetto non nullo: infatti, come ad es. in francese,
ma diversamente dall'italiano, i d. it. sett. possiedono due serie di
pronomi soggetto, una di pronomi liberi, l'altra di pronomi clitici
[...]; inoltre, di nuovo come in francese, ma diversamente
dall'italiano, il verbo con la sua flessione non ha capacità
pronominale, quindi deve essere necessariamente accompagnato dal
pronome e specificatamente dal pronome clitico: ad es., come in
francese non è possibile _*chante_, ma si deve avere _il chante_, così
nei d. it. sett. non è possibile _*canta_, ma si deve avere _el canta_
o sim. [...]

Ma questa apparente somiglianza dei d. it. sett. con una
lingua a soggetto non nullo come il francese [...] è stata
ridimensionata in una serie di studi [...] che hanno invece accentuato
altri tratti dei d. it. sett. che, allontanandoli dal tipo francese,
sono invece compatibili con una interpretazione dei d. it. sett. come
lingue a soggetto nullo (dunque appartenenti al tipo dell'italiano,
nonostante le differenze superficiali). [...]
(p. 51-52)

[...]

In altri termini, si può pensare al francese, dal punto di
vista del suo sviluppo, come a un sistema in qualche modo 'bloccato':
e questo d'altra parte concorda con il fatto che, mentre i d. it.
sett. in quanto tali hanno avuto uno sviluppo spontaneo, non
controllato da tentativi di 'normalizzazione' esterna [...], la storia
linguistica del francese è naturalmente diversa. [...] La presenza di
grammatiche normative che con le loro regole prescrittive (che
interpretano certamente processi reali della lingua, ma tendono a
regolarizzarli) può aver contribuito in modo decisivo a fissare un
determinato sistema, inibendo le spinte centrifughe, le tendenze
innovative.

[...]

Se queste indicazioni hanno qualche validità, i diversi pezzi
del nostro mosaico linguistico possono almeno in parte ricomporsi con
maggiore coerenza. Guardando le cose in sincronia, è senz'altro
convincente, almeno finora, l'analisi che accorpa i d. it. sett.
all'italiano (e agli altri dialetti italiani), ne fa degli esponenti
di lingue a soggetto nullo e li contrappone al francese, che
nonostante le apparenti somiglianze con essi, mostra strutture
sintattiche meglio compatibili con quelle di lingue a soggetto non
nullo, come l'inglese o il tedesco.
D'altra parte, se le somiglianze tra il francese e i d. it.
sett. sono apparenti sul piano del comportamento rispetto al parametro
del soggetto nullo, non si può negare che esse siano reali sotto
altyri punti di vista: non si può negare che francese e d. it. sett.
condividano la proprietà di possedere due serie di pronomi soggetto (e
questa proprietà non si trova né in italiano, né in inglese o in
tedesco), [...]
Ma se i fatti mostrati in questo lavoro sono obiettivi e se
l'interpretazione che ne è stata data è accettabile, allora si può
dire che queste somiglianze non sono casuali, ma sono una sorta di
eredità visibile del passato linguistico di queste lingue che, dopo un
inizio comune, hanno seguito uno stesso percorso, ma una facendo più
strada, e l'altra meno, raggiungendo così traguardi differenti.
(p. 88-89)

Paolo

unread,
Feb 7, 2002, 8:16:50 AM2/7/02
to

Fabio Parri <XXXparri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
3c611323...@News.CIS.DFN.DE...

> On Wed, 6 Feb 2002 11:22:09 +0100, "Paolo" <pao...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >????
>
> Da:
> http://www.sardiniapoint.it/33.html
[...]

Ma avete mai letto qualcosa in gallurese e sassarese? Secondo me no.
Come fate a dire che č un dialetto toscano?

L'equivoco IMHO nasce dal fatto che questi dialetti sono simili al corso...
ma non a quello "cismontano" (che č una variante genovesizzata del toscano)
bensě a quello "transmontano" che č simile a quei due dialetti.

Invece si dibatte ancora sulla questione che questi tre dialetti (corso
transmontano, sassarese e gallurese) facciano parte dell'area sarda.

Ciao,
Paolo


Gianni

unread,
Feb 7, 2002, 8:58:05 AM2/7/02
to
"Paolo" <pao...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:a3tv25$19oasb$1...@ID-29361.news.dfncis.de...

> Ma avete mai letto qualcosa in gallurese e sassarese? Secondo me no.
> Come fate a dire che è un dialetto toscano?

Secondo me in questo caso "dialetto toscano" = "dialetto
centro-italiano"

> L'equivoco IMHO nasce dal fatto che questi dialetti sono simili al corso...

> ma non a quello "cismontano" (che è una variante genovesizzata del toscano)
> bensì a quello "transmontano" che è simile a quei due dialetti.


>
> Invece si dibatte ancora sulla questione che questi tre dialetti (corso
> transmontano, sassarese e gallurese) facciano parte dell'area sarda.

Ci potresti dare une referenza? Ho un pacco di libri di linguistica
romanza, a casa, e tutti concordano sulla "centroitalianità" dei
dialetti del nord della Sardegna.

Gianni

Fabio Parri

unread,
Feb 7, 2002, 10:00:28 AM2/7/02
to
On Thu, 7 Feb 2002 13:58:05 +0000 (UTC), "Gianni"
<sal...@virgilio.it> wrote:

>Ci potresti dare une referenza? Ho un pacco di libri di linguistica
>romanza, a casa, e tutti concordano sulla "centroitalianità" dei
>dialetti del nord della Sardegna.

Idem, tutti le referenze trovate in rete, compresa una storia della
lingua sarda, concordano nel dare come di origine toscana il gallurese
e il sassarese. Ovviamente nessuno è infallibile, però...

Paolo

unread,
Feb 7, 2002, 11:05:37 AM2/7/02
to

Gianni <sal...@virgilio.it> wrote in message
54f4f176c4130e54358...@mygate.mailgate.org...
[...]

> > Ma avete mai letto qualcosa in gallurese e sassarese? Secondo me no.
> > Come fate a dire che è un dialetto toscano?
>
> Secondo me in questo caso "dialetto toscano" = "dialetto
> centro-italiano"

Sì l'avevo capito... ma il discorso non cambia d'una virgola.

> > L'equivoco IMHO nasce dal fatto che questi dialetti sono simili al
corso...
> > ma non a quello "cismontano" (che è una variante genovesizzata del
toscano)
> > bensì a quello "transmontano" che è simile a quei due dialetti.
> >
> > Invece si dibatte ancora sulla questione che questi tre dialetti (corso
> > transmontano, sassarese e gallurese) facciano parte dell'area sarda.
>
> Ci potresti dare une referenza? Ho un pacco di libri di linguistica
> romanza, a casa, e tutti concordano sulla "centroitalianità" dei
> dialetti del nord della Sardegna.

A me basta il fatto che il vocalismo non sia quello panromanzo ma quello
sardo, in cui /i/ e /u/ brevi latine passano a /i/ e /u/ romanze.

Il gallurese (non il sassarese) poi ha l'articolo derivato da illu(m)
anziché ipsu(m) e perfino la cogeminazione, ma resta sardo in tutto il
resto.

Questa storia dei dialetti del nord della Sardegna considerati dialetti
centroitaliani mi sembra una novità recente, giacché né Rohlfs, né
Meyer-Lübke, né Tagliavini, né Renzi la prendono in considerazione.

Ciao,
Paolo


Gianni

unread,
Feb 7, 2002, 11:26:32 AM2/7/02
to
"Paolo" <pao...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:a3u8uq$1ah4pk$1...@ID-29361.news.dfncis.de...

> Questa storia dei dialetti del nord della Sardegna considerati dialetti
> centroitaliani mi sembra una novità recente, giacché né Rohlfs, né
> Meyer-Lübke, né Tagliavini, né Renzi la prendono in considerazione.

Recente, recente... Ieri sera, incuriosito, ho riletto gran parte del
mitico "La fragmentation linguistique de la Romania" di Walther von
WARTBURG (Paris, Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1967).
Anche il Von Wartburg considerava i dialetti del nord della Sardegna
"centroitaliani".

It is loading more messages.
0 new messages