Talk:Languages of Italy: Difference between revisions

Improvement Drive

The article Culture of Italy has been listed to be improved on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. You can add your vote there if you would like to support the article.--Fenice 14:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't agree about the classification of Italian northern dialects as languages.

In any case, notice that: 1) Abruzzo (not Abruzzi, which was an ancient name no longer used) iS in central Italy, not in southern one (you can easily check looking at a map); 2) There is not ONE Abruzzese dialect, but two different families: the dialects of L'Aquila province belong to the Oscian-Umbrian family, such as the dialects of Latium, Umbria and Marche (but Pesaro and Urbino), while the dialects of Chieti, Pescara and Teramo provinces belong to the Iapigian family, such as the southern dialects of Puglia.

Languages of Italy

This article should be reorganized and expanded. The language tree, if we can call it like that, should be reorganized under a single tree. The dialects of Sardinia, Calabria and central Italy should be reorganized and classified accordingly. French, German, Albanian and all the imported languages should be listed at the end of the list. ICE77 -- 195.212.29.67 15:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. After a promising introduction and start it devolves into a list, and a meaningless list at that. What percentages speak these languages and dialects? How is this article, as it is, in any way useful? This is redirected from "Languages of Italy," and I think replacing the list with an actual article would be a significant improvement (see Languages of France, for example). 205.157.110.11 02:00, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Sicilian twice

I don't understand why sicilian is listed twice, I understand that it is still classified as a Italo-Dalmation language/dialect? why is it listed again as another heading. [anon]

my question exactly. 194.65.103.1 10:03, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Possibly because there is no consensus (see Ethnologue entry) on whether or not Sicilian is part of the "Southern Romance" group (with Sardinian & Corsican), or the "Italo Western group" like most idioms spoken on the continent. However, I'm not sure this justifies Sicilian being listed twice. I'll try to fix this since Wikipedia uses Ethnologue and ISO standard ratings to categorize languages and put out new versions of Wikipedia. It only makes sense to apply it here as well. --Zulux1 07:06, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Map Correction Needed

The Languages of Italy map with this article shows a red dot in the Province of Foggia with a line connecting it to Arbëresh. This is incorrect. The red dot in Foggia is the location of the towns of Faeto and Celle di San Vito. The residents there speak a dialect of the Franco-Provençal language called Faetar (or Faitare). This is also the name of a Franco-Provençal "dialect group", one of seven major language divisions which divides its 40+ individual dialects. (It was brought to Foggia in the XIVe century by soldiers from the Bresse region of France (in the department of Ain.) (Also see the Franco-Provençal language article or the brief statements under Province of Foggia or the towns for more on this subject.) Thanks in advance for fixing it. Charvex 10:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Merger

IS the article going to be merged with Languages of Italy? Is there voting going on? Thanks. --Dakrismeno (talk) 13:24, 10 May 2008 (UTC) Since nobody replied to my question, I have tidied up a bit by removing repetitions and putting the long language list to the end in order to improve legibility. I've also moved some text out of the intro and into the body of the article. --Dakrismeno (talk) 17:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

No it should not be merged. We have separate articles on English dialects, Languages of England, and the English language. 89.242.92.226 (talk) 09:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Corsican, Sassarese, and Gallurese

Currently, Corsican is listed twice in the Languages and language groups section: once in the Italian group, and another time in the South Romance group. According to all the sources I have seen (including the Wikipedia Corsican language article itself and the sources cited there), Corsican belongs to the same group as Tuscan, has nothing to do with Sardinian (apart maybe a couple of area features), and is stricly related to Sassarese and Gallurese, which are sometimes cited as "Corsican dialects". I am changing the Languages and language groups to reflect these facts. While moving the three language where they belong, I am also removing two remarks in parentheses about Corsican ("considered to be related to and mutually intelligible with Standard Italian") and Gallurese ("considered by some authors as a variety of Sardinian, by some others an independent language"). I am doing this because I feel both remarks are redundant in a simple list of languages (lots of Romance languages --or maybe all of them-- are considered to be related and mutualy intelligible with lots of other Romance languages --or maybe any other one of them--), and because I find no confirmation that "some authors" consider Gallurese as a variety of Sardinian; if there is a reliable source about this, the remark can be reinserte aferwards. 151.57.65.110 (talk) 20:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Romansch

In the "Languages spoken in Italy" section, among the others, it's also listed Romansch, but, as far as I know, it's spoken only in Switzerland (in Graubünden, which has three official languages: German, Italian and Romansch). I'm not aware of any Romansch community in Italy.--151.51.24.225 (talk) 22:18, 27 September 2009 (UTC) Yes Romansch is a bit of an odd one - you're right (as far as I know) that Romansch is generally thought to be a Swiss language. In Alto Adige/South Tyrol 5% (very roughly)of the population speak Ladin, a language described as Rheato-Romansch. Does that help? Cheers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.55.123.35 (talk) 13:38, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Stupid vandalism

This page is about languages in Italy, right? It says languages of France... 24.145.85.223 (talk) 08:34, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Need "In education" section

This article needs a (perhaps brief) section called "In education". It would answer these questions: What languages of Italy are languages of instruction (in classes in general, such as history and so forth) in the schools, and where? Do the teachers speak in a local dialect of that language, or the standard form? Duoduoduo (talk) 14:09, 18 July

No public institution officially uses any regional language, neither spoken or written. Medende (talk) 15:22, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

not languages

I am italian and I know much better than you which are the languages of italy and which are only 'dialects'. Most of those included in this page are not languages; the languages of italy are only Italian and those of linguistic minorities officially recognized by the State, such as Mocheno , Ladin , Occitan...some of those you consider endangered are not. Ladin , Occitan , Mocheno , Cimbrian and others, are not endangered because children still speak them; the 'Red book of endangered languages' does not indicate any source in Italy that establish which languages are actually endangered; whereas other more specific Italian ones, show that some of them are not endangered at all. The language/dialect distinction often has different meanings in the popular Italian culture than in Linguistics in the strict sense . There are numerous sources which consider these varieties to be distinct languages, based on their morphology, phonology, syntax and lack of mutual intelligibility. Moreover, some of the languages that you cite as not being endangered, in fact are. Child speakers is one of the most important criterion for language vitality, but not the only one; loss of fluency, diglossia and other factors can cause a language to be endangered to some extent as well. Although I am not sure, I think that this article is going by the consensus of the English speaking linguistic sources; the Italian view of these issues tends to be more political than strictly scientific.Mordeaux (talk) 14:05, 10 May 2013 (UTC) I am Italian and about this I know more than you all together [thank you VERY MUCH for your condescension, sadly the same cannot be said about your knowledge of written English](see the note** below). Nowadays Italian is the native language of 95% of Italians, including all the speakers of Lombard, Piedmontese or Sicilian; the remaining 5% speak other languages. such as Ladin, Mocheno, Occitan etc. These other ones are spoken languages in Italy, listed with their relative percentages: Sardinian(2.2%), Friulian(0.9%), German (0.5%), Occitan (0.3%), Albanian (0.2%), Roma (0.2%), Franco-Provencal and French (0.2%), Ladin (0.1%), Slovene (0.1%), Greek (0.03%), Catalan (0.01%), Croat (0.01%) ITALIAN 95% — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.95.63.70 (talk) 20:24, 25 June 2013 (UTC) I might add that the cited Occitan, Ladin and Mocheno are NOT endangered, for children still speak them currently as they are used extensively in every field of social life. The linguistic minorities speak languages other than Italian as tehir native tongues and they speak them well, withoutn loss of fluency. I repeat: how can you know this things better than me? I am Italian [and as can be easily seen, VERY MODEST] am interested in linguistic minorities and I live near some the areas where these tongues are spoken. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.95.14.245 (talk) 10:41, 29 June 2013 (UTC) Footnote **, regarding the insertions placed between square brackets [] - The writer of these insertion is the volunteer CarloMartinelli (talk) 02:52, 19 March 2015 (UTC)Carlo Martinelli.CarloMartinelli (talk) 02:52, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

@CarloMartinelli: language vs dialect is a messy ambiguous thing. Like English, Scots, and  Patwa; or Hindi and Urdu (but that's more languages vs registers). Irtapil (talk) 05:56, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Emilian/Romagnol

There seems to be a lot of talk of splitting the Emilian-Romagnol group into separate languages, rather than dialects of one; for example there is an incubator for a separate Romagnol WIkipedia and the ISO codes have been separated. The two are similar in many ways and have been grouped together in the past, although I'm not sure that they are much more similar to each other than either is to Lombard. My understanding is that historically they have been grouped together because they share an administrative region, rather than for scientific reasons. To my knowledge there is no Emilian-Romagnol dictionary or grammar, or Italian institutions seeking to preserve both as one entity. Perhaps this article should split them up as well? Mordeaux (talk) 14:12, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree. Emilian-Romagnol seems more like an academic classification, actual speaker would 100% tell you they speak their local dialect. TheFlagandAnthemGuy (talk) 23:57, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed that Emilian does not = Romagnol. Then again, as you rightly imply, someone from e.g. Parma doesn't speak Bolognese, and vice versa. In a sense Emilian doesn't = Emilian (ditto for Romagnol, obviously). The insistence on labeling by regione is a sometimes inconvenient fiction rooted in the administrative-political, or at least sociopolitical, not in academic linguistics. The ongoing administrative shotgun marriage of Emilia-Romagna just makes the terminological inexactitude more obvious. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 01:04, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

We may argue how much homogenous are the two, but for sure we can't put them together. Not mentioning that people would reject any union regardless of local rivalries and administrative organization. Also the Gallo-Picene spoken in Pesaro and Urbino (in Marche Region) has become kind of a third wheel of the controversy. So, in the end, how do we proceed?TheFlagandAnthemGuy (talk) 02:40, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Good question, to which I don't have a good easy answer. It makes no sense to force Emilian and Romagnol together as a sing;e linguistic entity, but the same can be said for just about any administrative region. The main task in all instances seems to be to avoid the spurious "a language" misconception (especially striking for Sardinia and Corsica, but certainly not only those), focusing instead on typologies and the exemplification of dialect continua, interrupted here and there by bundled isoglosses. I.e., just weave reality into whatever the article is. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 12:37, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Links within headings

Per the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, "Headings should normally not contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked." While headings such as:

Albanian, Slavic, Greek and Romani languages

are not strictly ruled out, they are frowned upon. Is there some reason they are necessary here? Cnilep (talk) 03:59, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

• Fair enough. As I made the edits I will reverse them. --Mrjulesd (talk) 08:50, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

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Skewed POV of the page

The article skews to elaborating the heterogeneity and dissimilarity of the Romance Languages in Italy, but fails to point out the fact that some of them (e.g Tuscan vs Central Italian, and Central Italian vs Neapolitan) are mutually intelligible to a significant level. These facts need to be covered if readers of this article are supposed to get an unbiased understanding of the pattern.--霎起林野间 (talk) 12:15, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

If anything, the article now tends to skew in the other direction, understating the heterogeneity of the L-Complex of local languages. It begins with a red flag that that will be case: the absurd contention that There are approximately thirty-four native living spoken languages and related dialects in Italy. Though valiant efforts have been made to offer a more accurate portrayal, these are countered by the fixation on regions, false misleading equivalencies (e.g. Venetian = Italian veneto), shoe-horning considerable variety into a singularity that doesn't really exist (the Sardinian language), inexplicable cherry-picking (Vastese is endangered, yes, but not Termolese?), and stuffing all that and more into convenient packages of incomprehension such as the stunning underestimation that "there are 31 endangered languages in Italy." Although mutual intelligibility can be a hot potato, indeed (Italian and Spanish are mutually intelligible if speakers want them to be), the variegated levels of mutual intelligibility among local Romance languages in Italy can be of interest once the Italian linguistic landscape is described accurately. 98.168.51.95 (talk) 18:28, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

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There are approximately thirty-four native living spoken languages and related dialects in Italy,

To be blunt, this is total nonsense. Ethnologue is notoriously inaccurate regarding the Italian linguistic landscape and should not be used as an authoritative source. The number of languages native to Italy -- which no one has been able to count -- is huge. 98.168.51.95 (talk) 19:09, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, 34 is just silly. I'll try to massage it out. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 21:54, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Loporcaro classification

Since the classification of Romance languages of Italy is controversial (as the previous version of the article itself says), I have added another classification (Loporcardo 2009). It would be best to include other possible classifications given by scholars. If anybody has access to such other classifications, I invite them to add them in. --SynConlanger (talk) 16:16, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

[edit] I just realised now that possibly this article is not the best place to include a classification of the romance languages of Italy at all? What does everybody think? The article on Romance languages gives a few classification systems (the thing is that although there is a dialectal continuum in Romance languages, the Laspezia-Rimini isogloss separates Northern Romance from Southern Romance, so that makes treatment of Romance languages within the borders of italy less straightforward... I'll try to gather up more references in the coming weeks). --SynConlanger (talk) 17:20, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

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• Italian Dialects.png

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Misleading

This page is totally misleading ad should be deleted or reorganized. Better from a Linguist od specialist in dialects. Languages are a system of conventional spoken sounds and written symbols. It must be a method of communication of a community. In this page dialects are listed as languages, two of recognized languages are not mentioned in the region they belong. Lively and official languages as Ladin are labelled as "endangered". Just to clarify: the languages spoken in Italy are: italian, french (Valle d'Aosta), German (South Tyrol and a small part of Valle D'aosta), Ladin (South Tirol, Trentino, Veneto), Sloveno (Friuli Venezia Giulia). There are ancient language minority in Sardinia (Catalan), Calabria (Arbesh-Albanian and Greek), Trentino (Dialect with influence of ancient German spoken by Mocheni). Italian as a Language comes from vulgar latin and it has been codified in 1400. There is no such thing as "central italian" or "south Italian", but many local dialects. More precisely, different accents. Dialects have almost disappeared with the public education and Tv. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:B07:6463:C143:A50C:E60C:C2D2:11BB (talk) 07:39, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Add academic sources

I removed references to Ethnologue given these guidelines and because there are accademic resources that can be cited. If relevant, demographic info from Ethnologue could be re-entered in the relevant sections. It would also be good to add more academic sources, so I encourage other linguists to do so based on their expertise. --SynConlanger (talk) 19:46, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@SynConlanger: Why don't some romance languages (e.g. Provençal, Franco-Provençal, Catalan) seem to be mentioned although they are undoubtedly spoken in Italy?--3knolls (talk) 05:37, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to add them with appropriate references. --SynConlanger (talk) 05:58, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Citation errors/confusion in Classification section

Loporcaro 2009 should include page number, 70. Maiden 1997 regarding classification is actually Maiden and Parry 1997, p. 13. Footnote 68 in that section cites Maiden 1997:273; it's actually the chapter Emilia-Romagna by John Hajek, in Maiden & Parry 1997; Hajek's work must be cited. For any citation from Maiden & Parry, a decision needs to be made regarding the original 1997 edition, or 2006 -- i.e. choose one, stick to that, not mix the two. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 03:18, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation of 'Dialects' link

Hi 3knolls: I am a bit confused.

The {{main|Italian dialects}} hatnote was on the disambiguation list. I carefully looked for the best alternative and at the correct uses of the main template, and, after reading the various Italian language-related articles and thoughfully considering, decided that {{main|Regional Italian}} would be usefully and appropriately linked via this template. Why would you reverse this change with the edit summary, "Unfortunately, the Italian dialects article is now a DAB page"?

I can't see any reason for this ... What am I missing? I have reinstated my edit in the meantime, but keen to hear from you. Thanks. AukusRuckus (talk) 14:15, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Excuse me for not being able to make myself understood. Indeed "Dialects of Italy" can have three different meanings, and the former article spoke about all of those. But now, how can we choose one of them? Why esclude the other two meanings? In any case, a link to "Regional Italian" appears to be completely useless, because the same link is already in that section.--3knolls (talk) 14:26, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

It's beginning to seem like a hopeless battle, given the two very distinct definitions of dialect, with the typically anglophone conceptualization 'variety of' winning the battle even elsewhere, outside the anglophone setting. This, for example, as the first sentence in the article German dialects: "German dialects are the various traditional local varieties of the German language", with the article, of necessity, going on the describe the plethora of local languages that are very clearly not varieties or derivatives of anything like Standard(ized) High German, but dialetti as the term is used in Italy. The disambiguation page for Italian dialects doesn't help at all by similarly reinforcing the 'variety of [language x]' usage: the actual dialects of Italian, rather than varieties of Italian... Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:23, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, this is beginning to look endemic. From Swedish dialects: "Swedish dialects are the various forms of the Swedish language, particularly those that differ considerably from Standard Swedish". That's immediately contradicted -- and readers immediately confused -- by an informative accurate statement: "The linguistic definition of a Swedish traditional dialect, in the literature merely called dialect, is a local variant that has not been heavily influenced by Standard Swedish and that can trace a separate development all the way back to Old Norse". Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:41, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Neapolitan language which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 12:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Southern Italo-Romance languages are *not* a variety of Neapolitan

What the subject line says. Please use scientifically valid maps (like Pellegrini's), not stuff found on the internet 5.168.59.94 (talk) 08:16, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

The map is wrong

The map in the infobox marks two regions of Northern Italy as being partially German speaking, the Province of Belluno and the Non Valley in the Province of Trento. This is wrong, as both regions are partially Ladin speaking, not German. 2804:30C:1F0B:EF00:1C90:192A:2E80:B03E (talk) 19:33, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Val di Non: "Tre comuni nell'estremità nord della valle sono, fin dal Medioevo, popolati da tedeschi. È la Deutschnonsberg, composta da Lauregno, Proves e Senale-San Felice. Qui quasi la totalità della popolazione parla il dialetto sudtirolese." Il Cadore: "È una regione storico-geografica italiana, situata nell'alta provincia di Belluno, in Veneto e in minima parte in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Le parlate sono tutte di ceppo ladino, lingua tutelata dalla legge 482/99, ad eccezione del sappadino, dialetto germanofono." (Ecc.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 02:08, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Arbëreshë speak Arbëresh, not Albanian

Arbëreshë speak Arbëresh, not Albanian. Arbëresh is a more precise designation. The recently added source by User:Βατο actually makes this abundantly clear: "The ethnic Albanian (Arbëresh) dialects of Italy bear little resemblance to the standard language or dialects of Albania, as they have been cut off from the main language for around 500 years." Please stop your narrow-minded Albanian chauvinism. Arbëreshë are not Albanian and have a right to their own ethnic identity, including their language. The fact that Arbëresh relates to the Albanian language is made in the linked article. DonCalo (talk) 18:57, 29 September 2024 (UTC)