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| History | |
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See also: Venetian literature
A street sign in Venice using the Venetian calle, as opposed to the Italian via.
Venetian descends from Vulgar Latin, influenced by the Celts and possibly the Venetic substratum and by the languages of the Germanic tribes (Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Lombards) who invaded Italy in the 5th century.[citation needed] Venetian, as a known written language, is attested in the 13th century. We also find influences and parallelism with Greek and Albanian in words such as : piròn (fork), inpiràr (to fork), carega (chair) fanela (t-shirt).
The language enjoyed substantial prestige in the days of the Venetian Republic, when it attained the status of a lingua franca in the Mediterranean. Notable Venetian-language authors are the playwrights Ruzante (1502–1542) and Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793). Both Ruzante and Goldoni, following the old Italian theater tradition (Commedia dell'Arte), used Venetian in their comedies as the speech of the common folk. They are ranked among the foremost Italian theatrical authors of all time, and Goldoni's plays are still performed today. Other notable works in Venetian are the translations of the Iliad by Casanova (1725–1798) and Francesco Boaretti, and the poems of Biagio Marin (1891–1985). Notable also is a manuscript titled "Dialogue of Cecco da Ronchiti of Bruzene about the New Star" attributed to Galileo (1564–1642).
However, as a literary language Venetian was overshadowed by the Dante's Tuscan "dialect" and the French languages like Provençal and the Oïl languages.
Even before the demise of the Republic, Venetian gradually ceased to be used for administrative purposes in favor of the Tuscan-derived Italian language that had been proposed and used as a vehicle for a common Italian culture strongly supported by eminent Venetian humanists and poets, from Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), a crucial figure in the development of the Italian language itself, to Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827).
At present, virtually all its speakers are diglossic, and use Venetian only in informal contexts. The policy of deploying law enforcement forces from other regions, especially southern Italy, has meant that people have to use standard Italian with the foremost representatives of the state.[citation needed] The present situation raises questions about the language's medium term survival. Despite recent steps to recognize it, the language remains far below the threshold of inter-generational transfer with younger generations preferring standard Italian in many situations. The dilemma is further complicated by the ongoing large-scale arrival of immigrants who only speak or learn standard Italian.
In the past however, Venetian was able to spread to other continents as a result of mass migration from the Veneto region between 1870 and 1905 and 1945 and 1960. This is itself a by-product of the 1866 annexation because the latter subjected the poorest sectors of the population to the vagaries of a newly integrated, developing industrial economy so-called national economy centered on north-western Italy. Tens of thousands of peasants and craftsmen were thrown off the land or out of their workshop, forced to seek better fortune overseas.
Venetian migrants created large Venetian-speaking communities in Argentina, Brazil (see Talian), Mexico (see Chipilo Venetian dialect), where the language is still spoken today. Internal migrations under the Fascist regime also sent many Venetian speakers to other regions of Italy like southern Lazio.
Presently, some firms have chosen to use the Venetian language in advertising as a famous beer did some years ago (Xe foresto solo el nome - only the name is foreign)[citation needed]. In other cases Italian advertisements are given a "Venetian flavour" by adding a Venetian word: for instance an airline used the verb "xe" (Xe sempre più grande - It is always bigger) into an Italian sentence (the correct Venetian being el xe senpre pi grando) to advertise new flights from Marco Polo Airport[citation needed].
On March 28, 2007 the Regional Council of Vèneto officially recognized the existence of the Venetian Language (Łéngua Vèneta) by passing with an almost unanimous vote a law on the "tutela e valorizzazione della lingua e della cultura veneta" (Law on the Protection and Valorisation of the Venetian Language and Culture) with the vote of both governing and opposition parties.
[edit] Tags:Italy,Brazil,Mexico,Veneto,Western,Venice,Venetic,Venetian Literature,Celts,Substratum,Germanic Tribes,Visigoths,Ostrogoths,Lombards,Citation Needed,Greek,Venetian Republic,Lingua Franca,Mediterranean,Ruzante,Carlo Goldoni,Commedia Dell'arte,Iliad,Casanova,Francesco Boaretti,Biagio Marin,Dialogue Of Cecco Da Ronchiti Of Bruzene About The New Star,Galileo,Literary Language,Dante,Tuscan,French Languages,Provençal,Oïl Languages,Pietro Bembo,Italian Language,Ugo Foscolo,Argentina,Talian,Chipilo Venetian Dialect,Fascist,Lazio,Marco Polo Airport,Chipilo, | |
| Geographic distribution | |
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Venetian is spoken mainly in the Italian regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia and in both Slovenia and Croatia (Istria, Dalmatia and the Kvarner Gulf).[citation needed] Smaller communities are found in Lombardy, Trentino, Emilia Romagna (in Mantova, Rimini, and Forlì), Lazio (Pontine Marshes), and formerly in Romania (Tulcea). It is also spoken in North and South America by the descendants of Italian immigrants. Notable examples of this are the city of Chipilo, Mexico or the Talian dialect spoken in Brazilian states of Espírito Santo, São Paulo, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. Until the middle 20th Century, Venetian was spoken on the Greek Island of Corfu, which had been long under the rule of the Republic of Venice. Moreover Venetian had been adopted by a large proportion of the population of Cefalonia, another Ionian Island, as it was part of the Domini da Màr for almost three centuries.[11]
[edit] Tags:Slovenia,Croatia,Friuli,Trentino,Istria,Rio Grande Do Sul,Venezia Giulia,Dalmatia,Friuli-venezia Giulia,Kvarner Gulf,Lombardy,Emilia Romagna,Mantova,Rimini,Forlì, | |
| Classification | |
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Venetian descends from Vulgar Latin, like all other Romance languages, including Italian and other "italian" regional languages. However, in the normal classification of Romance languages it is considered part of the Italo-Romance group.[12]
According to Ethnologue, Venetian and Italian belong to different branches of Romance, Venetian in Gallo-Iberian. But most academies and Venetian linguists not only don't classify it as a part of that group, but also they underline its "non-Gallicness", "agallicità" (Alberto Zamboni(1988:522)) and various "anti-Celtic features" (Giovan Battista Pellegrini (1976:425)). For example Venetian retained clear vowels as opposed to rounded front vowels, it didn't develop nasalization, it preserved the final vowels, it didn't palatalize |kt| and |ks| and doesn't present falling diphthongs |ei|, |ou|, whereas, like in the Italian language, the Venetian diphthongization occurs in originally open syllables.
[edit] Tags:Romance,Romance Language, | |
| Regional variants | |
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The main regional variants and sub-variants of Venetian are
Central (Padua, Vicenza, Polesine), with about 1,500,000 speakers.
Eastern/Coastal (Venice, Trieste, Grado, Istria, Fiume).
Western (Verona, Trentino).
North-Central (Treviso, most of Pordenonese).
Northern (Belluno, comprising Feltre, Agordo, Cadore, Zoldo Alto).
All these variants are mutually intelligible, with a minimum 92% between the most diverging ones (Central and Western). Modern speakers reportedly can still understand to some extent Venetian texts from the 14th century.
Other noteworthy variants are spoken in
Chioggia,
Pontine Marshes,
Dalmatia, Croatia,
Rio Grande do Sul (Antônio Prado), Santa Catarina, Paraná e São Paulo, Brazil ("Talian"),
Chipilo, Mexico,
Peripheral creole languages along the southern border (nearly extinct).
[edit] Tags:Extinct, | |
| Grammar | |
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Main article: Venetian grammar
Like most Romance languages, Venetian has mostly abandoned the Latin case system, in favor of prepositions and a more rigid subject–verb–object sentence structure. It has thus become more analytic, if not quite as much as English. Venetian also has the Romance articles, both definite (derived from the Latin demonstrative ille) and indefinite (derived from the numeral unus).
Venetian also retained the Latin concepts of gender (masculine and feminine) and number (singular and plural). Unlike the Gallo-Iberian languages, which form plurals by adding -s, Venetian forms plurals in a manner similar to standard Italian. Nouns and adjectives can be modified by suffixes that indicate several qualities such as size, endearment, deprecation, etc. Adjectives (usually postfixed) and articles are inflected to agree with the noun in gender and number, but it is important to mention that the suffix might be deleted because the article is the part that suggests the number. However, Italian is influencing the Venetian Language :
el gato graso, the fat (male) cat.
ła gata grasa, the fat (female) cat.
i gati grasi, the fat (male) cats.
łe gate grase, the fat (female) cats.
In conservative Venetian, the article alone may convey the gender:
i gat gras, the fat (all males or males and females) cats.
łe gat gras, the fat (female) cats.
el gatòn graso, the fat big (male) cat.
ła gatòna grasa, the fat big (female) cat.
un bel gateło, a nice small (male) cat.
na beła gateła, a nice small (female) cat.
No native Venetic words seem to have survived in present Venetian, but there may be some traces left in the morphology, such as the morpheme -esto/asto/isto for the past participle, which can be found in Venetic inscriptions from about 500 BC:
Venetian: Mi go fazesto ('I have done')
Venetian Italian: Mi go fato
Standard Italian: Io ho fatto
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| Redundant subject pronouns | |
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A peculiarity of Venetian grammar is a "semi-analytical" verbal flexion, with a compulsory "clitic subject pronoun" before the verb in many sentences, "echoing" the subject as an ending or a weak pronoun. Independent/emphatic pronouns (e.g. ti), on the contrary, are optional. The clitic subject pronoun (te, el/ła, i/łe) is used with the 2nd and 3rd person singular, and with the 3rd person plural. This feature may have arisen as a compensation for the fact that the 2nd- and 3rd-person inflections for most verbs, which are still distinct in Italian and many other Romance languages, are identical in Venetian. (The Piedmontese language also has clitic subject pronouns, but the rules are somewhat different.) The function of clitics is particularly visible in long sentences, which do not always have clear intonational breaks to easily tell apart vocative and imperative in sharp commands from exclamations with "shouted indicative". In Venetian the clitic el marks the indicative verb and its masculine subject, otherwise there is an imperative preceded by a vocative.
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| Interrogative inflection | |
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Venetian also has a special interrogative verbal flexion used for direct questions, which also incorporates a redundant pronoun:
Italian: (Tu) eri sporco? ("Were you dirty?").
Venetian: (Ti) jèristu onto? or even (Ti) xèrito spazo? (lit. "You were-you dirty?")
Italian: Il cane era sporco? ("Was the dog dirty?").
Venetian: El can jèreło onto? (lit. "The dog was-he dirty?")
or even: Jèreło onto el can ? (lit. "Was-he dirty the dog ?")
Italian: (Tu) ti sei domandato? ("Have you asked yourself?").
Venetian: (Ti) teto domandà? (lit. "You to-yourself have-you asked?")
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| Auxiliary verbs | |
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Reflexive tenses use the auxiliary verb aver ("to have"), as in English, German, and Spanish; instead of essar ("to be"), which would be normal in Italian. The past participle is invariable, unlike Italian:
Italian: (Tu) ti sei lavato (lit. "(You) yourself are washed").
Venetian: (Ti) te te à/ga/ghè lavà (lit. "(You) you yourself have washed").
Italian: (Loro) si sono svegliati (lit. "(They) themselves are awakened").
Venetian: (Luri) i se ga/à svejà (lit. "(They) they themselves have awakened").
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| Continuing action | |
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Another peculiarity of the language is the use of the phrase eser drìo (literally, "to be behind") to indicate continuing action:
Italian: Mio padre sta parlando ("My father is speaking").
Venetian: Mé pare 'l xe drìo(invià) parlàr (lit. "My father he is busy speaking").
Indeed the word drio=busy/engaged also appears in other sentences:
Venetian: So' drio i mistieri lit. means "I am busy doing the housework" (=I'm doing it)
Venetian: Vo drio i mistieri lit. means "I go busy with the housework" (=I'm going to do it)
Venetian: Mé pare l'è in leto drio (invià) dormir lit. means "My father is in bed, busy sleeping" (=My father is sleeping in bed)
Another progressive form uses the construction "essar là che" (lit. "to be there that"):
Venetian: Me pàre 'l è là che 'l parla (lit. "My father he is there that he speaks").
The use of progressive tenses is more pervasive than in Italian; E.g.
English: "He wouldn't possibly have been speaking to you".
Venetian: No 'l sarìa mìa stat/stà drìo parlarte (lit. "Not-he would possibly have been behind to speak-to-you").
That construction does not occur in Italian: *Non sarebbe mica stato parlandoti is not syntactically valid.
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| Subordinate clauses | |
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Subordinate clauses have double introduction ("whom that", "when that", "which that", "how that"), as in Old English:
Italian: So di chi parli ("(I) know about whom (you) speak").
Venetian: So de chi che te parla (lit. "(I) know about whom that you-speak").
As in other Romance languages, the subjunctive mood is widely used in subordinate clauses (although not always). Remarkably, while the use of subjunctive is weakening in many colloquial varieties of Italian, Venetian subjunctive seems to be more resisting. For example, many Italian speakers often hesitate between subjunctive che fosse 'that...were' and indicative che era 'that...was' (though this phenomenon is generally sanctioned in the standard form), while almost no Venetian speaker would use the indicative in the following examples. Notice that it is hardly possible to distinguish a colloquial and a standard form, Venetian being used especially in the spoken form.
Std.Italian: Credevo che fosse... ("I thought that he were...")
Coll. Ital.: Credevo che era... ("I thought that he was...")
Venetian: Credéa/évo che 'l fuse... ("I thought that he were...")
Venetian: Credéa/évo che 'l *xera...
For the same reasons, while Italian speakers may accept both vada and vado 'I go-subj/indic.' in the colloquial style, nearly everybody would reject the Venetian indicative *vo in the following context.
Std.Italian: E' meglio che vada ("I'd better go", lit. "it is better that I go" subj.)
Std.Italian: E' meglio che vado ("I'd better go", lit. "it is better that I go" indic.)
Venetian: Xe mejo che vaga/vae ("I'd better go"-subj.)
Venetian: Xe mejo che *vo
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| Sound system | |
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Venetian has some sounds not present in Italian, an interdental voiceless fricative [θ] spelled ç or z(h) and similar to English th in thing and thought, to Castilian Spanish c(e, i)/z (as in cero, cien, zapato), Modern Greek θ (theta), and Icelandic Thorn þ/Þ; it occurs, for example, in çena/zhena (supper), which sounds the same as Castilian Spanish cena (same meaning). However this sound, which is present only in some varieties of the language (Bellunese, north-Trevisan, some Central Venetian rural areas around Padua, Vicenza and the mouth of the river Po), is sociolinguistically marked as provincial, with most variants using other sounds instead such as [s], [z], and [ʃ]. Some variants also present an interdental voiced fricative written "z" (el pianze 'he cries') but this is often substituted by "voiced-S", i.e. [z] (written x: el pianxe) or [d] (el piande).
In some varieties intervocalic L is realized as a soft "evanescent" L (the alternation between evanescent and non-evanescent pronunciation is often represented with one spelling ł). The evanescent pronunciation of this phoneme varies from an almost e in the region of Venice, to a partially vocalised l further inland, to null realization in some mountainous areas. Otherwise, in more conservative areas where evanescence does not apply, the pronunciation of ł collapses with that of a simple L. Thus, for example, góndoła may sound like góndoea, góndola or góndoa. In the latter variant, the "ł" spelling also provides orthographic distinction for pairs such as scóła/skóła 'school' and scóa/skóa 'broom'.
Venetian, like Spanish, does not have the geminate consonants characteristic of Italian, Tuscan and many other Italian dialects: thus Italian fette, palla, penna ("slices", "ball", and "pen") are fete, bała, and pena in Venetian. The masculine singular ending, which is usually -o / -e in Italian, is often voided in Venetian, particularly in the regional countryside varieties: Italian pieno ("full") is pien, and altare is altar. Also, the masculine article el is often shortened to 'l. However, the extent of vowel dropping depends on the variety. The central-southern varieties display the most reduced dropping (only after -n), the northern variety shows the largest extent of dropping (even after dentals and velars), while eastern and western varieties are in the middle.
Velar N ([ŋ]) is also very often encountered in Venetian. It is the ng-sound of English "song". Unlike in Italian and English, every final -n is velar in Venetian. This is clearly heard in the pronunciation of local Venetian surnames, which often end in N as Marin [maˈriŋ] and Manin [maˈniŋ], as well as in common Venetian words such as man [ˈmaŋ] "hand", piron [piˈroŋ] "fork". (Italian speakers usually change this velar into a (geminate) dental -nn: [maˈniŋ] → [maˈninː] and [maˈriŋ] → [maˈrinː]).
[edit] Tags:Italian Dialect, | |
| Sample etymological lexicon | |
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As a direct descent of regional spoken Latin, the Venetian lexicon derives its vocabulary substantially from Latin and (in more recent times) from Tuscan, so that most of its words are cognate with the corresponding words of Italian. Venetian includes however many words derived from other sources (such as Greek, Gothic, and German) that are not cognate with their equivalent words in Italian, such as:
Venetian
English
Italian
Venetian word origin
uncò, 'ncò, incò, anco, ancuo
today
oggi
hunc + hodie (Latin)
apoteca
pharmacy
farmacia
Apotheke (German)
trincàr
to drink
bere
trinken (German)
becàr
to be spicy hot
essere piccante
from the verb beccare (Italian), literally "to peck"
armelin
apricot
albicocca
from Armenia
bisato, bisata
eel
anguilla
Latin bestia ("beast"); cfr. biscia (a kind of snake)
bisa, biso
snake
serpente
Latin bestia ("beast"); cfr. biscia (a kind of snake)
bìsi
peas
piselli
Related to Italian word.
isarda, risardola
lizard
lucertola
same etymon as lizard
trar via
to throw
tirare
local cognate of Italian tirare via
calìgo
fog
nebbia
from caligo (Latin)
cantón
corner/side
angolo/parte
from cantus (Latin)
catàr
find+take
trovare+prendere
from adcaptare (Latin)
caréga, trón
chair
sedia
cathedra, thronus (Latin) from (Greek)
petar sò
to fall
cascare
from casus of cadere (Latin) made into a verb
ciao
hello, goodbye
ciao
s-ciao (Venetian for slave); sclavus (vulgar Latin)
ciapàr
to catch, to take
prendere
capere (Latin)
co
when (non-interr.)
quando
cum (Latin)
copàr
to kill
uccidere
accoppare (old Italian, literally "to behead")
carpeta
miniskirt
gonna mini
like carpet
còtoła, còtola
skirt
sottana
cotta (Latin, coat or dress)
fanela
t-shirt
maglietta underwear
Greek word
gòto, bicer
drinking glass
bicchiere
gut(t)us (Latin for "cruet")
insìa
exit
uscita
in + exita (Latin)
mi
I
io
me (Latin accusative form); Italian derives from Latin nominative form (ego)
morsegàr, smorsegàr
to bite
mordere
morsus (Latin "bitten") made into a verb (cf. Italian morsicare)
mustaci
moustaches
baffi
moustaki (Greek)
munìn, gato, gatin
cat
gatto
perhaps from "meow" sound
meda
big sheaf
grosso covone
from messe mietere sounds like meadow oe moed harvest
musso
donkey
asino
?
nòtoła,notol, barbastrìo, signàpoła
bat
pipistrello
from not notte night
pantegàna
rat
ratto
podgana (slovene) ponticanus from ponto black see
pinciar
beat, cheat, sexual intercourse
imbrogliare, superare in gara, amplesso
pinch from fr pincer put in st
pirón
fork
forchetta
from Greek pirouni
pisalet
dandelion
tarassaco
pissinbed diuretic
plao far
truant
marinare scuola
from deutsch blauen
pomo/pón
apple
mela
pomus (Latin)
schei
money
denaro soldi
from german scheidemünze
saltapaiusk
grasshopper
cavalletta
salta hop paiusk paglia grass
sghiràt
squirrel
scoiattolo
Related to Italian word. More probably from the Greek "skiouros"
sgnapa
spirit from grapes, brandy
grappa acquavite
Schnaps (German)
sgorlàr, scorlàr
to shake
scuotere
ex + crollare (Latin)
strica
line, streak, stroke, strip
linea, striscia
root: *strik (proto Germanic). Related to English "streak", "stroke (of pen"). Example: Tirar na strica "to draw a line".
strucar
to strike/press
premere, schiacciare
root: *strik (proto Germanic). Related to English "strike" (=hit), "stroke" (=pass the hand over sth) and German "streichen". Example: Struca un tasto / boton "Strike any key/Press any button".
supiàr, subiàr, sficiàr
to whistle
fischiare
sub + flare (Latin)
tòr su
to pick up
raccogliere
tollere (Latin)
técia, tegia
pan
pentola
tecula (Latin)
tosàto, tosàt, buteleto, fio
lad, boy
ragazzo
from tosare (Italian, "to cut someone's hair")
puto, putèło, putełeto, putèo
lad, boy
ragazzo
puer, putus (Latin)
matelot
lad, boy
ragazzo
perhaps from matelot (French, "sailor")
vaca
cow
mucca, vacca
vacca (Latin)
sc-iopa, sc-iopòn
gun
fucile-scoppiare
from lat scloppum onomat
[edit] Tags: | |
| Traditional system | |
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Venetian does not have an official writing system, but it is traditionally written using the Latin script — sometimes with the addition of a couple of letters and/or diacritics for the sounds that do not exist in Italian, such as ç/zh for /θ/. Otherwise, the traditional spelling rules are mostly those of Italian, except that x represents /z/, as in English "zero".
As in Italian, the letter s between vowels usually represents [z], so one must write ss in those contexts to represent a voiceless /s/: basa for /ˈbaza/ ("he/she kisses"), bassa for /ˈbasa/ ("low"). Also, because of the numerous differences in pronunciation relative to Italian, the grave and acute accents are liberally used to mark both stress and vowel quality:
à /a/, á /ɐ/, è /ɛ/, é /e/, ò /ɔ/, ó /o/, ù /u/
Venetian allows the consonant cluster /stʃ/ (not present in Italian), which is usually written s-c or s'c before i or e, and s-ci or s'ci before other vowels. Examples include s-ciarir (Italian schiarire, "to clear up"), s-cèt (schietto, "plain clear"), and s-ciòp (schioppo, "gun"). The hyphen or apostrophe is used because the combination sc(i) is conventionally used for /ʃ/ sound, as in Italian spelling; e.g. scèmo (scemo, "stupid"); whereas sc before a, o and u represents /sk/: scàtoa (scatola, "box"), scóndar (nascondere, "to hide"), scusàr (scusare, "to forgive").
However, the traditional spelling is subject to many historical, regional, and even personal variations. In particular, the letter z has been used to represent different sounds in different written traditions. In Venice and Vicenza, for example, the phonemes /θ/ and /z/ are written z and x, respectively (el pianze = "he cries", el xe = "he Tags: | |
zote monety |