Eastern Lombard dialects - Misplaced Pages

Eastern Lombard is a group of closely related variants of Lombard , a Gallo-Italic language spoken in Lombardy , mainly in the provinces of Bergamo , Brescia and Mantua , in the area around Cremona and in parts of Trentino . Its main variants are Bergamasque and Brescian.

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116-680: In Italian-speaking contexts, Eastern Lombard is often called as dialetti ( lit. ' dialects ' ), understood to mean not a variety of Italian , but a local language that is part of the Romance languages dialect continuum that pre-dates the establishment of Tuscan-based Italian. Eastern Lombard and Italian have only limited mutual intelligibility , like many other Romance languages spoken in Italy. Eastern Lombard does not have any official status either in Lombardy or anywhere else:

232-453: A dialect of a language defined in this way. In these terms, Danish and Norwegian , though mutually intelligible to a large degree, are considered separate languages. In the framework of Heinz Kloss , these are described as languages by ausbau (development) rather than by abstand (separation). In other situations, a closely related group of varieties possess considerable (though incomplete) mutual intelligibility, but none dominates

348-508: A dialect cluster is defined as a central variety together with a collection of varieties whose speakers can understand the central variety at a specified threshold level (usually between 70% and 85%) or higher. It is not required that peripheral varieties be understood by speakers of the central variety or of other peripheral varieties. A minimal set of central varieties providing coverage of a dialect continuum may be selected algorithmically from intelligibility data. In many societies, however,

464-461: A dialect continuum . The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity . A dialect associated with a particular social class is called a sociolect ; one associated with a particular ethnic group is an ethnolect ; and a geographical or regional dialect is a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect' ). Any variety of

580-513: A "dialect", as it is the dominant language in a particular state, be it in terms of linguistic prestige , social or political (e.g. official ) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. The term "dialect" used this way implies a political connotation, being mostly used to refer to low-prestige languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from the national language), languages lacking institutional support, or those perceived as "unsuitable for writing". The designation "dialect"

696-644: A Sicilian-speaking person would have a greater degree of mutual intelligibility with a speaker of the more closely related Neapolitan language, but far less mutual intelligibility with a person speaking Sicilian Gallo-Italic, a language that developed in isolated Lombard emigrant communities on the same island as the Sicilian language. Today, the majority of Italian nationals are able to speak Italian, though many Italians still speak their regional language regularly or as their primary day-to-day language, especially at home with family or when communicating with Italians from

812-465: A Yiddish speaker would consult a Yiddish dictionary rather than a German dictionary in such a case, and is classified as its own language. Within this framework, W. A. Stewart defined a language as an autonomous variety in addition to all the varieties that are heteronomous with respect to it, noting that an essentially equivalent definition had been stated by Charles A. Ferguson and John J. Gumperz in 1960. A heteronomous variety may be considered

928-456: A central variety together with all those varieties whose speakers understand the central variety at a specified threshold level or higher. If the threshold level is high, usually between 70% and 85%, the cluster is designated as a language . Another occasionally used criterion for discriminating dialects from languages is the sociolinguistic notion of linguistic authority . According to this definition, two varieties are considered dialects of

1044-412: A chart of possible articulations. A precise vocabulary of compounding the two places of articulation is sometimes seen. However, it is usually reduced to the passive articulation, which is generally sufficient. Thus dorsal–palatal , dorsal–velar , and dorsal–uvular are usually just called "palatal", "velar", and "uvular". If there is ambiguity, additional terms have been invented, so subapical–palatal

1160-478: A cold as there had never been before. The she-blackbird did not know how to cope with her brood in the nest, so she sheltered in the hood of a chimney, and the smoke turned all the birds black; so when they came out the blackbirds did not have white feathers anymore, but black ones. And January, very happy, said: "This time it was me that fooled you, blackbird: you were white and I turned you black, this will teach you to stop teasing me." Dialects A dialect

1276-465: A consonant may be lateral alveolar, like English /l/ (the tongue contacts the alveolar ridge, but allows air to flow off to the side), or lateral palatal, like Castilian Spanish ll /ʎ/ . Some Indigenous Australian languages contrast dental, alveolar, retroflex, and palatal laterals, and many Native American languages have lateral fricatives and affricates as well. Some languages have consonants with two simultaneous places of articulation, which

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1392-453: A consonant. For example: The approximants /j/ and /w/ are distinct phonemes from the vocalic sounds /i/ , /u/ . This can be seen in the following examples: Locally, the alveolar fricative [s] is replaced by the glottal fricative [h] . This mainly happens in the prealpine valleys of the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia; thus Brèssa ("Brescia") is pronounced [ˈbrɛhɔ] instead of [ˈbrɛsɔ] . However, even in areas where this phenomenon

1508-533: A distinct language from Arabic and not merely a dialect thereof. During the civil war , Christians often used Lebanese Arabic officially, and sporadically used the Latin script to write Lebanese, thus further distinguishing it from Arabic. All Lebanese laws are written in the standard literary form of Arabic, though parliamentary debate may be conducted in Lebanese Arabic. In Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco,

1624-597: A following consonant. Thus, the /n/ in /nk/ and /nɡ/ is a velar [ŋ] , the /n/ in /nv/ and /nf/ is a labiodental [ɱ] . Within a word, the phoneme /n/ is never transcribed before /p/ and /b/ , where /m/ is written instead. Nasal assimilation, including /n/ to /m/ , also takes place across word boundaries. For example: Eastern Lombard has 9 vocalic sounds: Only three vocalic phonemes occur in unstressed final syllables: /a/ in open syllables only, and /o/ and /e/ in both open and closed syllables. Other vowels can occur in final syllables in loanwords. Locally,

1740-517: A further variant [ruˈba] is also possible, though in this case, a difference is noticed by speakers but it is considered a local variant and no loss of intelligibility results. The sounds [e] and [ɛ] also no longer contrast in unstressed syllables, and therefore the word vedèl ("calf") can be pronounced [veˈdɛl] or [vɛˈdɛl] . However, when affected by vowel harmony (see below ), the unstressed sounds [e] / [ɛ] , [o] / [ɔ] , and [ø] become [i] , [u] , and [y] respectively. In conclusion, it

1856-402: A given language can be classified as "a dialect", including any standardized varieties . In this case, the distinction between the "standard language" (i.e. the "standard" dialect of a particular language) and the " nonstandard " (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In

1972-556: A given language can be classified as a "dialect", including standardized ones . A second usage, which refers to colloquial settings, typically diglossic , in a few countries like Italy , such as dialetto , patois in France , much of East Central Europe, and the Philippines , may carry a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of an autochthonous non-national language to

2088-415: A language with a writing system will operate at different degrees of distance from the standardized written form. Some dialects of a language are not mutually intelligible in spoken form, leading to debate as to whether they are regiolects or separate languages. A standard dialect , also known as a "standardized language", is supported by institutions. Such institutional support may include any or all of

2204-814: A laud known as Mayor gremeza il mund no pothevela ancor aver , a manuscript found in Bovegno ( Trompia valley), and dating from the fourteenth century. Today, literary production has increased in volume and mainly consists in light comedies and poem collections (Angelo Canossi is an example for poetry in the Brescian dialect). The following tale is in Brescian: I mèrli 'na ólta i ghìa le pène biànche, ma chèl envéren lé l'éra stàt en bèl envéren e lé, la mèrla, la gà dìt: "Zenér de la màla gràpa, per tò despèt gó i uzilì 'ndela gnàta." A lü, 'l Zenér, gh'è nìt adòs 'n pó de ràbia, e 'l gà dìt: "Spèta, mèrla, che te la faró mé adès

2320-466: A matter of dispute. Macedonian , which is largely mutually intelligible with Bulgarian and certain dialects of Serbo-Croatian ( Torlakian ), is considered by Bulgarian linguists to be a Bulgarian dialect, while in North Macedonia , it is regarded as a language in its own right. Before the establishment of a literary standard of Macedonian in 1944, in most sources in and out of Bulgaria before

2436-556: A nasal consonant must be homorganic with a following stop. We see this with English i n tolerable but i m plausible ; another example is found in Yoruba , where the present tense of ba "hide" is mba "is hiding", while the present of sun "sleep" is nsun "is sleeping". The tongue contacts the mouth with a surface that has two dimensions: length and width. So far, only points of articulation along its length have been considered. However, articulation varies along its width as well. When

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2552-787: A number of different families follow the last two major groups: the Gallo-Romance languages ( French , Occitan and its Vivaro-Alpine dialect , Franco-Provençal ); the Rhaeto-Romance languages ( Friulian and Ladin ); the Ibero-Romance languages ( Sardinia 's Algherese ); the Germanic Cimbrian , Southern Bavarian , Walser German and the Mòcheno language ; the Albanian Arbëresh language ;

2668-478: A particular dialect, often the sociolect of the elite class, comes to be identified as the "standard" or "proper" version of a language by those seeking to make a social distinction and is contrasted with other varieties. As a result of this, in some contexts, the term "dialect" refers specifically to varieties with low social status . In this secondary sense of "dialect", language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages : The status of "language"

2784-410: A province of Brescia, the sounds [o] and [ø] are regularly replaced by [u] and [y] in pretonic position: Since in unstressed position these vocalic sounds are not contrastive, these local variants do not compromise reciprocal intelligibility. Certain varieties of Eastern Lombard (mostly in Brescian area) exhibit a process of regressive vowel harmony involving the feature of vowel height. When

2900-438: A separate and parallel way and may thus better fit various parties' criteria for a separate language. Despite this, these "dialects" may often be historically cognate and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may even, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter. In this sense, unlike in the first usage, the national language would not itself be considered

3016-673: A separate language, because Literary Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam and the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Qur'an . Although, especially since the 1960s, the Darijas are occupying an increasing use and influence in the cultural life of these countries. Examples of cultural elements where Darijas' use became dominant include: theatre, film, music, television, advertisement, social media, folk-tale books and companies' names. Place of articulation In articulatory phonetics ,

3132-414: A sequence of nasal+occlusive falls in contact with another occlusive or a fricative, the first occlusive is completely elided and the nasal undergoes partial assimilation. In this case no lengthening occurs. For example: But when an occlusive precedes /z/ , assimilation involves both consonants and the result is an affricate sound: The phoneme /n/ can undergo assimilation in place of articulation with

3248-430: A sequence of varieties, where each mutually intelligible with the next, but may not be mutually intelligible with distant varieties. Others have argued that mutual intelligibility occurs in varying degrees, and the potential difficulty in distinguishing between intelligibility and prior familiarity with the other variety. However, recent research suggests that there is some empirical evidence in favor of using some form of

3364-399: A similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives, and the term "dialect" is sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions. The term

3480-441: A similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives. The term "dialect" is however sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions. Conversely, some dialectologists have reserved

3596-553: A single language in New Guinea , and a uvular–epiglottal stop, [q͡ʡ] , found in Somali . More commonly, coarticulation involves secondary articulation of an approximantic nature. Then, both articulations can be similar such as labialized labial [mʷ] or palatalized velar [kʲ] . That is the case of English [w] , which is a velar consonant with secondary labial articulation. Common coarticulations include these: Symbols to

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3712-582: A socio-cultural approach, is possible. This is illustrated by the frequency with which the army-navy aphorism is cited. By the definition most commonly used by linguists, any linguistic variety can be considered a "dialect" of some language—"everybody speaks a dialect". According to that interpretation, the criteria above merely serve to distinguish whether two varieties are dialects of the same language or dialects of different languages. The terms "language" and "dialect" are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although they are often perceived to be. Thus there

3828-649: A speaker of purely Eastern Lombard , a language in Northern Italy 's Lombardy region that includes the Bergamasque dialect , would have severely limited mutual intelligibility with a purely Italian speaker and would be nearly completely unintelligible to a Sicilian -speaking individual. Due to Eastern Lombard's status as a Gallo-Italic language, an Eastern Lombard speaker may, in fact, have more mutual intelligibility with an Occitan, Catalan , or French speaker than with an Italian or Sicilian speaker. Meanwhile,

4060-479: A tiˌram en ˈdʒir] Once upon a time blackbirds had white feathers, but in that time winter had been mild and a she-blackbird scorned January saying: "Bad-headed January, in spite of you I have got a brood in my nest." Hearing this, January got angry and he said: "Just wait a bit, you she-blackbird, I will fool you and I will turn you from white into black." Then he said: "I have got two, and I will borrow one, and I will turn you from white to black." And he brought forth

4176-637: A té, e se te sét biànca mé te faró ègner négra." E pò dòpo 'l gà dit amò: "Dù ghe i ó e giü 'n prèstet el töaró e se te sét biànca, mé te faró ní négra." E alùra 'l gà fàt nì fò 'n frèt che se n'ìa mài vést giü compàgn. Lé la mèrla la saìa piö che fà cói sò uzilì ndèla gnàta, e isé l'è nàda a rifügiàs endèla càpa del camì; dré al camì va sö 'l föm e lùr i uzilì i è déentàcc töcc négher, e quànche i è nicc fò de là, la mèrla la gh'ìa mìa piö le pène biànche, ma la ghe i éra négre. Alùra Zenér, töt sudisfàt, el gà dìt: "Tò mèrla, che te l'ó fàda mé staólta: se te se stàda biànca mé t'ó fàt ní négra e isé te làset lé de seghetà

4292-620: Is a variety of languages spoken by a particular group of people. It can also refer to a language subordinate in status to a dominant language, and is sometimes used to mean a vernacular language. The more common usage of the term in English refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The dialects or varieties of a particular language are closely related and, despite their differences, are most often largely mutually intelligible , especially if geographically close to one another in

4408-809: Is also present in Eastern Lombard and is represented in this article with the sequence of signs ⟨-sgi-⟩ , for example: The grammatical system of Eastern Lombard is similar to other those of other Romance languages. The word order is SVO (subject–verb–object) and it has a moderate inflection system: verbs are declined for mood , tense and aspect and agree with their subject in person and number . Nouns are classified as either masculine or feminine and can be marked as singular or plural. Adjectives and pronouns agree with any nouns they modify in gender and number. Eastern Lombard also prefers prepositions over case marking . The oldest known text written in Eastern Lombard consists of fragments of

4524-503: Is also used popularly to refer to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term " vernacular language " would be preferred by linguists. John Lyons writes that "Many linguists [...] subsume differences of accent under differences of dialect." In general, accent refers to variations in pronunciation, while dialect also encompasses specific variations in grammar and vocabulary . There are three geographical zones in which Arabic

4640-504: Is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity . A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect . A dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed an ethnolect . A geographical/regional dialect may be termed a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect' ). According to this definition, any variety of

4756-535: Is called coarticulation . When these are doubly articulated , the articulators must be independently movable, and therefore there may be only one each from the major categories labial, coronal, dorsal and pharyngeal . The only common doubly articulated consonants are labial–velar stops like [k͡p] , [ɡ͡b] and less commonly [ŋ͡m] , which are found throughout Western Africa and Central Africa . Other combinations are rare but include labial–(post)alveolar stops [t͡p d͡b n͡m] , found as distinct consonants only in

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4872-437: Is called final devoicing . The phoneme /ʃ/ only occurs in loanwords, often borrowings from Italian. For example, scià , "to ski" (from Italian sciare ) is pronounced /ʃiˈa/ . The phoneme /tʃ/ is pronounced [j] before a consonant. This never occurs inside a word as the segment /tʃ/ + consonant doesn't exist in Eastern Lombard. However, it does occur when /tʃ/ appears word-finally preceding another word which begins with

4988-542: Is heavily based on the Florentine dialect of Tuscan . The Tuscan-based language that would eventually become modern Italian had been used in poetry and literature since at least the 12th century , and it first spread outside the Tuscan linguistic borders through the works of the so-called tre corone ("three crowns"): Dante Alighieri , Petrarch , and Giovanni Boccaccio . Florentine thus gradually rose to prominence as

5104-419: Is more commonly called "retroflex". Note: Additional shades of passive articulation are sometimes specified using pre- or post- , for example prepalatal (near the border between the postalveolar region and the hard palate ; prevelar (at the back of the hard palate , also post-palatal or even medio-palatal for the middle of the hard palate); or postvelar (near the border of the soft palate and

5220-486: Is most prevalent. Italy is in fact home to a vast array of separate languages , most of which lack mutual intelligibility with one another and have their own local varieties; twelve of them ( Albanian , Catalan , German , Greek , Slovene , Croatian , French , Franco-Provençal , Friulian , Ladin , Occitan and Sardinian ) underwent Italianization to a varying degree (ranging from the currently endangered state displayed by Sardinian and southern Italian Greek to

5336-448: Is mostly dependent on their formant frequencies and less on the specific tongue position and lip rounding. The terminology used in describing places of articulation has been developed to allow specifying of all theoretically possible contrasts. No known language distinguishes all of the places described in the literature so less precision is needed to distinguish the sounds of a particular language. The human voice produces sounds in

5452-613: Is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a historical and political development. Romansh came to be a written language, and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic alpine dialects and classical Latin. An opposite example is Chinese , whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often called dialects and not languages in China, despite their mutual unintelligibility. National boundaries sometimes make

5568-778: Is nothing contradictory in the statement "the language of the Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German ". There are various terms that linguists may use to avoid taking a position on whether the speech of a community is an independent language in its own right or a dialect of another language. Perhaps the most common is " variety "; " lect " is another. A more general term is " languoid ", which does not distinguish between dialects, languages, and groups of languages, whether genealogically related or not. The colloquial meaning of dialect can be understood by example, e.g. in Italy (see dialetto ), France (see patois ) and

5684-454: Is often considered to be purely linguistic, is that of mutual intelligibility : two varieties are said to be dialects of the same language if being a speaker of one variety has sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other dialect; otherwise, they are said to be different languages. However, this definition has often been criticized, especially in the case of a dialect continuum (or dialect chain), which contains

5800-405: Is only used for the traditional regional varieties. That allows them to be distinguished from the regional varieties of modern standard German. The German dialects show a wide spectrum of variation. Some of them are not mutually intelligible. German dialectology traditionally names the major dialect groups after Germanic tribes from which they were assumed to have descended. The extent to which

5916-475: Is possible to say that only five contrastive vowel qualities are found in unstressed syllables: [o] / [ɔ] / [(u)] , [ø] / [(y)] , [a] , [e] / [ɛ] , [i] (but with the [i] not completely separated from [e] / [ɛ] ). Some examples: The situation can differ for other Eastern Lombard varieties, however, and the rules of the unstressed vowel system vary according to the area. For example, in Franciacorta ,

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6032-450: Is rendered by means of the usual Italian orthography rules: ⟨c⟩ before front vowels and ⟨ci⟩ before non-front vowels). A consonant sequence that is peculiar to Lombard is that of a voiceless alveolar fricative followed by a voiceless postalveolar affricate , [stʃ] . This article adopts the convention of representing this sound as ⟨s·c⟩ , although other texts may follow different traditions (so

6148-518: Is said to be autonomous. In contrast, speakers in the Netherlands of Low Saxon varieties similar to Westphalian would instead consult a dictionary of Standard Dutch , and hence is categorized as a dialect of Dutch instead. Similarly, although Yiddish is classified by linguists as a language in the High German group of languages and has some degree of mutual intelligibility with German,

6264-641: Is spoken (Jastrow 2002). Zone I is categorized as the area in which Arabic was spoken before the rise of Islam. It is the Arabian Peninsula, excluding the areas where southern Arabian was spoken. Zone II is categorized as the areas to which Arabic speaking peoples moved as a result of the conquests of Islam. Included in Zone II are the Levant , Egypt , North Africa , Iraq , and some parts of Iran . The Egyptian, Sudanese, and Levantine dialects (including

6380-496: Is supported by the Académie Française institution. A nonstandard dialect also has a complete grammar and vocabulary, but is usually not the beneficiary of institutional support. The distinction between the "standard" dialect and the " nonstandard " (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In

6496-525: Is the rule, there are some interesting exceptions to take in account. Words like grassie ("thanks") are never pronounced [ˈɡrahje] . At present, the most common pronunciation is [ˈɡrasje] but a more genuine outcome (and often preferred by aged people) would be [ˈɡrahtʃe] . Other examples for this feature: Regressive assimilation at word boundaries is common in Eastern Lombard. Assimilation can be either complete or partial. Complete assimilation occurs when two occlusive sounds fall in contact. In this case

6612-587: The Centro-Southern and Centro-Northern dialects. Though mostly mutually unintelligible, the exact degree to which all the Italian languages are mutually unintelligible varies, often correlating with geographical distance or geographical barriers between the languages; some regional Italian languages that are closer in geographical proximity to each other or closer to each other on the dialect continuum are more or less mutually intelligible. For instance,

6728-572: The Darijas translated as literally meaning Dialect in Arabic (spoken North African languages) are sometimes considered more different from other Arabic dialects. Officially, North African countries prefer to give preference to the Literary Arabic and conduct much of their political and religious life in it (adherence to Islam ), and refrain from declaring each country's specific variety to be

6844-603: The Hellenic Griko language and Calabrian Greek ; the Serbo-Croatian Slavomolisano dialect ; and the various Slovene languages , including the Gail Valley dialect and Istrian dialect . The language indigenous to Sardinia , while being Romance in nature, is considered to be a specific linguistic family of its own, separate from the other Neo-Latin groups; it is often subdivided into

6960-609: The Middle Ages . However, all these languages evolved from Vulgar Latin in parallel with Italian, long prior to the popular diffusion of the latter throughout what is now Italy . During the Risorgimento , Italian still existed mainly as a literary language, and only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak Italian. Proponents of Italian nationalism , like the Lombard Alessandro Manzoni , stressed

7076-422: The Philippines , carries a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of a non-national language to the country's single official language. In other words, these "dialects" are not actual dialects in the same sense as in the first usage, as they do not derive from the politically dominant language and are therefore not one of its varieties , but instead they evolved in

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7192-420: The conscription of Italian men from all throughout Italy during World War I is credited with having facilitated the diffusion of Italian among the less educated conscripted soldiers, as these men, who had been speaking various regional languages up until then, found themselves forced to communicate with each other in a common tongue while serving in the Italian military. With the popular spread of Italian out of

7308-418: The place of articulation (also point of articulation ) of a consonant is an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articulator. Active articulators are organs capable of voluntary movement which create the constriction, while passive articulators are so called because they are normally fixed and are

7424-423: The umlaut is adopted to represent the rounded vowels /ø/ and /y/ : Note that grave and acute accents are also used to indicate the stressed syllable in non-monosyllabic words. Since unstressed vowels are less distinctive, it is not necessary to discriminate the open/close quality. The digraph ⟨-cc⟩ is used at the end of the word to represent the sound /tʃ/ (in other positions this sound

7540-696: The uvula ). They can be useful in the precise description of sounds that are articulated somewhat farther forward or back than a prototypical consonant; for this purpose, the "fronted" and "retracted" IPA diacritics can be used. However, no additional shade is needed to phonemically distinguish two consonants in a single language. Consonants that have the same place of articulation, such as the alveolar sounds /n, t, d, s, z, l/ in English , are said to be homorganic . Similarly, labial /p, b, m/ and velar /k, ɡ, ŋ/ are homorganic. A homorganic nasal rule, an instance of assimilation , operates in many languages, where

7656-626: The volgare of the literate and upper class in Italy, and it spread throughout the peninsula and Sicily as the lingua franca among the Italian educated class as well as Italian travelling merchants. The economic prowess and cultural and artistic importance of Tuscany in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance further encouraged the diffusion of the Florentine-Tuscan Italian throughout Italy and among

7772-481: The Caribbean coast of Costa Rica (Central America) by descendants of Jamaican people. The position that Costa Rican linguists support depends upon which university they represent. Another example is Scanian , which even, for a time, had its own ISO code. An important criterion for categorizing varieties of language is linguistic distance . For a variety to be considered a dialect, the linguistic distance between

7888-595: The Second World War, the South Slavic dialect continuum covering the area of today's North Macedonia were referred to as Bulgarian dialects . Sociolinguists agree that the question of whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis. In Lebanon , a part of the Christian population considers "Lebanese" to be in some sense

8004-558: The Syrian dialect) are well documented, and widely spoken and studied. Zone III comprises the areas in which Arabic is spoken outside of the continuous Arabic Language area. Spoken dialects of the Arabic language share the same writing system and share Modern Standard Arabic as their common prestige dialect used in writing. When talking about the German language, the term German dialects

8120-704: The West-Germanic language group. Some language siblings are closer to each other in terms of linguistic distance than to other linguistic siblings. French and Spanish, siblings in the Romance Branch of the Indo-European group, are closer to each other than they are to any of the languages of the West-Germanic group. When languages are close in terms of linguistic distance, they resemble one another, hence why dialects are not considered linguistically distant to their parent language. One criterion, which

8236-428: The airstream is directed down the center of the tongue, the consonant is said to be central . If, however, it is deflected off to one side, escaping between the side of the tongue and the side teeth, it is said to be lateral . Nonetheless, for simplicity's sake the place of articulation is assumed to be the point along the length of the tongue, and the consonant may in addition be said to be central or lateral. That is,

8352-505: The alveolar and post-alveolar regions merge into each other, as do the hard and soft palate, the soft palate and the uvula, and all adjacent regions. Terms like pre-velar (intermediate between palatal and velar), post-velar (between velar and uvular), and upper vs. lower pharyngeal may be used to specify more precisely where an articulation takes place. However, although a language may contrast pre-velar and post-velar sounds, it does not also contrast them with palatal and uvular sounds (of

8468-439: The area around Crema . The varieties spoken in these regions are generally mutually intelligible for speakers of neighboring areas, but this is not always true for distant peripheral areas. For instance, an inhabitant of the alpine valleys of Bergamo can hardly be understood by a rural inhabitant of the plains of Mantua . Differences include lexical, grammatical and phonetic aspects. The following notes are essentially based on

8584-448: The body of the tongue contact different parts of the roof of the mouth, but it cannot be independently controlled so they are all subsumed under the term dorsal . That is unlike coronal gestures involving the front of the tongue, which is more flexible. The epiglottis may be active, contacting the pharynx, or passive, being contacted by the aryepiglottal folds. Distinctions made in these laryngeal areas are very difficult to observe and are

8700-470: The country's official language(s). Dialects in this sense do not derive from a dominant language, are therefore not one of its varieties , but they evolved in a separate and parallel way. While they may be historically cognate with and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter, "dialects" under this second definition are separate languages from

8816-454: The default everyday language in virtually every situation, whereas standard German is only spoken in education, partially in media, and with foreigners not possessing knowledge of Swiss German. Most Swiss German speakers perceive standard German to be a foreign language. The Low German and Low Franconian varieties spoken in Germany are often counted among the German dialects. This reflects

8932-594: The dialects are spoken varies according to a number of factors: In Northern Germany, dialects are less common than in the South. In cities, dialects are less common than in the countryside. In a public environment, dialects are less common than in a familiar environment. The situation in Switzerland and Liechtenstein is different from the rest of the German-speaking countries. The Swiss German dialects are

9048-440: The distinction between "language" and "dialect" an issue of political importance. A group speaking a separate "language" may be seen as having a greater claim to being a separate "people", and thus to be more deserving of its own independent state, while a group speaking a "dialect" may be seen as a sub-group, part of a bigger people, which must content itself with regional autonomy. The Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich published

9164-606: The educated and powerful, though local and regional languages remained the main languages of the common people. Aside from the Italo-Dalmatian languages , the second most widespread family in Italy is the Gallo-Italic group , spanning throughout much of Northern Italy 's languages and dialects (such as Piedmontese , Emilian-Romagnol , Ligurian , Lombard , Venetian , Sicily's and Basilicata's Gallo-Italic in southern Italy , etc.). Finally, other languages from

9280-461: The expression, A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot ( "אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמײ און פֿלאָט" : " A language is a dialect with an army and navy ") in YIVO Bleter 25.1, 1945, p. 13. The significance of the political factors in any attempt at answering the question "what is a language?" is great enough to cast doubt on whether any strictly linguistic definition, without

9396-401: The first linguistic definition of the term, as they are in fact derived from Italian, with some degree of influence from the local or regional native languages and accents. The most widely spoken languages of Italy, which are not to be confused with regional Italian, fall within a family of which even Italian is part, the Italo-Dalmatian group . This wide category includes: Modern Italian

9512-412: The first occlusive is completely absorbed by the second and the resulting sound has all the features of the second consonant but is notably lengthened. For example: The same phenomenon occurs when an occlusive consonant precedes a nasal or a liquid consonant. For example: Complete assimilation can also occur when an occlusive precedes a fricative. For example: l'è ni t v ért = [ˌlɛ ni‿ˈvːert] . When

9628-411: The following manner: The larynx or voice box is a cylindrical framework of cartilage that serves to anchor the vocal folds . When the muscles of the vocal folds contract, the airflow from the lungs is impeded until the vocal folds are forced apart again by the increasing air pressure from the lungs. The process continues in a periodic cycle that is felt as a vibration (buzzing). In singing,

9744-475: The following: government recognition or designation; formal presentation in schooling as the "correct" form of a language; informal monitoring of everyday usage ; published grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks that set forth a normative spoken and written form; and an extensive formal literature (be it prose, poetry, non-fiction, etc.) that uses it. An example of a standardized language is the French language which

9860-413: The importance of establishing a uniform national language in order to better create an Italian national identity . With the unification of Italy in the 1860s, Italian became the official national language of the new Italian state, while the other ones came to be institutionally regarded as "dialects" subordinate to Italian, and negatively associated with a lack of education. In the early 20th century,

9976-544: The intellectual circles, because of the mass-media and the establishment of public education , Italians from all regions were increasingly exposed to Italian. While dialect levelling has increased the number of Italian speakers and decreased the number of speakers of other languages native to Italy, Italians in different regions have developed variations of standard Italian specific to their region. These variations of standard Italian, known as " regional Italian ", would thus more appropriately be called dialects in accordance with

10092-590: The intelligibility criterion to distinguish between languages and dialects, though mutuality may not be as relevant as initially thought. The requirement for mutuality is abandoned by the Language Survey Reference Guide of SIL International , publishers of the Ethnologue and the registration authority for the ISO 639-3 standard for language codes . They define a dialect cluster as

10208-442: The lips, upper teeth, gums, or roof of the mouth to the back of the throat. Although it is a continuum, there are several contrastive areas so languages may distinguish consonants by articulating them in different areas, but few languages contrast two sounds within the same area unless there is some other feature which contrasts as well. The following 9 degrees of passive articulatory areas are known to be contrastive (sorted such that

10324-405: The modern situation where they are roofed by standard German. This is different from the situation in the Middle Ages when Low German had strong tendencies towards an ausbau language . The Frisian languages spoken in Germany and the Netherlands are excluded from the German dialects. Italy is an often quoted example of a country where the second definition of the word "dialect" ( dialetto )

10440-585: The national language) of limited geographic distribution, languages lacking institutional support, or even those considered to be "unsuitable for writing". Occasionally, in a third usage, dialect refers to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term " vernacular language " would be preferred by linguists. Features that distinguish dialects from each other can be found in lexicon ( vocabulary ) and grammar ( morphology , syntax ) as well as in pronunciation ( phonology , including prosody ). In instances where

10556-414: The neck produces a squeak or buzz, depending on the tension across the neck and the level of pressure inside the balloon. Similar actions with similar results occur when the vocal cords are contracted or relaxed across the larynx. The active articulators are movable parts of the vocal apparatus that impede or direct the airstream, typically some part of the tongue or lips. There are five major parts of

10672-655: The normal unstressed vowel variability. Verbs are affected by this process in their conjugation, when the inflection contains a stressed /i/ (there are no verbal suffixes containing a stressed /u/ ). For example: Adjectives formed with the suffix -ùs (feminine -ùza ) also exhibit this rule: Since Eastern Lombard is still principally an oral language, a commonly accepted orthography has not been established. While in recent years there has been an increasing production of texts (mainly light comedies and poem collections), each author continues to follow their own spelling rules. The most problematic and controversial issues seem to be

10788-582: The only official language in Lombardy is Italian . Eastern Lombard is a Romance language of the Gallo-Italic branch, closer to Occitan , Catalan , French , etc. than to Italian , with a Celtic substratum. Eastern Lombard is primarily spoken in Eastern Lombardy (Northern Italy ), in the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia , in the Northern region of the province of Mantua and in

10904-459: The others. To describe this situation, the editors of the Handbook of African Languages introduced the term dialect cluster as a classificatory unit at the same level as a language. A similar situation, but with a greater degree of mutual unintelligibility, has been termed a language cluster . In the Language Survey Reference Guide issued by SIL International , who produce Ethnologue ,

11020-433: The parts with which an active articulator makes contact. Along with the manner of articulation and phonation , the place of articulation gives the consonant its distinctive sound. Since vowels are produced with an open vocal tract, the point where their production occurs cannot be easily determined. Therefore, they are not described in terms of a place of articulation but by the relative positions in vowel space . This

11136-456: The phoneme /a/ is pronounced [ɔ] when it appears as last sound of the word in an unstressed syllable (actually slightly more close than cardinal [ɔ] ). For example: Some vowel contrasts are eliminated in unstressed syllables. For example, in the urban Brescian variety, [ɔ] and [o] no longer contrast. Thus, the word robà ("to steal") can be pronounced both [roˈba] and [rɔˈba] , with almost no difference noticed by speakers. In addition,

11252-556: The representation of intervocalic /s/ and /z/ (rendered by different authors with ⟨-ss-⟩ , ⟨-s-⟩ or ⟨-z-⟩ ) and final /tʃ/ vs. /k/ (rendered with ⟨-cc⟩ , ⟨-c⟩ or ⟨-ch⟩ ). This article follows the rules of the Italian orthography , with the following exceptions. Diacritic marks are utilized for vowel sounds to distinguish /e/ from /ɛ/ and /o/ from /ɔ/ in stressed syllables. Furthermore,

11368-731: The salient distinctions are only or mostly to be observed in pronunciation, the more specific term accent may be used instead of dialect . Differences that are largely concentrated in lexicon may be classified as creoles . When lexical differences are mostly concentrated in the specialized vocabulary of a profession or other organization, they are jargons . Differences in vocabulary that are deliberately cultivated to exclude outsiders or to serve as shibboleths are known as cryptolects or cant, and include slangs and argots . The particular speech patterns used by an individual are referred to as that person's idiolect . Languages are classified as dialects based on linguistic distance . The dialects of

11484-486: The same language if (under at least some circumstances) they would defer to the same authority regarding some questions about their language. For instance, to learn the name of a new invention, or an obscure foreign species of plant, speakers of Westphalian and East Franconian German might each consult a German dictionary or ask a German-speaking expert in the subject. Thus these varieties are said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, Standard German , which

11600-476: The same language. A number of rough measures exist, sometimes leading to contradictory results. The distinction between dialect and language is therefore subjective and depends upon the user's preferred frame of reference. For example, there has been discussion about whether or not the Limón Creole English should be considered "a kind" of English or a different language. This creole is spoken in

11716-411: The same major part of the vocal apparatus. The following 9 degrees of active articulatory areas are known to be contrastive (sorted such that the top-most is in the front-most area of the mouth and the bottom-most is in the rear-most area of the mouth): In bilabial consonants , both lips move so the articulatory gesture brings the lips together, but by convention, the lower lip is said to be active and

11832-435: The same sequence can also be spelled ⟨s'c⟩ or ⟨s-c⟩ or even the ambiguous ⟨sc⟩ ; some authors use ⟨scc⟩ ). This sequence, which is absent in Italian, can occur at the beginning of word, as in s·cèt ("son, boy") /stʃɛt/ ; in the middle, as in brös·cia ("brush") /ˈbrøstʃa/ ; or at the end, as in giös·cc ("right, correct", plural) /ˈdʒøstʃ/ . The sequence /zdʒ/

11948-813: The same town or region. The classification of speech varieties as dialects or languages and their relationship to other varieties of speech can be controversial and the verdicts inconsistent. Serbo-Croatian illustrates this point. Serbo-Croatian has two major formal variants ( Serbian and Croatian ). Both are based on the Shtokavian dialect and therefore mutually intelligible with differences found mostly in their respective local vocabularies and minor grammatical differences. Certain dialects of Serbia ( Torlakian ) and Croatia ( Kajkavian and Chakavian ), however, are not mutually intelligible even though they are usually subsumed under Serbo-Croatian. How these dialects should be classified in relation to Shtokavian remains

12064-416: The same type of consonant) so contrasts are limited to the number above, if not always their exact location. The following table shows the possible combinations of active and passive articulators. The possible locations for sibilants as well as non-sibilants to occur are indicated in dashed red . For sibilants, there are additional complications involving tongue shape ; see the article on sibilants for

12180-474: The standard or national language. Under this definition, the standard or national language would not itself be considered a dialect, as it is the dominant language in terms of linguistic prestige , social or political (e.g. official ) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. Dialect used this way implies a political connotation, often being used to refer to non-standardized "low-prestige" languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from

12296-432: The stress falls on a close vowel ( /i/ or /u/ ) the preceding vowels shift their height, becoming close as well ( /ɛ/ and /e/ become [i] , while /ɔ/ and /o/ become [u] ). The vowel /a/ is not affected by this process and acts as opaque vowel blocking the harmonization process. In Camuno, harmonization occurs almost only where the stressed vowel is an /i/ and not where it is an /u/ . This phenomenon affects all

12412-414: The subject of ongoing investigation, and several still-unidentified combinations are thought possible. The glottis acts upon itself. There is a sometimes fuzzy line between glottal, aryepiglottal, and epiglottal consonants and phonation , which uses these same areas. The passive are the more stationary parts of the vocal tract that the active articulator touches or gets close to; they can be anywhere from

12528-584: The term "dialect" for forms that they believed (sometimes wrongly) to be purer forms of the older languages, as in how early dialectologists of English did not consider the Brummie of Birmingham or the Scouse of Liverpool to be real dialects, as they had arisen fairly recently in time and partly as a result of influences from Irish migrants. There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of

12644-400: The top-most is in the front-most area of the mouth and the bottom-most is in the rear-most area of the mouth): The regions are not strictly separated. For instance, in some sounds in many languages, the surface of the tongue contacts a relatively large area from the back of the upper teeth to the alveolar ridge, which is common enough to have received its own name, denti-alveolar . Likewise,

12760-621: The two varieties must be low. Linguistic distance between spoken or written forms of language increases as the differences between the forms are characterized. For example, two languages with completely different syntactical structures would have a high linguistic distance, while a language with very few differences from another may be considered a dialect or a sibling of that language. Linguistic distance may be used to determine language families and language siblings. For example, languages with little linguistic distance, like Dutch and German , are considered siblings. Dutch and German are siblings in

12876-432: The upper lip passive. Similarly, in linguolabial consonants the tongue contacts the upper lip with the upper lip actively moving down to meet the tongue; nonetheless, the tongue is conventionally said to be active and the lip passive if for no other reason than that the parts of the mouth below the vocal tract are typically active, and those above the vocal tract are typically passive. In dorsal gestures, different parts of

12992-478: The variety of Eastern Lombard spoken in Brescia . The basic principle are generally valid also for the other varieties but local discrepancies can be found. Eastern Lombard has 9 vowels and 20 consonants . The voiced consonants /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ , /v/ , /z/ , /dʒ/ never occur at the end of a word. This phenomenon, common to other languages (including German , Catalan , Dutch , Turkish and Russian ),

13108-442: The vibration frequency of the vocal folds determines the pitch of the sound produced. Voiced phonemes such as the pure vowels are, by definition, distinguished by the buzzing sound of this periodic oscillation of the vocal cords. The lips of the mouth can be used in a similar way to create a similar sound, as any toddler or trumpeter can demonstrate. A rubber balloon , inflated but not tied off and stretched tightly across

13224-502: The vigorous promotion of Germanic Tyrolean ), but have been officially recognized as minority languages ( minoranze linguistiche storiche ), in light of their distinctive historical development. Yet, most of the regional languages spoken across the peninsula are often colloquially referred to in non-linguistic circles as Italian dialetti , since most of them, including the prestigious Neapolitan , Sicilian and Venetian , have adopted vulgar Tuscan as their reference language since

13340-411: The vocal tract that move: the lips, the flexible front of the tongue, the body of the tongue, the root of the tongue together with the epiglottis , and the glottis . They are discrete in that they can act independently of each other, and two or more may work together in what is called coarticulation . The five main active parts can be further divided, as many languages contrast sounds produced within

13456-557: The words independent of the word's function. Because the diminutive and augmentative are formed with the suffixes -ì and -ù (feminine -ìna and -ùna ) respectively, this process is easily observable in nouns: As already mentioned, the vowel /a/ acts as opaque vowel which blocks the harmonization process: But vowels that occur after the /a/ and before the stressed vowel are still affected: In these cases variants like funtanì and üspedalì (but not üspidalì ) or murtadilìna are accepted (or locally preferred) but fall under

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