Piedmontese language


Piedmontese is a Romance language spoken by some 700,000 people mostly in Piedmont, northwestern region of Italy. It is geographically and linguistically included in the Gallo-Italic languages group of Northern Italy. It is part of the wider western group of Romance languages, which also includes French, Occitan, and Catalan. It is spoken in Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy.
Many European and North American linguists acknowledge Piedmontese as an independent language, though in Italy it is often still considered a dialect. Today it has a certain official status recognized by the Piedmont regional government, but not by the national government.
Piedmontese was the first language of emigrants who, in the period from 1850 to 1950, left Piedmont for countries such as France, Brazil, the United States, Argentina, and Uruguay.

History

The first documents in the Piedmontese language were written in the 12th century, the sermones subalpini, when it was extremely close to Occitan. Literary Piedmontese developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it did not gain literary esteem comparable to that of French or Italian, other languages used in Piedmont. Nevertheless, literature in Piedmontese has never ceased to be produced: it includes poetry, theatre pieces, novels, and scientific work.

Current status

In 2004, Piedmontese was recognised as Piedmont's regional language by the regional parliament, although the Italian government has not yet recognised it as such. In theory, it is now supposed to be taught to children in school, but this is happening only to a limited extent.
The last decade has seen the publication of learning materials for schoolchildren, as well as general-public magazines. Courses for people already outside the education system have also been developed. In spite of these advances, the current state of Piedmontese is quite grave, as over the last 150 years the number of people with a written active knowledge of the language has shrunk to about 2% of native speakers, according to a recent survey. On the other hand, the same survey showed Piedmontese is still spoken by over half the population, alongside Italian. Authoritative sources confirm this result, putting the figure between 2 million out of a population of 4.2 million people. Efforts to make it one of the official languages of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics were unsuccessful.

Phonology

Consonants

The // sound occurs as the sound of // in word-final position. When occurring intervocalically between an a or an o , // is pronounced as a non-syllabic .

Vowels

Allophones of // are in stressed syllables.

Alphabet

Piedmontese is written with a modified Latin alphabet. The letters, along with their IPA equivalent, are shown in the table below.
LetterIPA valueLetterIPA valueLetterIPA value
A a, H h∅P p
B bI i or Q q
C c or J jR r~
D dL lS s,
E e or M mT t
Ë ëN n or U u, or ,
F fO o, // or, V v,, or
G g or Ò òZ z

Certain digraphs are used to regularly represent specific sounds as shown below.
All other combinations of letters are pronounced as written. Grave accent marks stress and breaks diphthongs, so ua and uà are, but ùa is pronounced separately,.

Characteristics

Some of the characteristics of the Piedmontese language are:
  1. The presence of clitic so-called verbal pronouns for subjects, which give a Piedmontese verbal complex the following form: + verbal pronoun + verb, as in i von 'I go'. Verbal pronouns are absent only in the imperative form.
  2. The bound form of verbal pronouns, which can be connected to dative and locative particles.
  3. The interrogative form, which adds an enclitic interrogative particle at the end of the verbal form
  4. The absence of ordinal numerals higher than 'sixth', so that 'seventh' is col che a fà set 'the one which makes seven'.
  5. The existence of three affirmative interjections : si, sè ; é ; òj.
  6. The absence of the voiceless postalveolar fricative , for which an alveolar S sound is usually substituted.
  7. The existence of an S-C combination pronounced .
  8. The existence of a velar nasal , which usually precedes a vowel, as in lun-a 'moon'.
  9. The existence of the third Piedmontese vowel Ë, which is very short.
  10. The absence of the phonological contrast that exists in Italian between short and long consonants, for example, Italian fata 'fairy' and fatta 'done '.
  11. The existence of a prosthetic Ë sound when consonantal clusters arise that are not permitted by the phonological system. So 'seven stars' is pronounced set ëstèile.
Piedmontese has a number of varieties that may vary from its basic koiné to quite a large extent. Variation includes not only departures from the literary grammar, but also a wide variety in dictionary entries, as different regions maintain words of Frankish or Lombard origin, as well as differences in native Romance terminology. Words imported from various languages are also present, while more recent imports tend to come from France and from Italian.
A variety of Piedmontese was Judeo-Piedmontese, a dialect spoken by the Piedmontese Jews until the Second World War.

Lexical comparison

Lexical comparison with other Romance languages and English:
PiedmonteseItalianFrenchSpanishPortugueseRomanianCatalanEnglish
cadregasediachaisesillacadeirascaun, catedrăcadirachair
pijéprendere, pigliareprendrecoger, tomar, pillarpegar, tomara luaprendreto take
surtìusciresortirsalirsair ieșisortir/eixirto go/come out
droché/casché/tombécadere, cascaretombercaer, tumbarcair, tombarcăderecaureto fall
ca/misoncasamaisoncasacasacasăca/casahome
brassbracciobrasbrazobraçobrațbraçarm
nùmernumeronombrenúmeronúmeronumărnombrenumber
nòmnomenomnombrenomenumenomname
pommelapommemanzanamaçãmărpomaapple
travajélavoraretravaillertrabajartrabalhara lucratreballarto work
ratavolòirapipistrellochauve-sourismurciélagomorcegoliliacratpenatbat
scòlascuolaécoleescuelaescolașcoalăescolaschool
bòschboscoboisbosquebosquepădureboscwood
monsùsignoremonsieurseñorsenhor, seudomnsenyorMr
madamasignoramadameseñorasenhora, donadoamnăsenyoraMrs
istàestateétéverano, estíoverão, estiovarăestiusummer
ancheujoggiaujourd'huihoyhojeaziavui/huitoday
dmandomanidemainmañanaamanhãmâinedemàtomorrow
jerierihierayerontemieriahiryesterday
lùneslunedìlundilunessegunda-feiralunidillunsMonday
màrtesmartedìmardimartesterça-feiramarțidimartsTuesday
mèrcol/mercomercoledìmercredimiércolesquarta-feiramiercuridimecresWednesday
giòbiagiovedìjeudijuevesquinta-feirajoidijousThursday
vënner/venevenerdìvendrediviernessexta-feiravineridivendresFriday
sabasabatosamedisábadosábadosâmbătădissabteSaturday
dumìnicadomenicadimanchedomingodomingoduminicădiumengeSunday