Piedmontese language

Piedmontese ( ; autonym: or ; ) is a language spoken by some 2,000,000 people mostly in Piedmont, a region of Northwest Italy. Although considered by most linguists a separate language, in Italy it is often mistakenly regarded as an Italian dialect. It is linguistically part of the Gallo-Italic languages group from Northern Italy (with Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian and Romagnol), making it part of the wider western group of Romance languages, which also includes French, Arpitan, Occitan, and Catalan. It is spoken in the core of Piedmont, in northwestern Liguria (near Savona), and in Lombardy (some municipalities in the westernmost part of Lomellina near Pavia).

It has some support from the Piedmont regional government but is considered a dialect rather than a separate language by the Italian central government.

History

The first documents in the Piedmontese language were written in the 12th century, the sermones subalpini, when it was extremely close to Occitan.

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 and 3 million speakers 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.

Dialects

thumb|Geographical variants of Piedmontese

Piedmontese is divided into three major groups

Western, which include the dialects of Turin and Cuneo.
Eastern, which in turn is divided into south-eastern (Astigiano, Roero, Monregalese, High Montferrat, Langarolo, Alessandrino) and north-eastern (Low Montferrat, Biellese, Vercellese, Valsesiano).
Canavese, spoken in the Canavese region in north-western Piedmont.

The variants can be detected in the variation of the accent and variation of words. It is sometimes difficult to understand a person that speaks a different Piedmontese from the one you are used to, as the words or accents are not the same.

Eastern and western group

The Eastern Piedmontese group is phonologically more innovative than its Western counterpart.

Words that in the West end in jt, jd or t in the East end in [dʒ] or [tʃ], for example Western , , and (milk, all and old) correspond to Eastern , and .

A typical Eastern feature is as an allophone of : at word end, at the end of verbal infinitives, as in "to read" and "to be" (Western , vs. Eastern , ) and in feminine plurals. Nevertheless, this development is also shared partially (in the case of the infinitive) by most Western dialects, including that of Turin, which is the most spoken dialect of Western Piedmontese and also of the whole language.

A morphological feature that sharply divides the East from the West is the indicative imperfect conjugation of irregular verbs. In the East, the suffix -ava/iva is used, while in the West, the corresponding suffix is -asìa/isìa. The groups are also distinguished by differing conjugations of the present simple of irregular verbs: , , (to give, to go, to stay).

{| class="wikitable"

!English

! colspan="3" |eastern

! colspan="3" |western

!to give

!to go

!to stay

!to give

!to go

!to stay

|you

|he/she/it

|we

|you

|they

Judeo-Piedmontese

A variety of Piedmontese was Judeo-Piedmontese, a dialect spoken by the Piedmontese Jews until the Second World War, when most were killed during the Holocaust. Some survivors knew the language but as of 2015, the language had nearly gone extinct. It had many loanwards from Provencal, Spanish and Hebrew. It kept many conservative features that Piedmontese abandoned over time. The language never became as large in terms of words as larger Jewish languages like Yiddish, and it never developed a standardized writing system.

Phonology

Consonants

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! colspan="2" |

!Labial

!Dental/ Alveolar

!Post- alveolar

!Palatal

!Velar

! rowspan="2" |Stop

!voiceless

!voiced

! rowspan="2" |Affricate

!voiceless

!voiced

! rowspan="2" |Fricative

!voiceless

!voiced

! colspan="2" |Nasal

! colspan="2" |Trill

! colspan="2" |Approximant

/v/ is realized as labio-velar [<nowiki/>w] between /a/ and /u/ and as [<nowiki/>w] or [<nowiki/>f] when in word-final position.

Vowels

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! colspan="2" |Front

!Central

!Back

|- align="center"

!Close

! rowspan="2" |Mid

| rowspan="2" |

| colspan="2" |

|- align="center"

!Open

| colspan="2" |

Allophones of // are [] in stressed syllables and as when in unstressed position and at end of the word.

Phonological processes

Apocope, i.e., dropping of all of the unstressed vowels at word end, except /a/, which is usually centralized to [ɐ]. and post-tonic vowels: /me'luŋ/ > /mə'luŋ/ > /m'luŋ/, same happens in French, and other Gallo-Romance languages. In some cases, prothesis of [ə] or [ɐ] is also present to make some consonant clusters easier to pronounce (ex. novod, "nephew", [nʊˈvud] > [nvud] > [ɐnˈvud],