Bustocco and Legnanese (natively and ) are two dialects of
Western Lombard, spoken respectively in the cities of
Busto Arsizio (
Province of Varese
The province of Varese ( it, provincia di Varese) is a Provinces of Italy, province in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. Its capital is the city of Varese (population of 80,857 inhabitants), but its largest city is Busto Arsizio. The head ...
) and
Legnano
Legnano (; or ''Lignàn'') is an Italian town and ''comune'' in the north-westernmost part of the Metropolitan City of Milan, Province of Milan, about from central Milan. With 60,259, it is the thirteenth-most populous township in Lombardy. Le ...
(
Province of Milan),
Lombardy
Lombardy ( it, Lombardia, Lombard language, Lombard: ''Lombardia'' or ''Lumbardia' '') is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in the northern-central part of the country and has a population of about 10 ...
.
Although there is little evidence of Ligurian settlements in the area, they are widely thought to have been characterised by the
Ligurian substratum
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
. While Legnanese is closer to the
Milanese dialect, Bustocco is especially considered very similar to the modern
Ligurian language
Ligurian () or Genoese () (locally called or ) is a Gallo-Italic language spoken primarily in the territories of the former Republic of Genoa, now comprising the area of Liguria in Northern Italy, parts of the Mediterranean coastal zone of Fran ...
, for example for the frequent unstressed at the end of masculine nouns and other words is more frequent (e.g. Bustocco "cat", "dry", "hot", "glass", "when" = Legnanese , , , , ), as well as the elimination of some intervocalic consonants (e.g. Bustocco "to work" = Legnanese ). In both dialects stressed sounds like a mix between ''a'' and ''o''.
A comic theatrical group called ''I Legnanesi'' uses Legnanese (with simplified grammar and lexicon heavily based on Italian) in its shows.
References
{{Languages of Italy
Western Lombard language