The classical Milanese orthography is the orthography used for the Western Lombard language, in particular for the

Milanese dialect Milanese (endonym in traditional orthography , ') is the central variety of the Western dialect of the Lombard language spoken in Milan, the rest of its metropolitan city, and the northernmost part of the province of Pavia. Milanese, due to ...

, by the major poets and writers of this literature, such as

Carlo Porta Carlo Porta (June 15, 1775 – January 5, 1821) was an Italian poet, the most famous writer in Milanese (the prestige dialect of the Lombard language). Biography Porta was born in Milan to Giuseppe Porta and Violante Gottieri, a merchant famil ...

Carlo Maria Maggi Carlo Maria Maggi (Milan, 1630 – Milan, 1699) was an Italian scholar, writer and poet. Despite being an Accademia della Crusca affiliate, he gained his fame as an author of "dialectal" works (poems and plays) in Milanese language, for which he is ...

Delio Tessa Delio Tessa (18 November 1886 – 21 September 1939) was an Italian poet from Milan. Biography He studied at the High school Beccaria in Milan and graduated as a lawyer in the University of Pavia. After University studies he did not like th ...

, etc. It was first used in the sixteenth century by Carlo Maria Maggi; Maggi first introduced the trigram ''oeu'', while previous authors, like

Bonvesin de la Riva Bonvesin da la Riva (; sometimes Italianized in spelling Bonvesino or Buonvicino; 1240 – c. 1313) was a well-to-do Milanese lay member of the '' Ordine degli Umiliati'' (literally, "Order of the Humble Ones"), a teacher of (Latin) grammar and a n ...

(thirteenth century), used Latinizing orthographies. In 1606 G. A. Biffi with his ''Prissian de Milan de la parnonzia milanesa'' began the first codification, incorporating vowel length and the use of ''ou'' to represent the sound . The classical orthography came as a compromise between the old Tuscan system and the French one; the characteristic that considerably differentiates this orthography from the effective pronunciation is the method for the distinction of long and short vowels. As of today, because it has become more archaic, it is often replaced by simpler methods that use signs ''ö'', ''ü'' for front rounded vowels and the redoubling of vowels for long vowels. The classical orthography was regularized in the 1990s by the ''Circolo Filologico Milanese'' for modern use. The classical Milanese orthography (as edited by ''Circolo Filologico Milanese'') has the following conventions that differ from Italian alphabet. General use of accents: *

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed cha ...

: indicates a closed sound in ''e'' or ''o'' ( and respectively, as in Italian) *

grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages usin ...

: indicates an open sound in ''e'' or ''o'' ( and respectively, as in Italian) *

circumflex accent The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...

: indicates a stressed short ''o'' when otherwise would be unstressed ( ; the circumflex is not used in Italian) Pronunciation of vowels and false diphthongs: *, , represent open and short vowels when followed by doubled consonants or if accented at the end of a word, and close and long when followed by single consonant. * represents * represents * represents ; may also represent after or in the diphthong . Use of consonants: *doubling: makes the preceding vowel short and open * represents either a voiced or voiceless sibilant; intervocalically, it is always voiced, and voiceless is represented with a double . Word-finally, it is always voiceless. * represents historical or * after a vowel and followed by consonant (or word-final) represents the nasalization of the preceding vowel; before another vowel or when written doubled, it represents . * represents the nasalization of the preceding vowel when followed by consonant or word-final; otherwise it represents . * represents that the preceding or are velar before a front vowel. * represents * represents * represents //

Table of pronunciation

*The stress is normally on the penultimate syllable for words ending in vowel, on the last syllable for these ending in consonant.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Classical Milanese Orthography Western Lombard language Indo-European Latin-script orthographies