Piedmontese (; autonym: or , in it, piemontese) is a language spoken by some 2,000,000 people mostly in

Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

, northwestern region of

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. Although considered by most linguists a separate

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

, in Italy it is often mistakenly regarded as an Italian dialect. It is linguistically included in the

Gallo-Italic languages The Gallo-Italic, Gallo-Italian, Gallo-Cisalpine or simply Cisalpine languages constitute the majority of the Romance languages of northern Italy. They are Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian, and Romagnol. Although most publications def ...

group of Northern Italy (with Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian and Romagnolo), which would make it part of the wider western group of Romance languages, which also includes French,

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...

, and

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...

. It is spoken in the core of

, in northwestern

Liguria it, Ligure , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

, near Savona and in Lombardy (some municipalities in the westernmost part of

Lomellina The Lomellina (Western Lombard: Ümlína/Lümelína) is a geographical and historical area in the Po Valley of northern Italy, located in south-western Lombardy between the Sesia, Po and Ticino rivers. It is one of three areal divisions of the ...

near

Pavia Pavia (, , , ; la, Ticinum; Medieval Latin: ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy in northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was the cap ...

). It has some support from the

regional government but is considered a dialect rather than a separate language by the Italian central government. Due to the Italian diaspora Piedmontese has spread in the

Argentinian Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish ( masculine) or ( feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, ...

Pampas The Pampas (from the qu, pampa, meaning "plain") are fertile South American low grasslands that cover more than and include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, and Córdoba; all of Uruguay; and Brazi ...

, where many immigrants from Piedmont settled. The Piedmontese language is also spoken in some states of Brazil, along with the

Venetian language Venetian, wider Venetian or Venetan ( or ) is a Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy,Ethnologue mostly in the Veneto region, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and of ...

History

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

. Literary Piedmontese developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it did not gain literary esteem comparable to that of French or Italian, other

s used in Piedmont. Nevertheless,

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

in Piedmontese has never ceased to be produced: it includes

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

pieces, novels, and scientific work.

Current status

In 2004, Piedmontese was recognised as Piedmont's regional language by the regional parliament,''Piemontèis d'amblé - Avviamento Modulare alla conoscenza della Lingua piemontese''; R. Capello, C. Comòli, M.M. Sánchez Martínez, R.J.M. Nové; Regione Piemonte/Gioventura Piemontèisa; Turin, 2001 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.
Knowledge and Usage of the Piedmontese Language in Turin and its Province
'', carried out by ''Euromarket'', a Turin-based market research company on behalf of the ''Riformisti per l'Ulivo'' party in the Piedmontese Regional Parliament in 2003 . 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 (Assimil,F. Rubat Borel, M. Tosco, V. Bertolino. ''Il Piemontese in Tasca'', a Piedmontese basic language course and conversation guide, published by Assimil Italia (the Italian branch of ''Assimil'', the leading French producer of language courses) in 2006.
assimil.it
/ref> IRES Piemonte and 3 million speakers (EthnologueLewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL Internationa
ISO 639-3, pms (Piemontese)
Retrieved 13 June 2012) 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.

Regional variants

Piedmontese is divided into three major groups * Western which include the dialects of

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...

and

Cuneo Cuneo (; pms, Coni ; oc, Coni/Couni ; french: Coni ) is a city and ''comune'' in Piedmont, Northern Italy, the capital of the province of Cuneo, the fourth largest of Italy’s provinces by area. It is located at 550 metres (1,804 ft) in ...

. * 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 more phonologically evolved than its western counterpart. The words that in the west end with jt, jd or t in the east end with ʒe/o ʃfor example the westerns , , and ( milk, all and old) in the east are , and . A typical eastern features is as allophone of : in word end, at the end of infinitive time of the verb, like in to read and to be (''western'' , ''vs''. eastern , ) and at words feminine

plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...

. Although this development is shared partially (in the case of the infinitive time) also by most of the western dialects, including the Turin one, that is the most spoken dialect of western piedmontese (and also of the whole piedmontese language). A morphological variation that sharply divides east and west is the indicative imperfect conjugation of irregular verbs, in the east is present the suffix ava/iva, while in the west is asìa/isìa. And different conjugation of the present simple of the irregular verbs: dé, andé, sté (to give, to go, to stay).

Phonology

Consonants

is realized as labio-velar in the word-final position as well as between and .

Vowels

Allophones of // are [] in stressed syllables.

Alphabet

Piedmontese is written with a modified Latin alphabet. The letters, along with their International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA equivalent, are shown in the table below. 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 (except for ''o'' which is marked by an

acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse eff ...

to distinguish it from ''ò'') and breaks diphthongs, so ''ua'' and ''uà'' are , but ''ùa'' is pronounced separately, .

Numbers

Characteristics

Some of the characteristics of the Piedmontese language are: # The presence of clitic so-called verbal pronouns for subjects, which give a Piedmontese verbal complex the following form: (subject) + verbal pronoun + verb, as in ''(mi) i von'' 'I go'. Verbal pronouns are absent only in the imperative form. # The bound form of verbal pronouns, which can be connected to dative and locative particles (''a-i é'' 'there is', ''i-j diso'' 'I say to him'). # The interrogative form, which adds an enclitic interrogative particle at the end of the verbal form (''Veus-to…?'' 'Do you want to...?']) # The absence of ordinal numerals higher than 'sixth', so that 'seventh' is ''col che a fà set'' 'the one which makes seven'. # The existence of three affirmative interjections (that is, three ways to say yes): ''si, sè'' (from Latin ''sic est'', as in Italian); ''é'' (from Latin ''est'', as in Portuguese language, Portuguese); ''òj'' (from Latin ''hoc est'', as in Occitan, or maybe ''hoc illud'', as in

Franco-Provençal Franco-Provençal (also Francoprovençal, Patois or Arpitan) is a language within Gallo-Romance originally spoken in east-central France, western Switzerland and northwestern Italy. Franco-Provençal has several distinct dialects and is separ ...

, French and Old

and

). # The absence of the

voiceless postalveolar fricative A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiceles ...

(like the ''sh'' in English ''sheep''), for which an alveolar S sound (as in English ''sun'') is usually substituted. # The existence of an S-C combination pronounced tʃ # The existence of a

velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...

�(like the ''ng'' in English ''going''), which usually precedes a vowel, as in ''lun-a'' 'moon'. # The existence of the third Piedmontese vowel Ë, which is very short (close to the vowel in English ''sir''). # The absence of the phonological contrast that exists in Italian between short (single) and long (

double A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another. Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to: Film and television * Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character * ...

) consonants, for example, Italian ''fata'' 'fairy' and ''fatta'' 'done (F)'. # The existence of a

prosthetic In medicine, a prosthesis (plural: prostheses; from grc, πρόσθεσις, prósthesis, addition, application, attachment), or a prosthetic implant, is an artificial device that replaces a missing body part, which may be lost through trau ...

Ë sound when consonantal clusters arise that are not permitted by the phonological system. So 'seven stars' is pronounced ''set ëstèile'' (cf. ''stèile'' 'stars'). 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 Frankish may refer to: * Franks, a Germanic tribe and their culture ** Frankish language or its modern descendants, Franconian languages * Francia, a post-Roman state in France and Germany * East Francia, the successor state to Francia in Germany ...

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 France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

and from Italian. A variety of Piedmontese was Judeo-Piedmontese, a dialect spoken by the Piedmontese

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

until the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

Lexical comparison

Lexical comparison with other Romance languages and English:

References

External links

*
Cultural Association "Nòste Rèis"
features online Piedmontese courses for Italian, French, English, and Spanish speakers with drills and tests
Piemunteis.it - Online resources about piedmontese language: poems, studies, audio, free booksPiemontese basic lexicon (several dialects) at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Piedmontese Language Gallo-Italic languages Languages of Piedmont