Venetian language

Venetian language is a Romance language spoken as a native language by almost four million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia Giulia, Istria, and some towns of Dalmatia, an area of six to seven million people. Although referred to as an Italian dialect even by its speakers, Venetian is a separate language with many distinctive features. Its precise classification remains a matter of debate among linguists and philologists.

History

The Venetian language, as a distinct Romance language, evolved from Vulgar Latin. It received influence from the Gothic language and Old High German in the early Middle Ages, and later from French and Italian. The language enjoyed substantial prestige in the days of the Venetian Republic, when it attained the status of a lingua franca in the Mediterranean. Despite its rich literature and musical tradition, which includes works by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio, Venetian gradually lost ground to Italian (and the Tuscan dialect) following the fall of the Republic in 1797.

Characteristics

Venetian is characterized by a large number of fricative consonants, a feature it shares with other Northern Italian dialects but which distinguishes it from Central and Southern Italian dialects. It also has a number of diphthongs not present in most other Romance languages. Venetian, as a spoken language, also has a distinctive rhythmic pattern. It does not use the formal Italian 'lei' form for polite address, preferring instead the 'third person plural' form, a characteristic shared with some French dialects.

Status

Today, Venetian is in a precarious state. While it is still spoken as a native language by millions of people, it is not officially recognized by the Italian Government. As a result, it is not taught in schools and is not used in public life. There are also no newspapers or books published in Venetian.

See also

• Romance languages
• Italian language
• Veneto