Piedmontese (also known as Piemontèis, and Piemontese in Italian) is a language spoken by over 2 million people in Piedmont, northwest Italy. It is part of the western group of Romance languages, like French, Provençal and Catalan, and it is geographically and linguistically close to the northern Italian regional languages – Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian and Venetian – that, according to the Ethnologue classification, constitute the group of Gallo-Italic languages, also known as Cisalpine. Linguists worldwide (e. g. Einar Haugen, Hans Göbl, Helmut Lüdtke, George Bossong, Klaus Bochmann, Karl Gebhardt, Guiu Sobiela Caanitz, Gianrenzo P. Clivio) acknowledge Piedmontese as an independent language, though in Italy it is often still considered an Italian dialect. Today it is not an official language. Piedmontese was the first language of the emigrants who left Piedmont, in the period 1850-1950, for countries like France, Argentina and Uruguay. Piedmont (Italian: Piemonte) is a region of northwestern Italy. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the Americas as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Italic subfamily is a member of the Centum branch of the Indo-European language family. ... The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... Italo-Western is the largest sub-group of Romance languages. ... The Gallo-Romance branch of Romance languages includes French, Oïl languages, Catalan, and Occitan, among other languages. ... Gallo-Italic is a language family within the Gallo-Romance languages. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Piedmont is a region of northwestern Italy. ... The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... Provençal (Prouvençau in Provençal language) is one of several dialects of the Romance language Occitan, which is spoken by a minority of people in southern France and other areas of France. ... Catalan IPA: (català IPA: or []) is a Romance language, the national language of Andorra and co-official in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Valencia (under the name Valencian) and Catalonia. ... The term Lombard refers to a group of related dialects spoken mainly in Northern Italy (most of Lombardy and some areas of neighbouring regions), in Southern Switzerland (Ticino and Graubünden). ... Emiliano-Romagnolo (also known as Emilian-Romagnolo) is a western neo-Latin language (just like other Italian minority languages such as Piedmontese, Lombard and Ligurian), like French, Provençal and Catalan. ... The Ligurian language was spoken in pre-Roman times and into the Roman era by an ancient people of north-western Italy and south-eastern France known as the Ligures. ... A business sign in Venetian Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy. ... Gallo-Italic is a language family within the Gallo-Romance languages. ... Gallo-Italic or Cisalpine is a language family within the Gallo-Romance languages. ... Einar Ingvald Haugen (April 19, 1906 - June 20, 1994) was a linguist and Professor at University of Wisconsin and Harvard University. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ...

Origins

The first documents in the Piedmontese language were written in the 12th century, the sermones subalpini, when it was extremely close to Occitan. Literary Piedmontese developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. It did not gain literary esteem comparable to that of French and Italian, other languages used in Piedmont. Nevertheless, literature in Piedmontese has never ceased to be produced: it includes poetry, theatre pieces, novels and scientific work. (11th century - 12th century - 13th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 12th century was that century which lasted from 1101 to 1200. ... Occitan, or langue doc is a Romance language characterized by its richness, variability, and by the intelligibility of its dialects. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ... The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ... Serge Sudeikins poster for the Bat Theatre (1922). ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ...

Characteristics

Some of the most relevant characteristics of the Piedmontese language are:

1. The presence of verbal pronouns, which give a Piedmontese phrase the following form: (subject) + verbal pronoun + verb, as in mi i von [I go]. Verbal pronouns are absent only in the imperative form and in the “Piedmontese interrogative form”.
2. The agglutinating 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]).
3. The interrogative form, which adds an enclitic interrogative particle at the end of the verbal form (Veus-to? [Do you want to…])
4. The absence of ordinal numerals, starting from the seventh place on (so that seventh will be Col che a fà set [The one which makes seven]).
5. The co-presence of three affirmative interjections (that is, three ways to say yes): Si, sè (from the latin form sic est, as in Italian); É (from the Latin form est, as in Brazilian Portuguese); Òj (from the Latin form hoc est as in Occitan, or maybe illud est, as in Arpitan and French).
6. The absence of the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in sheep), for which an alveolar S sound (as in sun) is usually substituted.
7. The presence of a S-C combination (pronounced as you would in this-church).
8. The presence of a velar nasal N-sound (pronounced as the gerundive termination in going), which usually precedes a vowel, as in lun-a [moon].
9. The presence of the sixth piedmontese vowel Ë, which is read as a very short sound (somehow close to the half-mute sound in sir).
10. The absence of the phonological alternation that exists in Italian between short (single) and long (double) consonants, for example, it. fata [fairy] and fatta [done].
11. The existence of a prosthetic Ë sound, that is interposed when two consonantal sounds collide and are hard to pronounce. So stèila [star] becomes set ëstèile [seven stars].

Piedmontese has a number of dialects that may vary from its basic koiné to quite a large extent. Variations include not only departures from the literary grammar, but also a wide variety in dictionary entries, as different regions maintain words of Frankish or Longobard origin. Words imported from various languages, including the North African languages, are also present, while more recent imports tend to come from France. Brazilian Portuguese is a collective name for the varieties of Portuguese written and spoken by virtually all the 187 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a couple million Brazilian immigrants and temporary workers in other countries, mainly in Canada, United States, Portugal, Paraguay and Japan. ... Arpitan or Francoprovençal is a Romance language consisting of dialects that can be found in Italy (Valle dAosta, Piemonte, Calabria, Apulia), in Switzerland (cantons Fribourg, Valais, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Geneva, non-German speaking parts of Bern, but not Jura, where the dialects spoken are French) and in France... The voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... In phonetics, gemination is when a spoken consonant is doubled, so that it is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a single consonant. ... A United States Army soldier plays foosball with two prosthetic arms Jon Comer, professional skateboarder with a prosthetic leg. ... In linguistics, a koiné language (common language) is a standard language or dialect, specifically one that has arisen as a result of language contact much as pidgins or creoles, but where the original dialects are mutually intelligible. ... For other uses, see Franks (disambiguation). ... The Lombards (Latin Langobardi, whence the alternative name Longobards found in older English texts), were a Germanic people originally from Northern Europe that entered the late Roman Empire. ...  Northern Africa (UN subregion)  geographic, including above North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent. ...

Current status

As elsewhere in Italy, Italian dominates everyday communication and is spoken to a far greater extent by the population than Piedmontese. Usage of the language has been discouraged, both by the Kingdom of Italy, and by the Italian Republic, officially to prevent discrimination against migrants from the south of Italy, who moved to Turin in particular in large numbers. United in 1861, Italy has significantly contributed to the cultural and social development of the entire Mediterranean area, deeply influencing European culture as well. ... Turin (Italian: ; Piedmontese: Turin) is a major industrial city as well as a business and cultural center in northwest Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the west bank of the Po River. ...

In 2004, Piedmontese was recognised as Piedmont's regional language by the regional parliament, although the Italian government does not recognise it. In theory it is now supposed to be taught to children in school, but this is happening only in a limited way. 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The last decade has seen the publication of learning material for schoolchildren, as well as general-public magazines. Courses for people already outside the education system have also been catching up. 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 knowledge of the language has shrunk to about 2% of native speakers, according to a recent survey^[1]. 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^[2]) and 3 million speakers (Ethnologue^[3]) for a population of 4.2 million people. Efforts to make it one of the official languages of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics were unsuccessful. Neve and Gliz, the 2006 Olympics mascots, on display in Turin The 2006 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XX Olympic Winter Games, were celebrated in Turin, Italy from February 10, 2006, through February 26, 2006. ...

Links and References

1. ^ 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 (Italian).
2. ^ 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. ISBN 88-86968-54-X. http://www.assimil.it
3. ^ Ethnologue report for Piemontese

External links

• É - afermativ piemontèis The Piedmontese magazine with the largest on-line readership
• Piemont Viv A Piedmontese mailing-list used by native speakers worldwide to meet and socialize
• Website in Piedmontese edited by Guido Dematteis with information on the language, poetry, scientific physics papers, short stories, and the novel The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany translated into Piedmontese
• Piedmontese: History, Grammar, Syntax, Vocabulary
• Lalinguapiemontese.net Online Piedmontese Course for Italian, French, English and Spanish speakers with drills and tests
• Arbut - Ël piemontèis a scòla Program for Teaching Piedmontese in Schools

Piedmontese language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia