# Arianese dialect

The Arianese dialect, typical of the territorial area of Ariano Irpino, is a vernacular variety of the Irpinian dialect, belonging in turn to the Neapolitan group of southern Italian dialects. Like all Romance languages, it descends directly from Vulgar Latin, a language of Indo-European stock that has been widespread in the area since Roman times.

## Geographic context

The characteristics of the Arianese dialect appear rather atypical compared to the usual Irpinia vernacular canons by virtue of the geographical position of the town, located along the northern edge of Irpinia at the height of the main pass of the Campanian Apennines (the so-called saddle of Ariano), therefore in the extreme hinterland of Campania and immediately close to the Dauno-Apulian side. The Arianese dialect was able to resist relatively better the contamination of the lower Campania region in general and the Neapolitan one in particular (Naples became the capital of the Kingdom since the 13th century), but it remained exposed in some measure to the Apulian (and more precisely Daunian) dialectal influences, rather evident above all at a phonetic level. For similar reasons, there is also a certain influence of the Irpinia dialects, and especially for the Arianese dialect, on the vernaculars spoken along the Apulian side of the Daunia mountains (the so-called Dauno-Irpinia dialects) and even, albeit only superficially, on the linguistic islands present there. It should also be noted the presence of a certain contact with the large Benevento dialect area, mainly attributable to the geographical proximity as well as to the Early Medieval historical events. Since the first half of the 19th century, however, Arianese has been considered one of the main dialects of the entire Campanian group.

## Historical context

Conspicuous was the historical importance of the county of Ariano which, in medieval times, extended on both sides of the Apennines, so much so that under the Norman domain it became a great county (within the vast County of Apulia and Calabria) and expanded as far as at the gates of Benevento on one side and up to the threshold of the Tavoliere on the other; moreover Ariano itself was elevated to ducal seat from 1495, and from 1585 to royal city, the only one in the whole Principiato Ultra (within which it was by far the most populous center). The role played by the great traffic routes was also fundamental, such as the medieval via Francigena and the modern Apulian royal road as well as the ancient routes of transhumance: the tratturo Pescasseroli-Candela (to which a modest lexical influence from Abruzzo is also attributable) and the tratturello Camporeale-Foggia.
In the context of the Kingdom of Naples, the town was then nicknamed "la chiave delle puglie" (the key to Apulia) as it was an essential key in the connections between the capital Naples and the nearby Apulian provinces, with which there were intense contacts and exchanges: in addition to this, in the 15th century there was a massive influx of refugees from Trani, who settled in the extramural village which took its name from them ("Tranìsi", i.e. "Tranesi", people from Trani); this rock quarter would later house the numerous Ariano Irpino ceramics kilns, and it is precisely on some locally produced glazed ceramic tiles (dated 1772 and depicting big-game hunting scenes) that we find the first written attestations of the Arianese dialect, consisting in a complex series of covertly licentious or allusive slang expressions and as such not always easily interpretable. However, dialectal inflections, already significantly permeated by elements of Apulian origin, emerge from much more ancient times and even in documents of the early Middle Ages written in the local vulgar Latin.
It should also be considered that the diocese of Ariano, from the moment of its establishment and until the great schism, followed the Byzantine Rite similarly to the Apulian dioceses, although it depended on a Longobard archbishopric such as that of Benevento. And it is also significant that until 1930 the city was known under the eloquent denomination of Ariano di Puglia, made official starting from 1868 but already in use for many centuries by writers (even in the medieval Latin form Arianum in Apulia) although the local vernacular has always favored the simple original form Ariano, attested as far back as 782.

## Phonology

Among the salient features of the local dialect is the pronunciation of the tonic e / o vowels which, due to a partial syllabic isochronism of clear Adriatic origin, are generally closed in a free syllable in plain words, unlike than in the rest of Irpinia where the open stamp prevails. Therefore in Ariano it's said: "la mugliéra téne nóve sóre" (= "the wife has nine sisters"), whereas in the standard Irpinia it's have "(l) a muglièra tene nòve sòre". On the other hand, in slippery words the local pronunciation of the tonic vowels tends to reopen, as is well evident in the case of nouns combined with enclitic possessives: "muglièrima" (="my wife"), "sòreta" (="your sister").
Peculiar, and likely attributable to an Apulian influence, is also the way of pronouncing the tonic vowel a which in Ariano tends towards e while elsewhere in Irpinia it tends rather towards o, especially in a free or final syllable; thus, for example, the word "fare" is pronounced /fæ:/ in Arianese, /fɑː/ in standard Irpino.
Consider also, in compound tenses, the anomalous vowel alternation in the different persons of the auxiliary verb:
* à ritto (="hai detto", "you said")
* è dditto (="ha detto", "he/she/it said");
actually, while the first construct probably derives from the trivial truncation of a primitive *ài ritto (this can be deduced from the lack of syntactic gemination of the following syllable), the second would instead have originated from an ancient *à dditto. In other cases the local use of the stressed vowels a / e in the pronunciation of an auxiliary verb is instead freely interchangeable and independent of external factors: thus, for example, one can say "àggiu capito" or "èggiu capito" (="ho capito", "i understood" ), without there being any difference in meaning between the two expressions.
At a purely orthographic level, in addition to the almost systematic omission of the etymological h in the conjugated forms of the auxiliary verb "avere", we note the frequent use of the letter j (and sometimes also of the w) to indicate a semiconsonant in initial or intervocalic position, while the graphemes š and ẓ (or similar ones) are often used to signal respectively the possible palatalization of s (in a preconsonantal position) and the rather infrequent sonorization of z.
Overall, however, the differences between the Arianese dialect and the various vernaculars widespread in the small neighboring towns are quite evident (although not excessively profound), where the typical Irpinia cadences tend to be preserved in an even more genuine way,in fact in the rest of Irpinia it is said everywhere à dditto. although even these appear more or less dissimilar from each other, sometimes altered by a usually inconspicuous slang component but in some cases very well marked (an example is given by the slang ciaschino, once spoken in the nearby Baronia [it]).
Radically different, despite the continuous and frequent interchanges, are instead the idioms used by the communities belonging to the territorial linguistic minorities, such as the Albanians of Greci (once also present in Ariano), the Franco-Provençal of Valmaggiore [it] (also infiltrated as far as the city of Ariano, where conspicuous traces of their presence remain) as well as the ancient Schiavoni (also present in Ariano and surroundings); the latter, unlike the related Molise Croats, have lost their linguistic individuality after however having had a decisive influence on the history and culture of Ginestra degli Schiavoni, Sant'Arcangelo Trimonte (formerly known as Montemale or Montemalo) and Villanova del Battista (the ancient Polcarino degli Schiavoni), three communities linked since the very beginning to the diocese of Ariano (although since 1997 the parish of Sant'Arcangelo Trimonte has been transferred to the archdiocese of Benevento in exchange for Savignano Irpino and the already cited Greeks).
Moreover, some vernacular differences, albeit small, are even felt between one area and another of the same municipality: thus, for example, the word "dietro" (behind) is translated into dialect as addréto in some sectors of the Arianese territory, while arréto in others (from note, however, how both forms present the typical closed tonic); such a variety of nuances is attributable to the wide diffusion of rural settlements scattered over a very vast (the largest in Campania) and somewhat impervious countryside. Added to this is a certain sociolinguistic differentiation between a "cultured" and a "peasant" vernacular, the latter characterized by more altered but at the same time more colorful forms and cadences, with a greater propensity for rhotacism and betacism (for example, "due o tre volte" (two or three times) will be pronounced "doj-tre vvote" in the "cultured" variant, but "roj-tre bbote" in the "peasant" one). Not infrequently the subtle vernacular differences between the various localities of the countryside, as well as between the different social classes, have offered easy starting points for local political satire.
   Italian:
   Tutti abbracciano il contadino: "Tu sei il miglior compare mio; Ti darò la libertà, ma porta sempre roba qua"
   Arianese:
   Tutti abbràzzano lu cafone: "Tu si lu meglio cumparone; T'aggia rà la libertà, ma porta sàrcine sempe qua"
   English:
   Everyone hugs the farmer: "You are my best friend; I will give you freedom, but always bring stuff here"

## References and notes

* 1 2 Gregorio, Giacomo de (1907). Studi glottologici italiani ... (in Italian) (4th ed.). E. Loescher. p. 172.
* ↑ "Italy's 50 Shades of Latin". Italics Magazine. 2018-08-24. Retrieved 2022-12-02.
* ↑ "Benvenuti nel Portale della Cultura Arianese". www.culturaariano.it. Retrieved 2022-12-02.
* ↑ Holtus, Günter; Metzeltin, Michael; Schmitt, Christian (2011-06-01). Italienisch, Korsisch, Sardisch (in Italian) (4th ed.). Walter de Gruyter. p. 703. ISBN 978-3-11-096610-7.
* ↑ Kattenbusch, Dieter (1982). Das Frankoprovenzalische in Süditalien : Studien zur synchronischen und diachronischen Dialektologie. Tübingen: G. Narr. ISBN 3-87808-997-X. OCLC 9539237.
* 1 2 Vitolo, Giuseppe (2011–2012). "Analisi della realtà sociolinguistica della comunità albanofona di Greci in provincia di Avellino". Dipartimento di Linguistica – Università di Firenze: 165–191.
* ↑ "Lingua napoletana e tanti dialetti: la mappa di come si parla in Campania". NapoliToday (in Italian). Retrieved 2022-12-02.
* ↑ Suggestions coming from the Benevento area can be attributed, for example, to the widespread diffusion of the myth of the janara, a sort of evil witch who, unlike the mazzamurello (a benevolent goblin), struck terror among the populations.
* ↑ Belloni, Alessandra (2019-04-02). Healing Journeys with the Black Madonna: Chants, Music, and Sacred Practices of the Great Goddess. Simon and Schuster. p. 408. ISBN 978-1-59143-343-9.
* ↑ Polcino, Nicolino (1992). Dizionario del dialetto tra l'ùbere chioma della "Dormiente del Sannio" e il bacino del "Basso calore": Zibaldone e cenni di grammatica idiomatica (in Italian). N. Polcino.
* ↑ *Dizionario generale di scienze, lettere, arti, storia, geografia (in Italian) (7th ed.). Giuseppe Pomba e comp. 1846. p. 863.
* ↑ Cantone, Gaetana; Marcucci, Laura; Manzo, Elena (2007). Architettura nella storia: scritti in onore di Alfonso Gambardella (in Italian) (1st ed.). Skira. pp. 41–42. ISBN 978-88-7624-850-4.
* 1 2 Bacco, Enrico (1609). Il regno di Napoli diviso in dodici provincie: con vna breve descrittione delle cose pi ù notabili, i nomi delle citta, terre et i vicere ..., i sette officii del regno, con i cavalieri del Resone ..., i vescovadi, et arcives. covadi, che sono in ciascuna provincia ... e le famiglie nobili delle città più principali (in Italian). appresso Gio. Giacomo Carlino, e Constantino Vitale. p. 30.
* ↑ Archivio storico per le province napoletane (in Italian) (2nd ed.). Napoli: Presso gli editori Detken & Rocholl e F. Giannini. 1877. p. 134.
* ↑ Marcato, Gianna (June 2016). Il dialetto nel tempo e nella storia (Prima edizione ed.). Padova: Giovanni Abete. p. 380. ISBN 978-88-6787-527-6. OCLC 952962161.
* ↑ Il dialetto nel tempo e nella storia (in Italian). Gianna Marcato (1st ed.). Padova. June 2016. p. 380. ISBN 978-88-6787-527-6. OCLC 952962161.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
* ↑ Paolo, Macrì; Villani, Pasquale (1990). La Campania. Paolo Macry, Pasquale Villani (9th ed.). Torino: G. Einaudi. pp. 110–111. ISBN 88-06-11876-5. OCLC 24840413.
* ↑ Faenza (in Italian). Museo internazionale delle ceramiche in Faenza. 1976. p. 88.
* ↑ Flammia, Nicola (1893). Storia della città di Ariano. Ariano di Puglia: Tipografia Marino. pp. 129–131.
* ↑ Moine, Cecilia; Sabbionesi, Lara (2016-05-19). In&Around. Ceramiche e comunità. Secondo convegno tematico dell'AIECM3 (Faenza, Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, 17–19 aprile 2015) (in Italian). All’Insegna del Giglio. p. 212. ISBN 978-88-7814-699-0.
* ↑ Donatone, Guido (1980). La Maiolica di Ariano Irpino. Cava de' Tirreni. p. 202.
* ↑ For example, note the following deed (signed in Ariano in the year 1062) "Declaro me abere undecim trophe de olibe in loco Balle", where the word trophe (="young plants") is an ancient word of Greek origin now disappeared everywhere , but very common in medieval writings albeit in the exclusively Apulian area.
* ↑ Giuliani, Mariafrancesca (2007). Saggi di stratigrafia linguistica dell'Italia meridionale (2nd ed.). Pisa: PLUS-Pisa University Press. ISBN 978-88-8492-469-8. OCLC 227016916.
* ↑ Archeologia (in Italian) (8th ed.). 2000. p. 2.
* ↑ "ARIANO di Puglia in "Enciclopedia Italiana"". www.treccani.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2022-12-02.
* ↑ "Comuni d'Italia – Storia del Comune 064005 Ariano Irpino (Codice Catastale A399)". www.elesh.it. Retrieved 2022-12-02.
* ↑ Manni, Domenico Maria (1733). Cronichette antiche di varj scrittori del buon secolo della lingua toscana (in Italian). Appresso Domenico Maria Manni. p. 143.
* ↑ Fontanini, Giusto (1729). Codex Constitutionum quas summi Pontifices ediderunt in solemni canonizatione Sanctorum: a Johanne XV. ad Benedictum XIII., sive ab A. D. 993 ad A. D. 1729 (in Latin). Cam. Apostol. pp. 147–150.
* ↑ Leo of Ostia, Chronica monasterii casinensis. [it]
* ↑ Stanco, Gianfranco (2012). Gli statuti di Ariano : diritto municipale e identità urbana tra Campania e Puglia. Ariano Irpino: Centro europeo di studi normanni. p. 2. ISBN 978-88-98028-08-5. OCLC 883623241.
* 1 2 "Dati empirici e teorie linguistiche": atti del XXXIII Congresso internazionale di studi della Società linguistica italiana, Napoli, 28–30 ottobre 1999 (in Italian). Bulzoni. 2001. p. 268. ISBN 978-88-8319-609-6.
* 1 2 Abete, Giovanni (2017). Parole e cose della pastorizia in Alta Irpinia. Napoli: Giannini. pp. 43–44. ISBN 978-88-7431-888-9. OCLC 1045920273.
* ↑ Nittoli, Salvatore (1873). Vocabolario di varî dialetti del Sannio in rapporto con la lingua d'Italia (in Italian). V. Basile.
* ↑ Russo, Michela (2002-01-01). "Metafonesi opaca e differenziazione vocalica nei dialetti della Campania". Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie. 118 (2): 195–223 [195–202].
* ↑ This phenomenon is also found in Lacedonia, another Irpinia municipality located on the border with Apulia. Del Donno, Manfredi (1965). Idiomi dialettali della Campania. Montemurro. p. 19.
* ↑ Radtke, Edgar (1997). I dialetti della Campania. Paolo Di Giovine, Franco Fanciullo (44th ed.). Roma: Il calamo. p. 55. ISBN 88-85134-45-9. ISSN 0392-9361. OCLC 37612723.
* ↑ This form of vocalic change can be traced back not in Apulia, but in low Campania (Salerno, Pagani, Amalfi) instead. Giuseppe Vitolo. "Quaderni di linguistica e studi orientali. Fenomeni fonetici e morfo-sintattici nel dialetto campano di Pagani". Open Access Journal (in Italian). Firenze University Press. pp. 224–226. Archived from the original on 29 February 2020.
* ↑ Mattheier, Klaus (2001). Dialect and migration in a changing Europe. Frankfurt: P. Lang. pp. 19–20. ISBN 0-8204-4787-0. OCLC 44877013.
* ↑ As in various other central-southern and Sicilian dialects, the palatalization of s derives from ancient links -squ- / -scl- / -spl- / -stl- (with contextual drop of the phonemes u / l), or from loanwords from Neapolitan. The sonorization of the z is instead found only in loanwords from Provençal, French or Italian.
* ↑ Rohlfs, Gerhard (1966). Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti: fonetica (in Italian) (1st ed.). Einaudi. pp. 232–261.
* ↑ Note, for example, the difference in pronunciation between scasà (="to move") and šcascià (="to break down"), where the monogram š- actually has the same sound as the subsequent trigram -sci-; or between spitazzà (="to break") and smiẓẓà (="to halve"), in this case analogously to Italian. Furthermore, consonant doublings are constantly transcribed, even at the beginning of the word (for example ssuppilà, "to uncork").
* ↑ Mario, Sicuranza (1988). Prima Lingua – Piccolo Dizionario del Dialetto Arianese. Foggia: Centro Grafico Meridionale.
* ↑ Russo, Aniello (2004). Grammatica del dialetto irpino. Avellino: International Printing Editore.
* ↑ "Dalla carboneria del Regno di Napoli le origini della lingua ciaschina". giornalelirpinia.it. Retrieved 2023-04-20.
* ↑ Bitonti, Alessandro (2012). Luoghi, lingue, contatto : Italiano, dialetti e Francoprovenzale in Puglia. Galatina: Congedo Editore. ISBN 978-88-8086-982-5. OCLC 809971928.
* ↑ This information is confirmed in 1788 by Abbot Francesco Antonio Vitale, infra, pp. 27–28.
* 1 2 Around 1500 the feudal lords of Ariano used to keep Albanian and Schiavoni winemakers at their service. Proceedings of the Pontaniana Academy (1825), Giannini, 1920, p. 60. See also T. Vitale, infra, p. 112.
* ↑ Touring club italiano (1978). Puglia (4. ed. Con 13 carte geografiche, 14 piante di città, 28 piante di antichità ed edifici e 21 stemmi ed.). Milano: Touring club italiano. p. 62. ISBN 88-365-0020-X. OCLC 5172282.
* ↑ Gemmellaro, Ferruccio. "Vocabolario etimologico comparativo" (PDF). Literary. p. 184. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-10-14. Retrieved 2023-04-20.
* ↑ The Franco-Provençal presence must have concentrated in the Sambuco district (Saùco in dialect), and in particular in the caves that are part of it, since in that district the vernacular had a marked Gallo-Romance cadence (in both phonetic and lexical terms) at least until the first half of the 18th century.
* ↑ Sanchez, Giuseppe (1833). La Campania Sotterranea e brevi notizie degli edificii scavati entro Roccia nelle due sicilie ed in altre regioni (in Italian). Vol. 1. Naples: Trani Editore. p. 62.
* ↑ According to a local popular legend, the Arianese dialect itself derives from a hypothetical Provençal idiom (="franco-provençal") which penetrated the territory following the Normans.
* ↑ Albanese, Anna Maria (2018). Iu sacciu 'na canzona di Valle e ddi Capone (in Italian). Graus Editore. ISBN 978-88-8346-619-9.
* ↑ Rešetar, Milan. "Le colonie serbocroate nell'Italia meridionale" (PDF). p. 25. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-06-14. Retrieved 2023-04-20.
* ↑ Disconzi, Luciano, ed. (1993). Progetto Itinerari turistici Campania interna: la valle del Miscano (in Italian). Vol. 1. Archeoclub d'Italia Sede di Casalbore. Avellino: Poligrafica Ruggiero. p. 165.
* ↑ "Acta Apostolicae Sedis n° 90" (PDF). pp. 58–60 and 239–240. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-13. Retrieved 2023-04-20.
* ↑ "Comuni della Campania per superficie territoriale". Tuttitalia.it (in Italian). Archived from the original on 2017-12-11. Retrieved 2023-04-20.
* ↑ Grasso, Gaetano (2002). "Note introduttive". Vocabolario Arianese-Italiano. Edizioni La Ginestra.
* ↑ In particular we refer to the rhotacism of the dental D. Rassegna pugliese di scienze, lettere ed arti. 1900. p. 21.
* ↑ D'Antuono, Ottaviano; Guardabascio, Raffaele, eds. (1989). "Poeti a la scuria e... poeti alluttrinati" – La satira politica ad Ariano dal 1889 al 1989 (in Italian). Associazione circoli culturali – Ariano Irpino. Lioni: Poligrafica Irpina.
* ↑ Di Gruttola, Nicola (1982). Lu llorgio di tatone (in Italian). Lioni: Melito.
* ↑ "Otantonio Lappazzo", pseudonym of di Gruttola, Nicola (1946). Puvisia sciolda a pere di ranogna (in Italian). Ariano Irpino.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)