Talk:Regional Italian

message: I think that this paragraph is not really reflecting a npov.
"Certain people assert that some dialects have language status (sometimes for political reasons, such as the Northern League)."
I'm just wondering what the Northen League has to do with a linguistics article. Unless we insert a separate paragraph about political implications I can't see the reason why that has to be there. Or should we perhaps add what Alleanza Nazionale or Democratici di Sinistra think of the matter as well???
I am not sure of what "language status" means either... perhaps "official language status"?
"According to Ethnologue, some of these idioms (normally termed dialects by their own users) can belong to different branches of the family of Romance languages. Some of these variations can be different enough to be classified as separate languages. However, there is a substantial disagreement within the scholarly community over a consistent set of parameters for that end."
According to Ethnologue and to most linguists these idioms belong to different branches of Romance languages. Therefore how can we say that they are dialects of italian?? If they're not dialect of Italian as many have (correctly) pointed out in this discussion and they're not separate languages, they're dialect of which language then??
There is no "substantial disagreement" among linguists. The disagreement is at a political level.
I think the whole paragraph as it is is just useless. The paragraph "Dialects of Italian and dialects of Italy" already clarifies this point. IMHO I think it should be deleted. Or re-written.
I'd like to read your thoughts as well...  Lorenzino 14:47, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Italian Dialects is probably a better term than Dialects of Italian--as the discussion and article point out--since the latter implies that dialects come from the standard language, which is not the case here. To be truly descriptive, you would have to have something cumbersome such as "Varieties of Neo-Latin spoken in Italy" which (1) avoids the stigmatized word "dialect" in favor of the term "variety" of language, a usage preferred by many linguists today, and (2) excludes all of those non-Latin languages spoken on the Italian peninsula--Greek, Albanina, German, etc. Somewhere in here, there should be room for the old line that "the difference between a language and a dialect is that a language has an army."  Jeffmatt 06:24, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Languages or Dialects

message: :The large amount of mixed marriages, especially in large industrial cities as Milan and Turin, resulted in a generation that could confidentially speak only Standard Italian, and normally only understand some of their parents' dialects.
Does this apply to Naples as well? Has Italian largely replaced or is it replacing Neapolitan in everyday discourse? I know it’s part of the south, but it still also is a major port city.
:Italian has replaced Neapolitan for years. Now in everyday usage persists a distinguishable Neapolitan accent, with some typical features of old Neapolitan but largely similar to standard Italian and absolutely intelligible with it. --89.97.35.70 20:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Re "Does this apply to Naples, as well?"  Briefly, no. First, what produces speakers of a standard language instead of local variation (dialect) is a matter of some debate; "mixed marriages" may be one of them, as might the "leveling" influence of modern communication. In any event, in Naples there doesn't seem to be (to my eyes and ears--and I have lived in Naples for 30 years) any particular drop-off in the dialect. Neapolitan has a particularly strong tradtion of poetry, song and theater, which may account for some of that persistence. Jeffmatt 05:33, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Naples

message: I am not a linguist nor do I pretend to understand the evolution of the Italian language. However, it is very clear to me that there is a clear distinction missing from this article- and that leads to much confusion and argument: The article should clarify between modern Italian dialects- which are what most native speakers speak today in addition to standard Italian- and the traditional languages of pre-modern Italy- of which there are very few native speakers today. A case in point would be Venetian and Venetian Italian. The vast majority of people who speak "Venetian" in Italy today actually speak Venetian Italian (or Italianized Venetian?). Ever since the mid-19th Century most local Italian languages began to be influenced by Standard Italian. Of course, with unification this progression intensified and, today, it would be difficult to find speakers of historic Venetian or Sicilian. I believe that these regional languages gave way to so much Italianization in the early 20th century (and this intensified during the 1950s and 1960s) that most dialects spoken in Italy today are, in fact, dialects of Italian. 66.183.217.31 00:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification 

message: First of all I would like to point out that there is a common misconception about the words language and dialect. A language is a way of expressing ideas in a unique way whereas a dialect is a more or less modified version of a language that presents differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. The fact a dialect of a region is uncomprehensible to a speaker of a dialect of another region should be sufficient to define the two dialects as two languages.
When we talk about dialects and languages in Italy, we should talk about languages of Italy or dialects of Italian keeping in mind that the two things are not the same (dialects of Italian is a subset of languages of Italy). For instance, some of the dialects of Italian are Emiliano and Romanesco while some of the languages of Italy are Sardo and Ladin.
This article should change its title to Dialects of Italian and it should be linked under List of languages of Italy which should be renamed Languages of Italy. It would be nice to add an Italian version of Dialects of Italian named Dialetti d'Italia. I think this article is not really well-structured. This article should be reworked. Particular attention should be placed on regional versions of the standard Italian.
The fact that the Northern League uses the local dialect has nothing to do with this article. It is diverging from the main point of the article which is creating a list of dialects of Italian. ICE77 -- 195.212.29.67 13:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Italian languages like Lombard, Veneto, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Piedmontese are recognised languages. They are recognised in the ISO-639-3. The following is the list of languages of Italy by Ethnologue, the registrar of the ISO-639-3. GerardM 16:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Italian legislation and school recognise only tree as proper languages than dialects: Sardinian, Friulian and Ladin, the numbers in ethnologue are uncorrect (Lombard spoken by 8 million!!!??? I Live in Lombardy and I assure you that it is impossible), in fact in Italy only old generation use dialects, and only at home.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.104.57.6 (talk) 14:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

text: The 'dialects' of Italian from the article are definitelly LANGUAGES, not dialects. When you take a look how different are Sicilian and standard Italian (in the article about Sicilian language), you cannot say they're dialects, but 2 different languages. If you want to see an example of dialects of a same language, you can go to the pages explaining 'the differences between American and British English' or 'the differences between Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian standards of SerboCroatian'. Those are real dialects. Cheers. 24.86.127.209 (talk) 05:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

text: With respect, the reason there is a "common misconception" is that you essentially made up your own distinction between "language" and "dialect" and are faulting others for not following it. There is certainly a case to be made for a controversy or explanation section in this article, but languages of Italy is for languages protected by other country's armies or by the Italian government itself; at Wikipedia, everything else falls here per WP:USEENGLISH and WP:COMMONNAME, however mutually unintelligible they might be or wherever you would like to place things at your own encyclopedia. — LlywelynII 04:20, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dialects of Italian and languages of Italy 

message: Perhaps someone can assist here... the Calabrian languages article has a talk folder that links to "Dialects of Calabria" which in turn links here. I'm not adept at correcting this, and wonder if someone could take care of it. From what I gather, the Dialects of Calabria no longer exists. Mariokempes 05:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Finally figured it out. Done. Mariokempes 23:16, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Calabrian 

message: Why would one have a map say one thing and a text saying another? This is an edit war page, not an encyclopedic entry --82.207.5.183 16:44, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Absurd 

message: As it is now, the intro implies that the term "dialetcs" (as far as italians are concerned) includes varieties of the italian language which happen not to be standard. This is incorrect. Non-standard varieties of Italian (i.e. dialects of Italian) are popularly called "accents" or simply (and perhaps more obtusely) "wrong Italian". The word "dialects", on the other hand, is used to refer to "vernacular (Romance) idioms spoken in Italy other than Italian" (i.e. "dialects of Italy" as opposed to "dialects of Italian"). Hence, "Italian" here should not be limited to "standard italian". I proceed to remove the word "standard". --Dakrismeno (talk) 11:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  clarifying the meaning of "italian" 

message: There seems to be a recurring argument to merge this article with Dialects of Italy. The two are to all purposes, synonymous, and as such, leaving them as separate articles will continue to generate instability. Kitty-4r (talk) 14:19, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "The two are to all purposes, synonymous" Actually, except perhaps in Central Italy where there is no clear threshold between local Italian and local indigenous Romance language, the two are quite distinct. And even in Tuscany, the poles of the continuum -- Italian and local Tuscan -- are clearly identifiable. 2600:8800:A580:DAC0:9430:AB42:5DC4:3037 (talk) 18:41, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge (dozenth time) 

message: it actually had an important point to make, although the presentation was far from clear: milanese-italian (i.e. the variety of italian spoken in Milan) is one of the most influential dialects (of italian) at the sociolinguistic level (because of the prominent economic position that Milan enjoys). This must not be confused with Milanese, which is a variety of Western Lombard, NOT of Italian, and which is an L language in teh diglossic scenario. --Dakrismeno (talk) 16:39, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I absolutely hadn't understood that from the sentence's phrasing. Still, if you want to re-add it in a more understandable fashion, I'd like a source for it. I was never under the impression that the variety of Italian spoken in Milan was any more or less influential than other varieties - it may well be due to the fact that I'm from Milan myself, but it does seem like a statement that needs sourcing in any case. LjL (talk) 17:34, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. --Dakrismeno (talk) 11:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

text: De Mauro has even stated that usage that is current in both Rome and Milan is Standard Italian, fullstop. Pan Brerus (talk) 20:45, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleted statement that makes absolutely no sense 

message: As an italian of Sicilian and Venetian origin who has extensive knowledge of sociology and dialects of his native country, I have decided to delete some "citation needed" here and there as, frankly, they were ridundant and unnecessary, or else we'd "need citations" almost every other word and the paragraphs would become unreadable. If you feel you can challenge a sentence you definitely should, but unless someone's citing a controv fact, or a specific situation, or recounting an episode that needs verification, placing a "citation needed" everywhere is rude, boring and really distracting. However, I did smooth out some of the criticized passages.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.112.0.148 (talk) 19:52, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  My contribs and some deletions

message: In order to avoid a misunderstanding (my comment could have been a bit unclear): In South Tyrol, Italian is spoken by a considerable part of the population, but there is no specific variant, since most of the speakers were settled there during the fascism and came from different regions. In fact, bolzanini are well known for speaking standard Italian. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 09:59, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italian in Alto Adige/South Tyrol 

message: The article states in the section "Current usage": "Even strongly pro-dialect political forces such as the Northern League rarely resort to anything else than Standard Italian to write or speak publicly." I presume that this is true only in regard to writing or public speaking aimed at the general Italian public, but is false with regard to writing or speaking aimed at the local constituency. Would someone who knows for sure care to change this? Duoduoduo (talk) 13:53, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Northern League's leaders talk and write in Standard Italian to locals, too. Even their (often) offensive or racist manifesti and pamphlets (printed by local sections of the party and clearly aimed to local supporters) are in Italian. 87.15.80.191 (talk) 21:26, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Dubious tag re Northern League

message: The article is much too heavily influenced by people who harbor political views about the subject. Linguists (eg Devoto, De Mauro) distinguish several levels in the tongue people speak in Italy: namely, Standard Italian (ie what you hear in theatres), spoken by a very small minority of speakers and usually not all of the time; Regional varieties of Italian, with distinguishable regional accents (intonation and phonemes) and to a limited extent different vocabularies and grammars; Regional languages, differing from Standard Italian in phonetics, vocabulary and grammar --OR-- in a few cases, regional varieties of languages less closely related to Italian such as German, Slovene ot Greek; and local forms of those same regional languages. 
The situation is admittedly complicated, but it would be wrong to "simplify" it by fiat, making, say, Western Lombard a "dialect" of Italian, which it has never been, and citing the Italian state's official recognition of only a few regional languages as proof that the other regional languages must be dialects.
Trouble is, the discussion about dialects in Italy is not taking place in a purely intellectual context. In Italy, it is part of today's political debate. This is why some people become emotional about it, and why some more ride roughshod on some other people's contributions. In particular, any reference to the Lega Nord is guilty until proved innocent. And in any case, it's immaterial to the merely linguistic debate.
Although I have some linguistic knowledge, I'm not a professional linguist, so it would be too hard for me to gather the needed references and try to edit the article, in a hostile environment to boot. But I hope some unbiased, knowledgeable angel will do that, some day. Pan Brerus (talk) 20:42, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: This article is a downright mess

message: This article needs revision starting from the very first sentence:
<<Dialects of Italian (not to be confused with the Languages of Italy) are regional varieties of the Italian language, more commonly and more accurately referred to as Regional Italian.>>
Fair enough to label regional varieties of Italian as 'Dialects of Italian', but that designation leaves the door wide open to conflation of Regional Italian(s) and what in Italian are traditionally labeled dialetti, which are definitely not varieties of Italian, but autochthonous Romance languages that long pre-date the establishment of Italian.
Sure enough, that conflation is apparent throughout the article, exacerbated by the spurious language-dialect debate regarding macrodialetti that have achieved some status.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.134.23.211 (talk) 16:17, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Still needs help. Possibly including the Italian equivalents of various English terms (or explaining the differences) would help, but see my notes below concerning other issues. — LlywelynII 04:14, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Total revision needed here 

message: It's quite understandable that there's a terminological and conceptual battle going on here, but it's endless, and it's also confusing to readers who don't understand the Italian linguistic situation (not to mention maddening to those who do). One way to reduce the confusion would be to avoid using the term dialect when what is meant is a form of Italian (italiani regionali, italiani settoriali, etc.). Variety works fine in English. Then in the article that really is about what are traditionally called dialetti, explain clearly that dialect (dialetto) in that context means autochthonous minor language or something of that sort. As it is, both articles are a mess. 75.134.23.211 (talk) 02:42, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough, but "variety" does not work in English, since English has a word for a "variety" of a language. (It's "dialect".) And here at Wikipedia, we aim to WP:USEENGLISH WP:COMMONNAMEs.
That's precisely the problem: there are two definitions/usages of dialect in English: one is 'variety of a language', the other is 'minor(ity) language'. Both are used (even) in the community of linguists, thus vast confusion even in specialist literature. The confusion will remain as long as the two very distinct meanings bear the same label. Variety is common lexicon understandable to any reader. The argument that it shouldn't be used to disambiguate here is akin to claiming that no effort should be made to distinguish linguist 'language scientist' from linguist 'polyglot.' 
See below for a possible compromise usage with "Dialects in Italy", but it would still need to be used in addition to the more common names and not in place of them. — LlywelynII 04:07, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Solution to reduce confusion: Drop 'dialect' when speaking of Italian; use 'variety' 

message: I fixed the redirect Dialects of Italy to point here, but it still has an edit history that needs to be merged. — LlywelynII 04:25, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Mod help

message: We're pretty much stuck with the label "regional" for local varieties of Italian, since italiano regionale is the usual Italian term. It could, and should, be clarified in this article that what it really means, i.e. the linguistic reality, is local. With regard to the dialects, the label is much more misleading -- usually simply false -- and should be avoided when at all possible so as not to misinform readers.75.134.23.211 (talk) 15:29, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The English word "regional" does not refer specifically to the Regioni. Aside from politically defined regions, it can refer to some, specific or unspecific, geographical region. --JorisvS (talk) 13:02, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Region(al) in English when speaking of Italy is ambiguous. It can refer to either the official political divisions or to the equivalent of zone, area. A translation trap of ambiguity in the other direction is stato, when speaking in Italian of the United States; stato (and statale) can refer to the usual Italian usage meaning 'nation state' or the 50 official political divisions that form the United States. In either case, a responsible encyclopedia entry will disambiguate rather than leave readers with the ambiguity.75.134.23.211 (talk) 14:29, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. I have moved it to the notes, because it is a bit going overboard for the first sentence of the lead. --JorisvS (talk) 08:20, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "regional" fixation 

message: This heavily Italianised spelling (for "phonosyntactic" - whatever that means...) makes very clear that whoever wrote this article does not know English anything like well enough to be writing articles in it!213.127.210.95 (talk) 15:28, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "fonosintattic" 

message: This article has a lot of issues, but at the very least, it could include a link to Romanesco. An article without such a link has no business calling itself Regional Italian. Rwflammang (talk) 14:46, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  No link to Romanesco? Really?