Central Italian | ||
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Native to | Italy | |
Region | Umbria, Lazio (except the southeast), central Marche, small parts of southernmost Tuscany, and northwestern Abruzzo | |
Native speakers | ~3,000,000[citation needed] (2006) | |
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Language codes | ||
ISO 639-3 | – | |
Glottolog | None | |
Linguasphere | 51-AAA-ra ... -rba | |
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Dialects that maintain a distinction between final /-u/ and /-o/ are outlined in red.
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Central Italian (Italian: dialetti mediani) refers to the dialects of Italo-Romance spoken in the so-called Area Mediana, which covers a swathe of the central Italian peninsula. Area Mediana is also used in a narrower sense to describe the southern part, in which case the northern one may be referred to as the Area Perimediana, a distinction that will be made throughout this article. The two areas are split along a line running approximately from Rome in the southwest to Ancona in the northeast.[1]
In the early Middle Ages, Central Italian extended north into Romagna and covered all of modern-day Lazio, Abruzzo, and Molise. Since then, however, the dialects spoken in those areas have been assimilated into Gallo-Italic and Southern Italo-Romance respectively.[2] In addition, the dialect of Rome has undergone considerable Tuscanization from the fifteenth century onwards, such that it has lost many of its Central Italian features.[3][4]
Except for its southern fringe, the Area Mediana is characterized by a contrast between the final vowels /-u/ and /-o/, which distinguishes it from both the Area Perimediana and from Southern Italo-Romance.[5][6] Cf. Spoletine [ˈkreːto, ˈtittu] < Latin crēdō, tēctum 'I believe, roof'. An additional isogloss that runs along the border between the two areas, but often overlaps it in either direction, is that of post-nasal plosive voicing, as in [manˈt̬ellu] 'cloak'. This is a feature that the Area Mediana shares with neighbouring Southern Italo-Romance.[7]
In the Area Mediana are found the following vocalic phenomena:
Sound-changes (or lack thereof) that distinguish most or all of Central Italian from Tuscan include the following, many of them shared with Southern Italo-Romance:[13][12]
Sound-changes with a limited distribution within the Area Mediana include:[14]
In the north of the Area Perimediana, a number of Gallo-Italic features are found:[15]
The following changes to final vowels are found in the Area Perimediana:
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Historical linguistic minorities: Albanian, Catalan, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Germanic, Greek, Ladin, Occitan, Romani, Sardinian, Slovene, Wenzhounese | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Major branches |
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Eastern |
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Italo- Dalmatian |
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Western |
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Others |
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Reconstructed |
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