Among the regional languages of Italy, they are the most endangered, since in the main cities of their area (Milan, Turin, Genoa, Bologna) they are mainly used by the elderly.
Within this sub-family, the language with the largest geographic spread is Lombard, spoken in the Italian region of Lombardy, in eastern Piedmont and western Trentino. Outside Italy it is widespread in Switzerland in the canton of Ticino, and some southern valleys of the canton of the Grisons.
Piedmontese refers to the languages spoken in the region of Piedmont and the north west corner of Liguria. Historically, the Piedmontese-speaking area is the plain at the foot of the Western Alps, and ends at the entrance to the valleys where Occitan and Arpitan are spoken. In recent centuries, the language has also spread into these valleys, where it is also more widely spoken than these two languages, thus the borders of Piedmontese have reached the western alps watershed that is the border with France.
Gallo-Piceno (gallo-italic of the Marchesorgallico-marchigiano) is spoken in the province of Pesaro and Urbino and in the northern part of the province of Ancona (the Marches).[4] Once classified as a dialect of Romagnol, now there is a debate about considering it a separated Gallo-Italic language.[17][18]
Isolated varieties in Sicily and in Basilicata (Southern Gallo-Italic variants)[edit]
Varieties of Gallo-Italic languages are also found in Sicily,[5] corresponding with the central-eastern parts of the island that received large numbers of immigrants from Northern Italy, called Lombards, during the decades following the Norman conquest of Sicily (around 1080 to 1120). Given the time that has lapsed and the influence from the Sicilian language itself, these dialects are best generically described as Southern Gallo-Italic. The major centres where these dialects can still be heard today include Piazza Armerina, Aidone, Sperlinga, San Fratello, Nicosia, and Novara di Sicilia. Northern Italian dialects did not survive in some towns in the province of Catania that developed large Lombard communities during this period, namely Randazzo, Paternò and Bronte. However, the Northern Italian influence in the local varieties of Sicilian are marked. In the case of San Fratello, some linguists suggested that the nowadays dialect has Provençal as its basis, having been a fort manned by Provençal mercenaries in the early decades of the Norman conquest (bearing in mind that it took the Normans 30 years to conquer the whole of the island).
Gallo-Italic languages are often said to resemble Western Romance languages like French, Spanish, or Portuguese, and in large part it is due to their phonology.
The Gallo-Italic languages differ somewhat in their phonology from one language to another, but the following are the most important characteristics, as contrasted with Italian:[21]
Most Gallo-Italic languages have lost all unstressed final vowels except /a/, e.g. Lombard òm "man", füm "smoke", nef "snow", fil "wire", röda "wheel" (Italian uomo, fumo, neve, filo, ruota). They remain, however, in Ligurian, with passage of -oto-u, except after n; e.g. ramu, rami, lüme, lümi "branch, branches, light, lights" (Italian ramo, rami, lume, lumi), but can, chen/kaŋ,keŋ/ "dog, dogs" (Italian cane, cani).
u/u/ tends to evolve as ü/y/, as in French and Occitan, as in Lombard füm (Italian fumo "smoke") and Ligurian lüme, Piedmont lüm (Italian lume "light"). In some parts, e.g. southern Piedmont, this has further developed into /i/, e.g. fis (Italian fuso), lim (Italian lume "light"). In some mountainous parts of Piedmont, however (e.g. Biellese, Ossolano), this development was blocked before final /a/, leading to masculine crü (Italian crudo "raw") but feminine cru(v)a (Italian cruda).
Metaphony is very common, affecting original open stressed è/ɛ/ and ò/ɔ/ when followed by /i/ or sometimes /o/ (operating before final vowels were dropped). This leads at first to diphthongs ie and uo, but in many dialects these progress further, typically to monophthongs i and ö/ø/. Unlike standard Italian diphthongization, this typically operates both in open and closed syllables, hence in Lombardy (where typically /i/ but not /o/ triggers metaphony) quest (Italian questo "this") vs. quist (Italian questi "these").
Stressed closed é/e/ and sometimes ó/o/, when occurring in an open syllable (followed by at most one consonant) often diphthongized to /ei/ and /ou/, as in Old French; e.g. Piedmont beive (Italian bere < *bévere "to drink"), teila (Italian tela "cloth"), meis (Italian mese "month"). In some dialects, /ei/ developed further into either /ɛ/or/i/, e.g. tèla/tɛla/ < *teila (Italian tela "cloth"), sira (Italian sera "evening"), mis (Italian mese "month").
Stressed /a/ in an open syllable often fronts to ä/æ/orè/ɛ/.
Lenition affects single consonants between vowels. /d/ and /ɡ/ drop; /b/ becomes /v/ or drops; /t/ and /k/ become /d/ and /ɡ/, or drop; /p/ becomes /b/, /v/, or drops. /s/ between vowels voices to /z/. /l/ between vowels sometimes becomes /r/, and this /r/ sometimes drops. Double consonants are reduced to single consonants, but not otherwise lenited. /n/ becomes velarized to /ŋ/. These changes occur before a final vowel drops. After loss of final vowels, however, further changes sometimes affect the newly final consonants, with voiced obstruents often becoming voiceless, and final /ŋ/ sometimes dropping. Liguria, especially in former times, showed particularly severe lenition, with total loss of intervocalic /t/, /d/, /ɡ/, /b/, /v/, /l/, /r/ (probably also /p/, but not /k/) in Old Genoese, hence müa (Latin matura "early"), a éia e âe? (Italian aveva le ali? "did it have wings?"; modern a l'aveiva e ae? with restoration of various consonants due to Italian influence). In Liguria and often elsewhere, collapse of adjacent vowels due to loss of an intervocalic consonant produced new long vowels, notated with a circumflex.
/k/ and /ɡ/ preceding /i/, /e/or/ɛ/ often assibilitated historically to /s/ and /z/, respectively. This typically does not occur in Lombardy, however, and parts of Liguria have intermediate /ts/ and /dz/, while Piemontese varieties typically have differential developments, with /k/ assibilating (sent/sɛŋt/ '100'), but /ɡ/ retaining palatalization (gent/dʒɛŋt/ 'people').
Latin /kl/ palatalized to /tʃ/ (Piemontese ciav, Romagnol ceva 'key'); similarly /ɡj/ from Latin /ɡl/ develops as /dʒ/. In Liguria, /pj/ and /bj/ from Latin /pl/ and /bl/ are affected in the same way, e.g. Ligurian cian (Italian piano "soft") and giancu (Italian bianco "white").
Latin /kt/ develops into /jt/, /tʃ/or/t/, varying by locale (contrast Italian /tt/).
^Hull, Geoffrey (1982): «The linguistic unity of northern Italy and Rhaetia.» Ph.D. diss., University of Sydney West.
^Longobardi, Giuseppe. (2014). Theory and experiment in parametric minimalism. Language description informed by theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 217–262.
^Tamburelli, M., & Brasca, L. (2018). Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 33, 442–455. [2]
^
Bernard Comrie, Stephen Matthews, Maria Polinsky (eds.), The Atlas of languages : the origin and development of languages throughout the world. New York 2003, Facts On File. p. 40.
Stephen A. Wurm, Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Paris 2001, UNESCO Publishing, p. 29.
Glauco Sanga: La lingua Lombarda, in Koiné in Italia, dalle origini al 500 (Koinés in Italy, from the origin to 1500), Lubrina publisher, Bèrghem
Studi di lingua e letteratura lombarda offerti a Maurizio Vitale, (Studies in Lombard language and literature) Pisa : Giardini, 1983
Brevini, Franco – Lo stile lombardo : la tradizione letteraria da Bonvesin da la Riva a Franco Loi / Franco Brevini – Pantarei, Lugan – 1984 (Lombard style: literary tradition from Bonvesin da la Riva to Franco Loi )
Mussafia Adolfo, Beitrag zur kunde der Norditalienischen Mundarten im XV. Jahrhunderte (Wien, 1873)
Pellegrini, G.B. "I cinque sistemi dell'italoromanzo", in Saggi di linguistica italiana (Turin: Boringhieri, 1975), pp. 55–87.
Rohlfs, Gerhard, Rätoromanisch. Die Sonderstellung des Rätoromanischen zwischen Italienisch und Französisch. Eine kulturgeschichtliche und linguistische Einführung (Munich: C.H. Beek'sche, 1975), pp. 1–20.
Canzoniere Lombardo – by Pierluigi Beltrami, Bruno Ferrari, Luciano Tibiletti, Giorgio D'Ilario – Varesina Grafica Editrice, 1970.
Bernard Comrie, Stephen Matthews, Maria Polinsky (eds.), The Atlas of languages: the origin and development of languages throughout the world. New York 2003, Facts On File. p. 40.
Stephen A. Wurm, Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Paris 2001, UNESCO Publishing, p. 29.
Glauco Sanga: La lingua Lombarda, in Koiné in Italia, dalle origini al 500 (Koinés in Italy, from the origin to 1500), Lubrina publisher, Bèrghem
Studi di lingua e letteratura lombarda offerti a Maurizio Vitale, (Studies in Lombard language and literature) Pisa : Giardini, 1983
Brevini, Franco – Lo stile lombardo : la tradizione letteraria da Bonvesin da la Riva a Franco Loi / Franco Brevini – Pantarei, Lugan – 1984 (Lombard style: literary tradition from Bonvesin da la Riva to Franco Loi )
Hull, Geoffrey The Linguistic Unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia: Historical Grammar of the Padanian Language 2 vols. Sydney: Beta Crucis Editions, 2017.
Mussafia Adolfo, Beitrag zur kunde der Norditalienischen Mundarten im XV. Jahrhunderte (Wien, 1873)
Pellegrini, G.B. "I cinque sistemi dell'italoromanzo", in Saggi di linguistica italiana (Turin: Boringhieri, 1975), pp. 55–87.
Rohlfs, Gerhard, Rätoromanisch. Die Sonderstellung des Rätoromanischen zwischen Italienisch und Französisch. Eine kulturgeschichtliche und linguistische Einführung (Munich: C.H. Beek'sche, 1975), pp. 1–20.
Canzoniere Lombardo – by Pierluigi Beltrami, Bruno Ferrari, Luciano Tibiletti, Giorgio D'Ilario – Varesina Grafica Editrice, 1970.
