Ligurian language (Romance)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Ligurian is also the name of an extinct language of Italy.
| Ligurian | ||
|---|---|---|
| Lígustico, Ligure, Liguru, Zeneize | ||
| Spoken in |  Italy (Liguria, Piedmont, Tuscany, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Sardinia) France (Alpes Maritimes and Corsica) Monaco Argentina (in the neighborhood of La Boca in Buenos Aires). |
|
| Total speakers | 2,000,000 | |
| Language family | Indo-European
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| Official status | ||
| Official language in | Officially recognized in Italy (Law 482/1999) and Monaco. | |
| Regulated by | No official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | roa | |
| ISO 639-3 | lij | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Ligurian is a Gallo-Romance language, currently spoken in Liguria, northern Italy, and parts of the Mediterranean coastal zone of France, and Monaco. Genoese (Zeneize or Zeneise) is one of the most well-known languages, spoken in Genoa, the capital of Liguria.
It belongs to the Northern Italian group within the Romance languages.
The language may be dying out, but is still widely spoken by many, especially the elderly, out of a population of 2,000,000 (two millions).
The highest artistic expression of this language is probably the album Crêuza de mä by the Genoese singer and songwriter Fabrizio de Andrè. The whole album is written and sung in Ligurian, and is considered one of the best of the World music during the Eighties.[citation needed]
Notable native speakers:
- Niccolò Paganini
- Giuseppe Garibaldi
- Eugenio Montale
- Giulio Natta
- Italo Calvino
- Fabrizio De André
- Claudio Burlando
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[edit] Geographic extent
Besides Liguria, the language is traditionally spoken in coastal, northern Tuscany, southern Piedmont (part of the province of Alessandria), western extremes of Emilia-Romagna (some areas in the province of Piacenza), in northern parts of Sardinia (Italy), the Alpes-Maritimes of France (Mostly the Côte d'Azur from the Italian border to and including Monaco), and parts of Corsica (France). It has been adopted formally in Monaco as the Monegasque language; or locally, Munegascu.
The Mentonasc dialect, spoken in the East of the County of Nice, is considered to be a transitional Occitan dialect to Ligurian; conversely, the Roiasc and Pignasc spoken further North in the Eastern margin of the County are ligurian dialects showing occitanic influences.
In Italy, the language has given way to Standard Italian and in France to French.
[edit] Linguistic structure
Ligurian exhibits distinct Italian features, while also having features of other Romance languages. No link between Romance Ligurian and the Ligurian language of the ancient Ligurian populations, in the form of a substrate or otherwise, can be demonstrated by linguistic evidence. There do exist, however, toponomastic derivations from ancient Ligurian.
[edit] Variants
Variants of the Ligurian language are:
- Zeneize (main Ligurian variant, spoken in Genoa)
- Monegasque (in Monaco)
- Mentonasque (in Menton (France))
- Intemelio (in Sanremo and Ventimiglia)
- Brigasc (in La Brigue and Briga Alta)
- Roiasc (in Upper Roya Valley)
- Tabarchino (in Calasetta and Carloforte)
- Bonifacino (in Bonifacio)
[edit] Alphabet
The Ligurian alphabet has:
- 6 vowels: a, e, i, o, u, y
- 18 consonants: b, c, ç, d, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, x, z.
- It uses the umlaut (¨), circumflex (^), acute (´), and accent (`) on most vowels. It also uses the c-cedilla (ç).
[edit] Vocabulary
- a péia: pear (It. and Sp. pera, Pt. pêra)
- u méi: apple (It. mela)
- u setrun: orange (cf. Fr. citron 'lemon'; replacing Gen. limon--cf. It. limone)
- u fîgu: fig (It. fico Fr. figue, Gl. and Pt. figo)
- u pèrsegu: peach (It. pesca, Fr. pêche, Cat. préssec, Gl. pexego, Pt. pêssego)
- u rîbes: currant (It. ribes)
- u franbuâse: raspberry (Fr. framboise, Pt. framboesa)
- a sêsgia: cherry (It. ciliegia, Fr. cerise, Pt. cereja)
- u mêlu: strawberry
- a nûsge: hazelnut (It. nocciola, Fr. noisette, Pt. noz)
- l'arbicòca: apricot (It. albicocca, Cat. albercoc, Pt. abricó)
- l'üüga: grape (It., Sp. and Pt. uva)
- u pinjöö: pine nut (It. pinolo, Pt. pinho)
- arvî: to open (It. aprire, Fr. ouvrir, Sp. and Pt. abrir)
- serâ: to close (Sp. cerrar)
- u cèeu: light (cf. It. chiaro)
- a cà: home, house (It., Sp. and Pt. casa; Cat. and Ven: ca)
- l'öövu: egg (It. uovo, Gl. and Pt. ovo)
- l'ögiu: eye (It. occhio, Fr. l'œil, Cat. ull, Gl. ollo, Pt. olho)
- a buca: mouth (It. bocca, Sp. and Pt. boca)
- a tésta: head (It. testa)
- a schèn-a: back (It. schiena, Cat. esquena)
- u cüü: arse (It., Sp. and Gal. culo, Fr. and Cat. cul, Pt. cu)
- u brasu: arm (It. braccio, Fr. bras, Pt. braço)
- a gamba: leg (It. gamba, Fr. jambe, Cat. cama)
- u cöö: heart (It. cuore, Fr. cœur)
[edit] Anecdote
The highest artistic expression of this language is probably the album Crêuza de mä by the Genoese singer and songwriter Fabrizio de Andrè. The whole album is written and sung in Ligurian, and is considered to be possibly one of the best of the World music during the Eighties.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Jean-Philippe Dalbera, Les parlers des Alpes Maritimes : étude comparative, essai de reconstruction [thèse], Toulouse: Université de Toulouse 2, 1984 [éd. 1994, Londres: Association Internationale d’Études Occitanes]
- Werner Forner, “Le mentonnais entre toutes les chaises ? Regards comparatifs sur quelques mécanismes morphologiques” [Caserio & al. 2001: 11-23]
- Intemelion (revue), n° 1, Sanremo, 1995.
[edit] External links
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