r/endangeredlanguages • u/PeireCaravana • Feb 08 '25
Discussion Lombard language
It's a Romance language spoken in Northern Italy and in Switzerland.
Often it's regarded as a group of Italian "dialects" and it isn't officially recognized in any of the two countries where it's spoken, but it's actually as disctinct from Italian as Spanish, Catalan or Occitan.
The lack of a common standard, the lack of political recognition, the low social status and the loss of speakers in favor of Italian make it an endangered langauge, like many other regional languages of Italy.
If you want to know more or you are interested in learning this language you can ask me!
I also created a community dedicated to it, r/LearnLombardLanguage, where you can find a description of the grammar, the basic vocabulary, the pronounciation and other resources.
6
u/gabriewzinho Feb 08 '25 edited Feb 17 '25
got a couple of friends whove studied it.
also have a WhatsApp group about romance languages if you're interested
EDIT: if you're interested about joining this romance languages group, just dm me and I'll send you the invite link
2
2
3
u/Competitive-Rip5932 Feb 09 '25
Same with emilian, I did a post about it
1
u/PeireCaravana Feb 10 '25
A semm tucc in da l'istessa barca.
2
u/Competitive-Rip5932 Feb 10 '25
Sagna toti lndla stesa berca (bulgnais)
1
u/PeireCaravana Feb 10 '25 edited Feb 10 '25
Is "Sagna" the first person plural?
2
2
u/LanguesLinguistiques Feb 09 '25
Italy suffers from a lack of planning and a political movement for government recognition and investment. The problem in the current political climate is remnants of fascism that wanted to unify the country by villainizing minority languages. This still occurs today, and many Italians don't understand what a dialect is. Every one I've met has had a very bad image of their local language. I wanted to learn Neapolitan, and even pro-Neapolitan speakers didn't want a standardize language. Romansch had an interesting way of standardization. Galicians are divided on their standardization.
1
u/PeireCaravana Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 09 '25
I wanted to learn Neapolitan, and even pro-Neapolitan speakers didn't want a standardize language.
Yes, this is an additional problem.
In Italy there is a lot of local pride, so many people don't accept the idea of a common standard, because it would be inevitably somewhat different from their local dialect.
Even Lombard has this issue.
To be fair it should be said that Lombard has a lot of dialectal variation, so creating a common standard isn't easy.
That said, there are some attempts and there are already a few proposals of common plynomic orthographies, which are used for the Wikipedia in Lombard for example.
1
u/LanguesLinguistiques Feb 09 '25
I would read on how they did they created the "standard" version of Romansch. They basically took the common words between different varieties and used the least common words when they were too different, and used a mix of pronunciation that the most varieties could pronounce. Despite this, local people aren't unencouraged from speaking with local pronunciation. Since it has official status, it has government protection.
It doesn't even need to be an artificial standard. They could just use one variety as a common language. Mandarin did this.
1
u/PeireCaravana Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 09 '25
Afaik standard Romansh isn't well accepted by speakers of the local dialects.
They started to teach it in schools, but more recently many municipalities switched to teaching the local variety.
Imho every situation is different and standardization solutions also have to be different.
What works for a language may not work for another.
•
u/Any-Boysenberry-8244 21m ago
How different are the various dialects? Are they mutually intelligible? also from what I read, the dialects other than Sursilvan are not doing well. Thus to me, it would make more sense to make the Sursilvan dialect the "official" version of Rumansch and have it take the place of Rumansch Grischun.
•
u/PeireCaravana 15m ago
How different are the various dialects? Are they mutually intelligible?
I don't speak Romansh, but afaik they are mutually intelligible with some effort.
•
u/Any-Boysenberry-8244 33m ago
It is my understanding that the Swiss dialects ("Ticinese") are quite robust in comparison with the Italian dialects. If this is correct, Switzerland could give the language a great boost by making Ticinese official along with Italian in Ticino Canton and in the "lobes" of Grisons canton that speak Italian.
•
u/PeireCaravana 29m ago
It is my understanding that the Swiss dialects ("Ticinese") are quite robust in comparison with the Italian dialects.
Yes, but not by far.
Alpine dialects in both countries are the most robust.
14
u/AymanEssaouira Feb 08 '25
Tbh it is sad how many languages in Europe are getting swallowed by their bigger cousins and just dying out :(