Venetian language

Venetian, also called wider Venetian or Venetan, is a special language spoken mainly in a place called Veneto in northeastern Italy. About five million people there can understand it. You can also hear it in nearby areas such as Trentino, Friuli, the Julian March, and Istria. Some people in Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro still speak it too, as do Venetian communities in countries like Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Even though many call it an "Italian dialect," this name is more about politics than science. Experts often think of Venetian as its own language with different local versions. Some experts place it in a group called Gallo-Italic, which makes it closer to French and Emilian–Romagnol than to Italian. Others, however, see it as part of the Italo-Dalmatian group. This means there is still some debate about exactly where Venetian fits among the many languages of Europe.

History

See also: Venetian literature

Venetian is part of the Romance language family and grew from Vulgar Latin. It is related to Italian and other similar languages. People first wrote in Venetian in the 1300s.

During the time of the Republic of Venice, Venetian was very important and used widely around the Mediterranean Sea. Famous writers like Ruzante, Carlo Goldoni, and Carlo Gozzi used Venetian in their plays. These plays are still enjoyed by people all over the world today.

Venetian was also used in other famous works, such as translations of old stories and poems. Even though Italian became more popular, Venetian kept being used by many people. Venetian speakers moved to many places, including Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, where they still speak it today.

In 2007, leaders in the Veneto region made a law to protect and promote the Venetian language as part of the area's culture and history.

Geographic distribution

Venetian is mainly spoken in the Italian regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as in parts of Slovenia and Croatia, including areas like Istria, Dalmatia, and the Kvarner Gulf. Smaller groups also speak it in places such as Lombardy, Trentino, and Emilia-Romagna.

Many people in North and South America speak Venetian today because their ancestors came from Italy. For example, in Argentina and Brazil, especially in cities like São Paulo, people still use a version of Venetian called the Talian dialect. In Mexico, a special form of Venetian called Chipilo Venetian is spoken in the town of Chipilo, Puebla, by people whose families came from the Veneto region.

Classification

Venetian is a Romance language that comes from Vulgar Latin. Some say it is part of the Italo-Dalmatian languages, while others place it among the Gallo-Italic languages. Experts do not always agree on its exact family.

Venetian has some unique features that set it apart from nearby languages. For example, it does not change vowel sounds in certain ways that other languages do. It also uses special ways to show ongoing actions and does not use some verb forms that other languages use. These special traits make Venetian interesting to language experts.

Modern Venetian is different from the much older Venetic language spoken in the same area long ago, though both belong to the bigger Indo-European language family.

Regional variants

Venetian has many regional varieties and subvarieties. These include:

• Central varieties spoken in Padua, Vicenza, and Polesine, with about 1,500,000 speakers.
• Varieties in Venice.
• Eastern/Coastal varieties in Trieste, Grado, Istria, and Fiume.
• Western varieties in Verona and Trentino.
• Northern Sinistra Piave in the Province of Treviso and most of the Province of Pordenone.
• North-Central Destra Piave in the Province of Treviso, including Belluno, Feltre, Agordo, Cadore, and Zoldo Alto.

All these varieties are easy to understand each other, sharing at least 92% of their words, even between the most different ones. People today can still somewhat understand Venetian texts from the 1300s.

Other interesting varieties include:

• The variety spoken in Chioggia.
• The variety from the Pontine Marshes.
• The variety from Dalmatia.
• The Talian dialect found in Antônio Prado, Entre Rios, Santa Catarina, and Toledo, Paraná in Brazil.
• The Chipilo Venetian dialect in Chipilo, Mexico.
• The extinct Judeo-Venetian dialect once spoken by the Jewish community of Venice.

Grammar

Venetian, like many Romance languages, has changed from Latin by dropping its old case system. Instead, it uses prepositions and a strict subject–verb–object order in sentences. It has articles, words that tell us if something is specific or not, just like in Latin.

Venetian keeps Latin ideas of gender (masculine and feminine) and number (singular and plural). It makes plurals, like standard Italian, instead of adding an “s” as some other languages do. Nouns and adjectives change endings to match in gender and number, but sometimes the ending can be dropped if the article shows the number.

Venetian uses special words at the start of verbs in many sentences, which repeat the subject. These words help show details like number and gender that the verb endings don’t show. Venetian also has special verb forms for questions and uses certain phrases to show actions that are still happening. It uses double words to start subordinate clauses, similar to Old English. The subjunctive mood is used a lot in these clauses.

Phonology

Consonants

Some dialects of the Venetian language have special sounds not found in standard Italian. For example, there is a sound similar to the "th" in English words like "thing" and "thought." This sound appears in words like "çéna" meaning "supper."

Over time, this particular sound has become less common in everyday speech, especially in big cities. Most speakers now use a different sound instead. Venetian also has a soft "th" sound in some words, but it is often pronounced differently depending on the area.

Vowels

In Venetian, certain stressed vowels sound different from their usual pronunciation. For example, a stressed "a" can sound a bit like "uh." Also, the vowel "u" can sometimes sound more like the English "w" when it appears between other vowels.

Prosody

Venetian sounds quite different from Italian, with a special musical rhythm. While written Venetian looks similar to Italian, when spoken it has a unique, flowing feel. The timing of syllables in Venetian is more even, and accents are not as strong as in Italian. Instead, Venetian uses a wider range of tones and more complex musical patterns. In Venetian, stressed and unstressed syllables sound very similar, and there are no long vowels or extra-long consonants. This makes the language feel lighter and more even in sound.

Sample etymological lexicon

Venetian comes from old Latin spoken in the area and has many words that come from Latin and more recent Tuscan. This means that many Venetian words are similar to Italian words.

However, Venetian also includes words from other languages like ancient Venetic, Greek, Gothic, and German. It has kept some Latin words that Italian does not use as much, leading to many Venetian words that are different from their Italian equivalents.

Spelling systems

Modern script (GVIM-DECA)

Since December 2017, the Venetian language has used a new writing system called GVIM (short for Grafia del Veneto Internazionale Moderno, meaning Writing system for Modern International Venetian). This change was made by a group of experts from the Veneto Region in Italy. Before this, another system called DECA had been used and tested by a group working to support the Venetian language and culture.

The DECA system became official in the Veneto Region on December 14, 2017. It was used in important documents and even in the first university grammar book of the Venetian language, published in Brazil in 2018.

Traditional system

Venetian has an official way to write it. Traditionally, it uses the Latin script, sometimes adding special letters or marks. Old Venetian texts used letters like ⟨x⟩, ⟨ç⟩, and ⟨z⟩ in ways that are different from Italian.

For example, the letter ⟨x⟩ was used in words that now sound like /z/, such as in raxon meaning "reason." The letter ⟨z⟩ could sound like /z/, /dz/, or /ð/, depending on the word and dialect. The letter ⟨ç⟩ was used for a sound that now varies between /s/, /ts/, and /θ/, like in dolçe meaning "sweet."

Over time, spelling has changed, and there isn’t one perfect system that everyone agrees on. But most of the time, Venetian spelling looks very similar to Italian spelling.

Proposed systems

Recently, people have tried to make Venetian spelling simpler by using older letters in new ways. For example, some suggest using ⟨x⟩ for the /z/ sound and a single ⟨s⟩ for the /s/ sound. Others have tried using ⟨ç⟩ in certain words to keep them close to their Italian looks.

There have also been ideas to use special letters for certain sounds, but these have not been widely accepted because of differences in how people speak Venetian.

On December 14, 2017, a new spelling guide for Venetian was approved. It was made easy to learn for both Italian and foreign speakers.

The Venetian speakers in Chipilo use a writing system based on Spanish orthography. An American expert suggested a system using only the Italian alphabet, but it wasn’t very popular.

Orthographies comparison

Sample texts

Ruzante returning from war

Here is a sample from an old form of Venetian, taken from a play by Ruzante in 1529. It shows a character named Ruzante, a farmer, talking about his return from war. He feels happy to be safe and alive after a scary experience.

Discorso de Perasto

This sample is from a speech given in 1797 by a Venetian captain named Giuseppe Viscovich. It was said when the flag of the Venetian Republic was lowered for the last time. The speaker talks about how the people of Venice had always been loyal and brave.

Francesco Artico

This modern piece is by Francesco Artico. An older man remembers singers from his youth in a church choir. He describes how the singers would sometimes drift off while singing, especially after having a bit of wine.

Main article: old dialect of Padua

Main article: Perasto

Miscellaneous

Because the letter Ł is used in Venetian and Polish but not recognized by many computer companies like Microsoft and Apple, people in the Venice area often use Polish keyboard settings on their phones and computers, even though they are not from Poland. Sometimes, when they need the letter and cannot type it, they look up the Polish złoty online just to copy and paste the letter.

Venetian lexical exports to English

Many words from the Venetian language have found their way into English, either directly or through Italian or French. The following list shows some examples of these words and when they first appeared in English.