Venetian language
Encyclopedia
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language
spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto
region of Italy
, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli
, Venezia Giulia, Istria
and some towns of Dalmatia
, an area of six to seven million people. The language is called vèneto or vènet in Venetian, veneto in Italian; the variant spoken in Venice
is called venexiàn/venesiàn or veneziano, respectively. Although referred to as an Italian dialect
(diałeto dialetto) even by its speakers, like other Italian dialects it is a sister language of the national language, not a variety or derivative of it. Venetan (and Venetian proper, the language of Venice) display structural and lexical differences from Italian. Typologically, Venetian is clearly distinct from the Romance languages spoken in North Western Italy, the Gallo-Italic languages
.
Neither Venetan nor Venetian should be confused with Venetic
, an extinct
Indo-European language that was spoken in the Veneto region around the 6th century BC.
, Venetian, as a known written language, is attested in the 13th century. We also find influences and parallelism with Greek
and Albanian
in words such as : piròn (fork), inpiràr (to fork), carega (chair) fanela (t-shirt).
The language enjoyed substantial prestige in the days of the Venetian Republic, when it attained the status of a lingua franca
in the Mediterranean. Notable Venetian-language authors are the playwrights Ruzante
(1502–1542) and Carlo Goldoni
(1707–1793). Both Ruzante and Goldoni, following the old Italian theater tradition (Commedia dell'Arte
), used Venetian in their comedies as the speech of the common folk. They are ranked among the foremost Italian theatrical authors of all time, and Goldoni's plays are still performed today. Other notable works in Venetian are the translations of the Iliad
by Casanova
(1725–1798) and Francesco Boaretti, and the poems of Biagio Marin
(1891–1985). Notable also is a manuscript titled "Dialogue of Cecco da Ronchiti of Bruzene about the New Star
" attributed to Galileo
(1564–1642).
However, as a literary language
Venetian was overshadowed by the Dante
's Tuscan
"dialect" and the French languages like Provençal
and the Oïl languages.
Even before the demise of the Republic, Venetian gradually ceased to be used for administrative purposes in favor of the Tuscan-derived Italian language that had been proposed and used as a vehicle for a common Italian culture strongly supported by eminent Venetian humanists and poets, from Pietro Bembo
(1470–1547), a crucial figure in the development of the Italian language
itself, to Ugo Foscolo
(1778–1827).
At present, virtually all its speakers are diglossic
, and use Venetian only in informal contexts. The present situation raises questions about the language's medium term survival. Despite recent steps to recognize it, the language remains far below the threshold of inter-generational transfer with younger generations preferring standard Italian in many situations. The dilemma is further complicated by the ongoing large-scale arrival of immigrants who only speak or learn standard Italian.
In the past however, Venetian was able to spread to other continents as a result of mass migration from the Veneto region between 1870 and 1905 and 1945 and 1960. This is itself a by-product of the 1866 annexation because the latter subjected the poorest sectors of the population to the vagaries of a newly integrated, developing industrial economy so-called national economy centered on north-western Italy. Tens of thousands of peasants and craftsmen were thrown off the land or out of their workshop, forced to seek better fortune overseas.
Venetian migrants created large Venetian-speaking communities in Argentina
, Brazil
(see Talian
), Mexico
(see Chipilo Venetian dialect
), where the language is still spoken today. Internal migrations under the Fascist
regime also sent many Venetian speakers to other regions of Italy like southern Lazio.
Presently, some firms have chosen to use the Venetian language in advertising as a famous beer did some years ago (Xe foresto solo el nome - only the name is foreign). In other cases Italian advertisements are given a "Venetian flavour" by adding a Venetian word: for instance an airline used the verb "xe" (Xe sempre più grande - It is always bigger) into an Italian sentence (the correct Venetian being el xe senpre pi grando) to advertise new flights from Marco Polo Airport.
On March 28, 2007 the Regional Council of Vèneto officially recognized the existence of the Venetian Language (Łéngua Vèneta) by passing with an almost unanimous vote a law on the "tutela e valorizzazione della lingua e della cultura veneta" (Law on the Protection and Valorisation of the Venetian Language and Culture) with the vote of both governing and opposition parties.
and Friuli-Venezia Giulia
and in both Slovenia
and Croatia
(Istria
, Dalmatia
and the Kvarner Gulf
). Smaller communities are found in Lombardy
, Trentino, Emilia Romagna (in Mantova, Rimini
, and Forlì
), Lazio (Pontine Marshes
), and formerly in Romania
(Tulcea
). It is also spoken in North and South America by the descendants of Italian immigrants. Notable examples of this are the city of Chipilo
, Mexico
or the Talian
dialect spoken in Brazil
ian states of Espírito Santo
, São Paulo
, Paraná
, Rio Grande do Sul
and Santa Catarina
.
Until the middle 20th Century, Venetian was spoken on the Greek Island of Corfu
, which had been long under the rule of the Republic of Venice
. Moreover Venetian had been adopted by a large proportion of the population of Cefalonia, another Ionian Island
, as it was part of the Domini da Màr for almost three centuries.
, like all other Romance languages, including Italian and other "italian" regional languages. However, in the normal classification of Romance languages it is considered part of the Italo-Romance group.
According to Ethnologue
, Venetian and Italian belong to different branches of Romance, Venetian in Gallo-Iberian
. But most academies and Venetian linguists not only don't classify it as a part of that group, but also they underline its "non-Gallicness", "agallicità" (Alberto Zamboni(1988:522)) and various "anti-Celtic features" (Giovan Battista Pellegrini (1976:425)). For example Venetian retained clear vowels as opposed to rounded front vowels, it didn't develop nasalization, it preserved the final vowels, it didn't palatalize |kt| and |ks| and doesn't present falling diphthongs |ei|, |ou|, whereas, like in the Italian language
, the Venetian diphthongization occurs in originally open syllables.
All these variants are mutually intelligible, with a minimum 92% between the most diverging ones (Central and Western). Modern speakers reportedly can still understand to some extent Venetian texts from the 14th century.
Other noteworthy variants are spoken in
, in favor of prepositions and a more rigid subject–verb–object sentence structure. It has thus become more analytic, if not quite as much as English. Venetian also has the Romance articles
, both definite (derived from the Latin demonstrative ille) and indefinite (derived from the numeral unus).
Venetian also retained the Latin concepts of gender
(masculine and feminine) and number
(singular and plural). Unlike the Gallo-Iberian languages, which form plurals by adding -s, Venetian forms plurals in a manner similar to standard Italian. Nouns and adjectives can be modified by suffixes that indicate several qualities such as size, endearment, deprecation, etc. Adjectives (usually postfixed) and articles are inflected to agree with the noun in gender and number, but it is important to mention that the suffix might be deleted because the article is the part that suggests the number. However, Italian is influencing the Venetian Language :
In conservative Venetian, the article alone may convey the gender:
No native Venetic words seem to have survived in present Venetian, but there may be some traces left in the morphology, such as the morpheme
-esto/asto/isto for the past participle, which can be found in Venetic inscriptions from about 500 BC:
subject pronoun" before the verb in many sentences, "echoing" the subject as an ending or a weak pronoun. Independent/emphatic pronouns (e.g. ti), on the contrary, are optional. The clitic subject pronoun (te, el/ła, i/łe) is used with the 2nd and 3rd person singular, and with the 3rd person plural. This feature may have arisen as a compensation for the fact that the 2nd- and 3rd-person inflections for most verbs, which are still distinct in Italian and many other Romance languages, are identical in Venetian. (The Piedmontese language
also has clitic subject pronouns, but the rules are somewhat different.) The function of clitics is particularly visible in long sentences, which do not always have clear intonational breaks to easily tell apart vocative and imperative in sharp commands from exclamations with "shouted indicative". In Venetian the clitic el marks the indicative verb and its masculine subject, otherwise there is an imperative preceded by a vocative.
, and Spanish; instead of essar ("to be"), which would be normal in Italian. The past participle is invariable, unlike Italian:
Indeed the word drio=busy/engaged also appears in other sentences:
Another progressive form uses the construction "essar là che" (lit. "to be there that"):
The use of progressive tenses is more pervasive than in Italian; E.g.
That construction does not occur in Italian: *Non sarebbe mica stato parlandoti is not syntactically valid.
:
As in other Romance languages, the subjunctive mood is widely used in subordinate clauses (although not always). Remarkably, while the use of subjunctive is weakening in many colloquial varieties of Italian, Venetian subjunctive seems to be more resisting. For example, many Italian speakers often hesitate between subjunctive che fosse 'that...were' and indicative che era 'that...was' (though this phenomenon is generally sanctioned in the standard form), while almost no Venetian speaker would use the indicative in the following examples. Notice that it is hardly possible to distinguish a colloquial and a standard form, Venetian being used especially in the spoken form.
For the same reasons, while Italian speakers may accept both vada and vado 'I go-subj/indic.' in the colloquial style, nearly everybody would reject the Venetian indicative *vo in the following context.
th in thing and thought, to Castilian Spanish
c(e, i)/z (as in cero, cien, zapato), Modern Greek
θ (theta), and Icelandic
Thorn þ/Þ; it occurs, for example, in çena/zhena (supper), which sounds the same as Castilian Spanish cena (same meaning). However this sound, which is present only in some varieties of the language (Bellunese, north-Trevisan, some Central Venetian rural areas around Padua, Vicenza and the mouth of the river Po), is sociolinguistically marked as provincial, with most variants using other sounds instead such as [s], [z], and [ʃ]. Some variants also present an interdental voiced fricative written "z" (el pianze 's/he cries') but this is often substituted by "voiced-S", i.e. [z] (written x: el pianxe) or [d] (el piande).
In some varieties intervocalic L is realized as a soft "evanescent" L (the alternation
between evanescent and non-evanescent pronunciation is often represented with one spelling ł). The evanescent pronunciation of this phoneme varies from an almost e in the region of Venice, to a partially vocalised l further inland, to null realization in some mountainous areas. Otherwise, in more conservative areas where evanescence does not apply, the pronunciation of ł collapses with that of a simple L. Thus, for example, góndoła may sound like góndoea, góndola or góndoa. In the latter variant, the "ł" spelling also provides orthographic distinction for pairs such as scóła/skóła 'school' and scóa/skóa 'broom'.
Venetian, like Spanish, does not have the geminate consonants
characteristic of Italian, Tuscan and many other Italian dialects: thus Italian fette, palla, penna ("slices", "ball", and "pen") are fete, bała, and pena in Venetian. The masculine singular ending, which is usually -o / -e in Italian, is often voided in Venetian, particularly in the regional countryside varieties: Italian pieno ("full") is pien, and altare is altar. Also, the masculine article el is often shortened to 'l. However, the extent of vowel dropping depends on the variety. The central-southern varieties display the most reduced dropping (only after -n), the northern variety shows the largest extent of dropping (even after dentals and velars), while eastern and western varieties are in the middle.
Velar N (ŋ) is also very often encountered in Venetian. It is the ng-sound of English "song". Unlike in Italian and English, every final -n is velar in Venetian. This is clearly heard in the pronunciation of local Venetian surnames, which often end in N as Marin [maˈriŋ] and Manin [maˈniŋ], as well as in common Venetian words such as man [ˈmaŋ] "hand", piron [piˈroŋ] "fork". (Italian speakers usually change this velar into a (geminate) dental -nn: [maˈniŋ] → [maˈninː] and [maˈriŋ] → [maˈrinː]).
, but it is traditionally written using the Latin alphabet
— sometimes with the addition of a couple of letters and/or diacritics for the sounds that do not exist in Italian
, such as ç/zh for /θ/. Otherwise, the traditional spelling rules are mostly those of Italian, except that x represents /z/, as in English
"zero".
As in Italian, the letter s between vowels usually represents [z], so one must write ss in those contexts to represent a voiceless /s/: basa for /ˈbaza/ ("he/she kisses"), bassa for /ˈbasa/ ("low"). Also, because of the numerous differences in pronunciation relative to Italian, the grave and acute accents are liberally used to mark both stress and vowel quality:
Venetian allows the consonant cluster
/stʃ/ (not present in Italian), which is usually written s-c or s'c before i or e, and s-ci or s'ci before other vowels. Examples include s-ciarir (Italian schiarire, "to clear up"), s-cèt (schietto, "plain clear"), and s-ciòp (schioppo, "gun"). The hyphen or apostrophe is used because the combination sc(i) is conventionally used for /ʃ/ sound, as in Italian spelling; e.g. scèmo (scemo, "stupid"); whereas sc before a, o and u represents /sk/: scàtoa (scatola, "box"), scóndar (nascondere, "to hide"), scusàr (scusare, "to forgive").
However, the traditional spelling is subject to many historical, regional, and even personal variations. In particular, the letter z has been used to represent different sounds in different written traditions. In Venice and Vicenza
, for example, the phonemes /θ/ and /z/ are written z and x, respectively (el pianze = "he cries", el xe = "he is"); whereas other traditions have used ç and z (el piançe and el ze).
The Venetian speakers of Chipilo
use a system based on Spanish orthography, even though it does not contain letters for [j] and [θ]. The American linguist Carolyn McKay proposed a writing system for that variant, based entirely on the Italian
alphabet. However, the system was not very popular.
o, by Venetian Captain Giuseppe Viscovich
, at the last lowering of the flag of the Venetian Republic (nicknamed the "Republic of Saint Mark").
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Language and Culture:
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto
Veneto
Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...
region of Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli
Friuli
Friuli is an area of northeastern Italy with its own particular cultural and historical identity. It comprises the major part of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, i.e. the province of Udine, Pordenone, Gorizia, excluding Trieste...
, Venezia Giulia, Istria
Istria
Istria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...
and some towns of Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
, an area of six to seven million people. The language is called vèneto or vènet in Venetian, veneto in Italian; the variant spoken in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
is called venexiàn/venesiàn or veneziano, respectively. Although referred to as an Italian dialect
Italian dialects
Dialects of Italian are regional varieties of the Italian language, more commonly and more accurately referred to as Regional Italian. The dialects have features, most notably phonological and lexical, percolating from the underlying substrate languages...
(diałeto dialetto) even by its speakers, like other Italian dialects it is a sister language of the national language, not a variety or derivative of it. Venetan (and Venetian proper, the language of Venice) display structural and lexical differences from Italian. Typologically, Venetian is clearly distinct from the Romance languages spoken in North Western Italy, the Gallo-Italic languages
Gallo-Italic languages
The Gallo-Italic or Gallo-Italian is a linguistic set of Romance languages. In accordance with a source such as Ethnologue is a subset of the Gallo-Romance languages, which also include French and Occitan, among others; in accordance with the major Italian linguists and dialectologists The...
.
Neither Venetan nor Venetian should be confused with Venetic
Venetic language
Venetic is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken in ancient times in the North East of Italy and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po River delta and the southern fringe of the Alps....
, an extinct
Extinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
Indo-European language that was spoken in the Veneto region around the 6th century BC.
History
Venetian descends from Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
, Venetian, as a known written language, is attested in the 13th century. We also find influences and parallelism with Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and Albanian
Albanian language
Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
in words such as : piròn (fork), inpiràr (to fork), carega (chair) fanela (t-shirt).
The language enjoyed substantial prestige in the days of the Venetian Republic, when it attained the status of a lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
in the Mediterranean. Notable Venetian-language authors are the playwrights Ruzante
Angelo Beolco
Angelo Beolco , better known by the nickname Il Ruzzante or el Ruzante, was a Venetian actor and playwright.He is known by his rustic comedies in the Venetian language of Padua, featuring a peasant called "Ruzzante"...
(1502–1542) and Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...
(1707–1793). Both Ruzante and Goldoni, following the old Italian theater tradition (Commedia dell'Arte
Commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
), used Venetian in their comedies as the speech of the common folk. They are ranked among the foremost Italian theatrical authors of all time, and Goldoni's plays are still performed today. Other notable works in Venetian are the translations of the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
by Casanova
Giacomo Casanova
Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie , is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century...
(1725–1798) and Francesco Boaretti, and the poems of Biagio Marin
Biagio Marin
Biagio Marin was an Italian poet, best known from his poems in the Venetian-Friulian dialect, which had no literary tradition until then. In his writings he has never obeyed rhetoric or poetics...
(1891–1985). Notable also is a manuscript titled "Dialogue of Cecco da Ronchiti of Bruzene about the New Star
Dialogo de Cecco da Ronchitti da Bruzene in perpuosito de la stella Nova
The Dialogo de Cecco da Ronchitti da Bruzene in perpuosito de la stella Nova is a manuscript in the Venetian language about a nova and other astronomical subjects, especially the heliocentric system.Although the book itself claims to be by a certain Cecco da Ronchitti, it has been conjectured that...
" attributed to Galileo
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...
(1564–1642).
However, as a literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
Venetian was overshadowed by the Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
's Tuscan
Tuscan dialect
The Tuscan language , or the Tuscan dialect is an Italo-Dalmatian language spoken in Tuscany, Italy.Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine variety...
"dialect" and the French languages like Provençal
Provençal language
Provençal is a dialect of Occitan spoken by a minority of people in southern France, mostly in Provence. In the English-speaking world, "Provençal" is often used to refer to all dialects of Occitan, but it actually refers specifically to the dialect spoken in Provence."Provençal" is also the...
and the Oïl languages.
Even before the demise of the Republic, Venetian gradually ceased to be used for administrative purposes in favor of the Tuscan-derived Italian language that had been proposed and used as a vehicle for a common Italian culture strongly supported by eminent Venetian humanists and poets, from Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch...
(1470–1547), a crucial figure in the development of the Italian language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
itself, to Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo , born Niccolò Foscolo, was an Italian writer, revolutionary and poet.-Biography:Foscolo was born on the Ionian island of Zakynthos...
(1778–1827).
At present, virtually all its speakers are diglossic
Diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety , a second, highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal...
, and use Venetian only in informal contexts. The present situation raises questions about the language's medium term survival. Despite recent steps to recognize it, the language remains far below the threshold of inter-generational transfer with younger generations preferring standard Italian in many situations. The dilemma is further complicated by the ongoing large-scale arrival of immigrants who only speak or learn standard Italian.
In the past however, Venetian was able to spread to other continents as a result of mass migration from the Veneto region between 1870 and 1905 and 1945 and 1960. This is itself a by-product of the 1866 annexation because the latter subjected the poorest sectors of the population to the vagaries of a newly integrated, developing industrial economy so-called national economy centered on north-western Italy. Tens of thousands of peasants and craftsmen were thrown off the land or out of their workshop, forced to seek better fortune overseas.
Venetian migrants created large Venetian-speaking communities in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
(see Talian
Talian
Talian is a dialect spoken mainly in the wine-producing area of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Talian is sometimes called Vêneto ...
), Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
(see Chipilo Venetian dialect
Chipilo Venetian dialect
Chipilo Venetian or Chipileño is a diaspora language currently spoken by the descendants of some five hundred Venetian 19th century immigrants to Mexico. The Venetians settled in the State of Puebla, founding the city of Chipilo...
), where the language is still spoken today. Internal migrations under the Fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
regime also sent many Venetian speakers to other regions of Italy like southern Lazio.
Presently, some firms have chosen to use the Venetian language in advertising as a famous beer did some years ago (Xe foresto solo el nome - only the name is foreign). In other cases Italian advertisements are given a "Venetian flavour" by adding a Venetian word: for instance an airline used the verb "xe" (Xe sempre più grande - It is always bigger) into an Italian sentence (the correct Venetian being el xe senpre pi grando) to advertise new flights from Marco Polo Airport.
On March 28, 2007 the Regional Council of Vèneto officially recognized the existence of the Venetian Language (Łéngua Vèneta) by passing with an almost unanimous vote a law on the "tutela e valorizzazione della lingua e della cultura veneta" (Law on the Protection and Valorisation of the Venetian Language and Culture) with the vote of both governing and opposition parties.
Geographic distribution
Venetian is spoken mainly in the Italian regions of VenetoVeneto
Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...
and Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Friuli–Venezia Giulia is one of the twenty regions of Italy, and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The capital is Trieste. It has an area of 7,858 km² and about 1.2 million inhabitants. A natural opening to the sea for many Central European countries, the region is...
and in both Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
and Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
(Istria
Istria
Istria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...
, Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
and the Kvarner Gulf
Kvarner Gulf
The Kvarner Gulf ); sometimes also Kvarner Bay, in Italian Quarnaro or Carnaro) is a bay in the northern Adriatic Sea, located between the Istrian peninsula and the northern Croatian seacoast....
). Smaller communities are found in Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...
, Trentino, Emilia Romagna (in Mantova, Rimini
Rimini
Rimini is a medium-sized city of 142,579 inhabitants in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, and capital city of the Province of Rimini. It is located on the Adriatic Sea, on the coast between the rivers Marecchia and Ausa...
, and Forlì
Forlì
Forlì is a comune and city in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. The city is situated along the Via Emilia, to the right of the Montone river, and is an important agricultural centre...
), Lazio (Pontine Marshes
Pontine Marshes
thumb|250px|Lake Fogliano, a coastal lagoon in the Pontine Plain.The Pontine Marshes, termed in Latin Pomptinus Ager by Titus Livius, Pomptina Palus and Pomptinae Paludes by Pliny the Elder, today the Agro Pontino in Italian, is an approximately quadrangular area of former marshland in the Lazio...
), and formerly in Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
(Tulcea
Tulcea
Tulcea is a city in Dobrogea, Romania. It is the administrative center of Tulcea county, and has a population of 92,379 as of 2007. One village, Tudor Vladimirescu, is administered by the city.- History :...
). It is also spoken in North and South America by the descendants of Italian immigrants. Notable examples of this are the city of Chipilo
Chipilo
Chipilo is a small city in the state of Puebla, Mexico. It is located twelve kilometers south of the state capital Puebla, Puebla, at a height of 2,150 meters above sea level. Its official name is Chipilo de Francisco Javier Mina...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
or the Talian
Talian
Talian is a dialect spoken mainly in the wine-producing area of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Talian is sometimes called Vêneto ...
dialect spoken in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian states of Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo
Espírito Santo is one of the states of southeastern Brazil, often referred to by the abbreviation "ES". Its capital is Vitória and the largest city is Vila Velha. The name of the state means literally "holy spirit" after the Holy Ghost of Christianity...
, São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, Paraná
Paraná (state)
Paraná is one of the states of Brazil, located in the South of the country, bordered on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay,...
, Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
and Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
.
Until the middle 20th Century, Venetian was spoken on the Greek Island of Corfu
Corfu
Corfu is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the second largest of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the edge of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The island is part of the Corfu regional unit, and is administered as a single municipality. The...
, which had been long under the rule of the Republic of Venice
Republic of Venice
The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...
. Moreover Venetian had been adopted by a large proportion of the population of Cefalonia, another Ionian Island
Ionian Islands
The Ionian Islands are a group of islands in Greece. They are traditionally called the Heptanese, i.e...
, as it was part of the Domini da Màr for almost three centuries.
Classification
Venetian descends from Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
, like all other Romance languages, including Italian and other "italian" regional languages. However, in the normal classification of Romance languages it is considered part of the Italo-Romance group.
According to Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
, Venetian and Italian belong to different branches of Romance, Venetian in Gallo-Iberian
Gallo-Iberian
- Gallo-Italic languages :* Gallo-Italic group ** Piedmontese** Ligurian** Lombard*** Western Lombard*** Eastern Lombard** Emiliano-Romagnolo*** Emiliano*** Romagnolo**Gallo-Italic of Sicily...
. But most academies and Venetian linguists not only don't classify it as a part of that group, but also they underline its "non-Gallicness", "agallicità" (Alberto Zamboni(1988:522)) and various "anti-Celtic features" (Giovan Battista Pellegrini (1976:425)). For example Venetian retained clear vowels as opposed to rounded front vowels, it didn't develop nasalization, it preserved the final vowels, it didn't palatalize |kt| and |ks| and doesn't present falling diphthongs |ei|, |ou|, whereas, like in the Italian language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, the Venetian diphthongization occurs in originally open syllables.
Regional variants
The main regional variants and sub-variants of Venetian are- Central (PaduaProvince of PaduaThe Province of Padua is a province in the Veneto region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Padua.-History and territory:...
, VicenzaProvince of VicenzaThe Province of Vicenza is a province in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Its capital city is Vicenza.The province has an area of 2,723 km², and a total population of 840,000 . There are 121 comuni in the province...
, PolesineProvince of RovigoThe Province of Rovigo is a province in the Veneto region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Rovigo.It borders on the north with the provinces of Verona, Padua and Venice, on the south with the province of Ferrara, on the west with the province of Mantua, and on the eastwith the Adriatic Sea.-...
), with about 1,500,000 speakers. - Eastern/Coastal (VeniceProvince of VeniceThe Province of Venice is a province in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Its capital is the city of Venice.It has an area of 2,467 km², and a total population of 829,418 . There are 44 comuni in the province . As of 2005, the main comuni by population are:-External links:* * : photos of...
, TriesteProvince of TriesteThe Province of Trieste is a province in the autonomous Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Trieste.It has an area of 212 km², and a total population of 236,520...
, GradoGrado, ItalyGrado is a town and comune in the north-eastern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, located on a peninsula of the Adriatic Sea between Venice and Trieste....
, IstriaIstriaIstria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...
, FiumeRijekaRijeka is the principal seaport and the third largest city in Croatia . It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,735 inhabitants...
). - Western (VeronaProvince of VeronaThe Province of Verona is a province in the Veneto region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Verona.-Overview:The province has an area of 3,109 km², and a total population of 912,981...
, Trentino). - North-Central (TrevisoProvince of TrevisoThe Province of Treviso is a province in the Veneto region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Treviso.The province has an area of 2,477 km², and a total population of 886.886 . There are 95 municipalities in the province .-Municipalities:-External links:*...
, most of PordenoneseProvince of PordenoneThe Province of Pordenone is a province in the autonomous Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Pordenone. The territory was carved out of the Province of Udine in 1968....
). - Northern (BellunoProvince of BellunoTheThe Province of Belluno is a province in the Veneto region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Belluno.It has an area of 3,678 km², and a total population of 214,026 .-Geography:...
, comprising FeltreFeltreFeltre is a town and comune of the province of Belluno in Veneto, northern Italy. A hill town in the southern reaches of the province, it is located on the Stizzon River, about 4 km from its junction with the Piave, and 20 km southwest from Belluno...
, AgordoAgordoAgordo is a town and comune sited in the Province of Belluno, in the Veneto region in Italy. It is located about 100 km north of Venice and about 20 km northwest of Belluno....
, CadoreCadoreCadore is a "comunità montana" in the Italian region of Veneto, in the northernmost part of the province of Belluno bordering on Austria, the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. It is watered by the Piave River poured forth from the Carnic Alps...
, Zoldo AltoZoldo Alto-External links:* on Wikivoyage...
).
All these variants are mutually intelligible, with a minimum 92% between the most diverging ones (Central and Western). Modern speakers reportedly can still understand to some extent Venetian texts from the 14th century.
Other noteworthy variants are spoken in
- ChioggiaChioggiaChioggia is a coastal town and comune of the province of Venice in the Veneto region of northern Italy.-Geography:...
, - Pontine MarshesPontine Marshesthumb|250px|Lake Fogliano, a coastal lagoon in the Pontine Plain.The Pontine Marshes, termed in Latin Pomptinus Ager by Titus Livius, Pomptina Palus and Pomptinae Paludes by Pliny the Elder, today the Agro Pontino in Italian, is an approximately quadrangular area of former marshland in the Lazio...
, - DalmatiaDalmatiaDalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
, CroatiaCroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, - Rio Grande do SulRio Grande do SulRio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
(Antônio PradoAntônio PradoAntônio Prado is a municipality in the state Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. It is surrounded by the municipalities Ipê, Flores da Cunha, Vila Flores, Nova Roma do Sul, São Marcos, Nova Pádua, and Protásio Alves...
), Santa CatarinaSanta Catarina (state)Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
, ParanáParaná (state)Paraná is one of the states of Brazil, located in the South of the country, bordered on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay,...
e São PauloSão PauloSão Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, BrazilBrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
("TalianTalianTalian is a dialect spoken mainly in the wine-producing area of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Talian is sometimes called Vêneto ...
"), - ChipiloChipiloChipilo is a small city in the state of Puebla, Mexico. It is located twelve kilometers south of the state capital Puebla, Puebla, at a height of 2,150 meters above sea level. Its official name is Chipilo de Francisco Javier Mina...
, MexicoMexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, - Peripheral creole languages along the southern border (nearly extinct).
Grammar
Like most Romance languages, Venetian has mostly abandoned the Latin case systemDeclension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
, in favor of prepositions and a more rigid subject–verb–object sentence structure. It has thus become more analytic, if not quite as much as English. Venetian also has the Romance articles
Article (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
, both definite (derived from the Latin demonstrative ille) and indefinite (derived from the numeral unus).
Venetian also retained the Latin concepts of gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
(masculine and feminine) and number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
(singular and plural). Unlike the Gallo-Iberian languages, which form plurals by adding -s, Venetian forms plurals in a manner similar to standard Italian. Nouns and adjectives can be modified by suffixes that indicate several qualities such as size, endearment, deprecation, etc. Adjectives (usually postfixed) and articles are inflected to agree with the noun in gender and number, but it is important to mention that the suffix might be deleted because the article is the part that suggests the number. However, Italian is influencing the Venetian Language :
- el gato graso, the fat (male) cat.
- ła gata grasa, the fat (female) cat.
- i gati grasi, the fat (male) cats.
- łe gate grase, the fat (female) cats.
In conservative Venetian, the article alone may convey the gender:
- i gat gras, the fat (all males or males and females) cats.
- łe gat gras, the fat (female) cats.
- el gatòn graso, the fat big (male) cat.
- ła gatòna grasa, the fat big (female) cat.
- un bel gateło, a nice small (male) cat.
- na beła gateła, a nice small (female) cat.
No native Venetic words seem to have survived in present Venetian, but there may be some traces left in the morphology, such as the morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
-esto/asto/isto for the past participle, which can be found in Venetic inscriptions from about 500 BC:
- Venetian: Mi go fazesto ('I have done')
- Venetian Italian: Mi go fato
- Standard Italian: Io ho fatto
Redundant subject pronouns
A peculiarity of Venetian grammar is a "semi-analytical" verbal flexion, with a compulsory "cliticClitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
subject pronoun" before the verb in many sentences, "echoing" the subject as an ending or a weak pronoun. Independent/emphatic pronouns (e.g. ti), on the contrary, are optional. The clitic subject pronoun (te, el/ła, i/łe) is used with the 2nd and 3rd person singular, and with the 3rd person plural. This feature may have arisen as a compensation for the fact that the 2nd- and 3rd-person inflections for most verbs, which are still distinct in Italian and many other Romance languages, are identical in Venetian. (The Piedmontese language
Piedmontese language
Piedmontese is a Romance language spoken by over 2 million people in Piedmont, northwest Italy. It is geographically and linguistically included in the Northern Italian group . It is part of the wider western group of Romance languages, including French, Occitan, and Catalan.Many European and...
also has clitic subject pronouns, but the rules are somewhat different.) The function of clitics is particularly visible in long sentences, which do not always have clear intonational breaks to easily tell apart vocative and imperative in sharp commands from exclamations with "shouted indicative". In Venetian the clitic el marks the indicative verb and its masculine subject, otherwise there is an imperative preceded by a vocative.
Interrogative inflection
Venetian also has a special interrogative verbal flexion used for direct questions, which also incorporates a redundant pronoun:- Italian: (Tu) eri sporco? ("Were you dirty?").
- Venetian: (Ti) jèristu onto? or even (Ti) xèrito spazo? (lit. "You were-you dirty?")
- Italian: Il cane era sporco? ("Was the dog dirty?").
- Venetian: El can jèreło onto? (lit. "The dog was-he dirty?")
- or even: Jèreło onto el can ? (lit. "Was-he dirty the dog ?")
- Italian: (Tu) ti sei domandato? ("Have you asked yourself?").
- Venetian: (Ti) teto domandà? (lit. "You to-yourself have-you asked?")
Auxiliary verbs
Reflexive tenses use the auxiliary verb aver ("to have"), as in English, GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, and Spanish; instead of essar ("to be"), which would be normal in Italian. The past participle is invariable, unlike Italian:
- Italian: (Tu) ti sei lavato (lit. "(You) yourself are washed").
- Venetian: (Ti) te te à/ga/ghè lavà (lit. "(You) you yourself have washed").
- Italian: (Loro) si sono svegliati (lit. "(They) themselves are awakened").
- Venetian: (Luri) i se ga/à svejà (lit. "(They) they themselves have awakened").
Continuing action
Another peculiarity of the language is the use of the phrase eser drìo (literally, "to be behind") to indicate continuing action:- Italian: Mio padre sta parlando ("My father is speaking").
- Venetian: Mé pare 'l xe drìo(invià) parlàr (lit. "My father he is busy speaking").
Indeed the word drio=busy/engaged also appears in other sentences:
- Venetian: So' drio i mistieri lit. means "I am busy doing the housework" (=I'm doing it)
- Venetian: Vo drio i mistieri lit. means "I go busy with the housework" (=I'm going to do it)
- Venetian: Mé pare l'è in leto drio (invià) dormir lit. means "My father is in bed, busy sleeping" (=My father is sleeping in bed)
Another progressive form uses the construction "essar là che" (lit. "to be there that"):
- Venetian: Me pàre 'l è là che 'l parla (lit. "My father he is there that he speaks").
The use of progressive tenses is more pervasive than in Italian; E.g.
- English: "He wouldn't possibly have been speaking to you".
- Venetian: No 'l sarìa mìa stat/stà drìo parlarte (lit. "Not-he would possibly have been behind to speak-to-you").
That construction does not occur in Italian: *Non sarebbe mica stato parlandoti is not syntactically valid.
Subordinate clauses
Subordinate clauses have double introduction ("whom that", "when that", "which that", "how that"), as in Old EnglishOld English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
:
- Italian: So di chi parli ("(I) know about whom (you) speak").
- Venetian: So de chi che te parla (lit. "(I) know about whom that you-speak").
As in other Romance languages, the subjunctive mood is widely used in subordinate clauses (although not always). Remarkably, while the use of subjunctive is weakening in many colloquial varieties of Italian, Venetian subjunctive seems to be more resisting. For example, many Italian speakers often hesitate between subjunctive che fosse 'that...were' and indicative che era 'that...was' (though this phenomenon is generally sanctioned in the standard form), while almost no Venetian speaker would use the indicative in the following examples. Notice that it is hardly possible to distinguish a colloquial and a standard form, Venetian being used especially in the spoken form.
- Std.Italian: Credevo che fosse... ("I thought that he were...")
- Coll. Ital.: Credevo che era... ("I thought that he was...")
- Venetian: Credéa/évo che 'l fuse... ("I thought that he were...")
- Venetian: Credéa/évo che 'l *xera...
For the same reasons, while Italian speakers may accept both vada and vado 'I go-subj/indic.' in the colloquial style, nearly everybody would reject the Venetian indicative *vo in the following context.
- Std.Italian: E' meglio che vada ("I'd better go", lit. "it is better that I go" subj.)
- Std.Italian: E' meglio che vado ("I'd better go", lit. "it is better that I go" indic.)
- Venetian: Xe mejo che vaga/vae ("I'd better go"-subj.)
- Venetian: Xe mejo che *vo
Sound system
Venetian has some sounds not present in Italian, an interdental voiceless fricative [θ] spelled ç or z(h) and similar to EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
th in thing and thought, to Castilian Spanish
Castilian Spanish
Castilian Spanish is a term related to the Spanish language, but its exact meaning can vary even in that language. In English Castilian Spanish usually refers to the variety of European Spanish spoken in north and central Spain or as the language standard for radio and TV speakers...
c(e, i)/z (as in cero, cien, zapato), Modern Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
θ (theta), and Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
Thorn þ/Þ; it occurs, for example, in çena/zhena (supper), which sounds the same as Castilian Spanish cena (same meaning). However this sound, which is present only in some varieties of the language (Bellunese, north-Trevisan, some Central Venetian rural areas around Padua, Vicenza and the mouth of the river Po), is sociolinguistically marked as provincial, with most variants using other sounds instead such as [s], [z], and [ʃ]. Some variants also present an interdental voiced fricative written "z" (el pianze 's/he cries') but this is often substituted by "voiced-S", i.e. [z] (written x: el pianxe) or [d] (el piande).
In some varieties intervocalic L is realized as a soft "evanescent" L (the alternation
Alternation (linguistics)
In linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a phoneme or morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant...
between evanescent and non-evanescent pronunciation is often represented with one spelling ł). The evanescent pronunciation of this phoneme varies from an almost e in the region of Venice, to a partially vocalised l further inland, to null realization in some mountainous areas. Otherwise, in more conservative areas where evanescence does not apply, the pronunciation of ł collapses with that of a simple L. Thus, for example, góndoła may sound like góndoea, góndola or góndoa. In the latter variant, the "ł" spelling also provides orthographic distinction for pairs such as scóła/skóła 'school' and scóa/skóa 'broom'.
Venetian, like Spanish, does not have the geminate consonants
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
characteristic of Italian, Tuscan and many other Italian dialects: thus Italian fette, palla, penna ("slices", "ball", and "pen") are fete, bała, and pena in Venetian. The masculine singular ending, which is usually -o / -e in Italian, is often voided in Venetian, particularly in the regional countryside varieties: Italian pieno ("full") is pien, and altare is altar. Also, the masculine article el is often shortened to 'l. However, the extent of vowel dropping depends on the variety. The central-southern varieties display the most reduced dropping (only after -n), the northern variety shows the largest extent of dropping (even after dentals and velars), while eastern and western varieties are in the middle.
Velar N (ŋ) is also very often encountered in Venetian. It is the ng-sound of English "song". Unlike in Italian and English, every final -n is velar in Venetian. This is clearly heard in the pronunciation of local Venetian surnames, which often end in N as Marin [maˈriŋ] and Manin [maˈniŋ], as well as in common Venetian words such as man [ˈmaŋ] "hand", piron [piˈroŋ] "fork". (Italian speakers usually change this velar into a (geminate) dental -nn: [maˈniŋ] → [maˈninː] and [maˈriŋ] → [maˈrinː]).
Sample etymological lexicon
As a direct descent of regional spoken Latin, the Venetian lexicon derives its vocabulary substantially from Latin and (in more recent times) from Tuscan, so that most of its words are cognate with the corresponding words of Italian. Venetian includes however many words derived from other sources (such as Greek, Gothic, and German) that are not cognate with their equivalent words in Italian, such as:| Venetian | English | Italian | Venetian word origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| uncò, 'ncò, incò, anco, ancuo | today | oggi | hunc + hodie (Latin) |
| apoteca | pharmacy | farmacia | Apotheke (German) |
| trincàr | to drink | bere | trinken (German) |
| becàr | to be spicy hot | essere piccante | from the verb beccare (Italian), literally "to peck" |
| armelin | apricot | albicocca | from Armenia |
| bisato, bisata | eel | Latin bestia ("beast"); cfr. biscia (a kind of snake) | |
| bisa, biso | snake | serpente | Latin bestia ("beast"); cfr. biscia (a kind of snake) |
| bìsi | peas | piselli | Related to Italian word. |
| isarda, risardola | lizard | lucertola | same etymon as lizard |
| trar via | to throw | tirare | local cognate Cognate In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g... of Italian |
| calìgo | fog | nebbia | from caligo (Latin) |
| cantón | corner/side | angolo/parte | from cantus (Latin) |
| catàr | find+take | trovare+prendere | from adcaptare (Latin) |
| caréga, trón | chair | sedia | cathedra, thronus (Latin) from (Greek) |
| petar sò | to fall | cascare | from casus of cadere (Latin) made into a verb |
| ciao Ciao The word "ciao" is an informal Italian verbal salutation or greeting, meaning either "hello", "goodbye", "bye" or "hi". Originally from the Venetian language, it was adopted into the Italian language and eventually entered the vocabulary of English and of many other languages around the world... |
hello, goodbye | ciao | s-ciao (Venetian for slave); sclavus (vulgar Latin) |
| ciapàr | to catch, to take | prendere | capere (Latin) |
| co | when (non-interr.) | quando | cum (Latin) |
| copàr | to kill | uccidere | accoppare (old Italian, literally "to behead") |
| carpeta | miniskirt | gonna mini | like carpet |
| còtoła, còtola | skirt | sottana | cotta (Latin, coat or dress) |
| fanela | t-shirt | maglietta underwear | Greek word |
| gòto, bicer | drinking glass | bicchiere | gut(t)us (Latin for "cruet") |
| insìa | exit | uscita | in + exita (Latin) |
| mi | I | io | me (Latin) |
| morsegàr, smorsegàr | to bite | mordere | morsus (Latin "bitten") made into a verb (cf. Italian morsicare) |
| mustaci | moustaches | baffi | moustaki (Greek) |
| munìn, gato, gatin | cat | gatto | perhaps from "meow" sound |
| meda | big sheaf | grosso covone | from messe mietere sounds like meadow oe moed harvest |
| musso | donkey | asino | ? |
| nòtoła,notol, barbastrìo, signàpoła | bat | pipistrello | from not notte night |
| pantegàna | rat | ratto | podgana (slovene) ponticanus from ponto black see |
| pinciar | beat, cheat, sexual intercourse | imbrogliare, superare in gara, amplesso | pinch from fr pincer put in st |
| pirón | fork | forchetta | from Greek pirouni |
| pisalet | dandelion | tarassaco | pissinbed diuretic |
| plao far | truant | marinare scuola | from deutsch blauen |
| pomo/pón | apple | mela | pomus (Latin) |
| schei | money | denaro soldi | from german scheidemünze |
| saltapaiusk | grasshopper | cavalletta | salta hop paiusk paglia grass |
| sghiràt | squirrel | scoiattolo | Related to Italian word. More probably from the Greek "skiouros" |
| sgnapa | spirit from grapes, brandy | grappa acquavite | Schnaps (German) |
| sgorlàr, scorlàr | to shake | scuotere | ex + crollare (Latin) |
| strica | line, streak, stroke, strip | linea, striscia | root: *strik (proto Germanic). Related to English "streak", "stroke (of pen"). Example: Tirar na strica "to draw a line". |
| strucar | to strike/press | premere, schiacciare | root: *strik (proto Germanic). Related to English "strike" (=hit), "stroke" (=pass the hand over sth) and German "streichen". Example: Struca un tasto / boton "Strike any key/Press any button". |
| supiàr, subiàr, sficiàr | to whistle | fischiare | sub + flare (Latin) |
| tòr su | to pick up | raccogliere | tollere (Latin) |
| técia, tegia | pan | pentola | tecula (Latin) |
| tosàto, tosàt, buteleto, fio | lad, boy | ragazzo | from tosare (Italian, "to cut someone's hair") |
| puto, putèło, putełeto, putèo | lad, boy | ragazzo | puer, putus (Latin) |
| matelot | lad, boy | ragazzo | perhaps from matelot (French, "sailor") |
| vaca | cow | mucca, vacca | vacca (Latin) |
| sc-iopa, sc-iopòn | gun | fucile-scoppiare | from lat scloppum onomat |
Traditional system
Venetian does not have an official writing systemOfficial script
An official script is a writing system that is specifically designated to be official in the constitutions or other applicable laws of countries, states, and other jurisdictions. Akin to an official language, an official script is much rarer. It is used primarily where an official language is in...
, but it is traditionally written using the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
— sometimes with the addition of a couple of letters and/or diacritics for the sounds that do not exist in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, such as ç/zh for /θ/. Otherwise, the traditional spelling rules are mostly those of Italian, except that x represents /z/, as in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
"zero".
As in Italian, the letter s between vowels usually represents [z], so one must write ss in those contexts to represent a voiceless /s/: basa for /ˈbaza/ ("he/she kisses"), bassa for /ˈbasa/ ("low"). Also, because of the numerous differences in pronunciation relative to Italian, the grave and acute accents are liberally used to mark both stress and vowel quality:
- à /a/, á /ɐ/, è /ɛ/, é /e/, ò /ɔ/, ó /o/, ù /u/
Venetian allows the consonant cluster
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
/stʃ/ (not present in Italian), which is usually written s-c or s'c before i or e, and s-ci or s'ci before other vowels. Examples include s-ciarir (Italian schiarire, "to clear up"), s-cèt (schietto, "plain clear"), and s-ciòp (schioppo, "gun"). The hyphen or apostrophe is used because the combination sc(i) is conventionally used for /ʃ/ sound, as in Italian spelling; e.g. scèmo (scemo, "stupid"); whereas sc before a, o and u represents /sk/: scàtoa (scatola, "box"), scóndar (nascondere, "to hide"), scusàr (scusare, "to forgive").
However, the traditional spelling is subject to many historical, regional, and even personal variations. In particular, the letter z has been used to represent different sounds in different written traditions. In Venice and Vicenza
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
, for example, the phonemes /θ/ and /z/ are written z and x, respectively (el pianze = "he cries", el xe = "he is"); whereas other traditions have used ç and z (el piançe and el ze).
Proposed systems
Recently there have been attempts to standardize and simplify the script, e.g. by using x for [z] and a single s for [s]; then one would write baxa for [ˈbaza] ("she kisses") and basa for [ˈbasa] ("low"). Another recent convention is to use ł for the "soft" l, to allow a more unified orthography for all variants of the language. However, in spite of their theoretical advantages, these proposals have not been very successful outside of academic circles, because of regional variations in pronunciation and incompatibility with existing literature.The Venetian speakers of Chipilo
Chipilo
Chipilo is a small city in the state of Puebla, Mexico. It is located twelve kilometers south of the state capital Puebla, Puebla, at a height of 2,150 meters above sea level. Its official name is Chipilo de Francisco Javier Mina...
use a system based on Spanish orthography, even though it does not contain letters for [j] and [θ]. The American linguist Carolyn McKay proposed a writing system for that variant, based entirely on the Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
alphabet. However, the system was not very popular.
Ruzante returning from war
The following sample, in the old dialect of Padua, comes from a play by Ruzante (Angelo Beolco), titled Parlamento de Ruzante che iera vegnù de campo ("Dialogue of Ruzante who came from the battlefield", 1529). The character, a peasant returning home from the war, is expressing to his friend Menato his relief at being still alive:Orbéntena, el no serae mal star in campo per sto robare, se 'l no foesse che el se ha pur de gran paure. Càncaro ala roba! A' son chialò mi, ala segura, e squase che no a' no cherzo esserghe gnan. [...] Se mi mo' no foesse mi? E che a foesse stò amazò in campo? E che a foesse el me spirito? Lo sarae ben bela. No, càncaro, spiriti no magna. | "Really, it would not be that bad to be in the battlefield looting, were it not that one gets also big scares. Damn the loot! I am right here, in safety, and almost can't believe I am. [...] And if I were not me? And if I had been killed in battle? And if I were my ghost? That would be just great. No, damn, ghosts don't eat." |
Discorso de Perasto
The following sample is taken from the Perasto Speech (Discorso de Perasto), given on August 23, 1797 at PerastPerast
Perast is an old town in Bay of Kotor, Montenegro. It is situated a few kilometres northwest of Kotor.- Geography :...
o, by Venetian Captain Giuseppe Viscovich
Giuseppe Viscovich
Giuseppe Viscovich, also Josip Visković, was a Venetian count. He was the Captain of the town of Perast , the last territory of the Republic of Venice to surrender to France....
, at the last lowering of the flag of the Venetian Republic (nicknamed the "Republic of Saint Mark").
Par trezentosetantasete ani le nostre sostanse, el nostro sangue, le nostre vite le xè sempre stàe par Ti, S.Marco; e fedelisimi senpre se gavemo reputà, Ti co nu, nu co Ti, e sempre co Ti sul mar semo stài lustri e virtuosi. Nisun co Ti ne gà visto scanpar, nisun co Ti ne gà visto vinti e spaurosi!' | "For three hundred and seventy seven years our bodies, our blood our lives have always been for You, St. Mark; and very faithful we have always thought ourselves, You with us, we with You, And always with You on the sea we have been illustrious and virtuous. No one has seen us with You flee, No one has seen us with You defeated and fearful!" |
Francesco Artico
The following is a contemporary text by Francesco Artico. The elderly narrator is recalling the church choir singers of his youth, who, needless to say, sang much better than those of today:Sti cantori vèci da na volta, co i cioéa su le profezie, in mezo al coro, davanti al restèl, co'a ose i 'ndéa a cior volta no so 'ndove e ghe voéa un bèl tóc prima che i tornésse in qua e che i rivésse in cao, màssima se i jèra pareciàdi onti co mezo litro de quel bon tant par farse coràjo. | "These old singers of the past, when they picked up the Prophecies, in the middle of the choir, in front of the gate, with their voice they went off who knows where, and it was a long time before they came back and landed on the ground, especially if they had been previously "oiled" with half a litre of the good one [wine] just to make courage." |
English words of Venetian origin
| Venetian source | English loanword | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| arsenà | arsenal Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, issued to authorized users, or any combination of those... |
via Italian; from Arabic dār aṣ-ṣināʿah 'house of work/skills, factory' |
| artichioco | artichoke Artichoke -Plants:* Globe artichoke, a partially edible perennial thistle originating in southern Europe around the Mediterranean* Jerusalem artichoke, a species of sunflower with an edible tuber... |
from Arabic al-haršūf |
| balota | ballot Ballot A ballot is a device used to record choices made by voters. Each voter uses one ballot, and ballots are not shared. In the simplest elections, a ballot may be a simple scrap of paper on which each voter writes in the name of a candidate, but governmental elections use pre-printed to protect the... |
'ball' used in Venetian elections |
| casin | casino Casino In modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships or other tourist attractions... |
borrowed in Italianized form |
| schiao | ciao Ciao The word "ciao" is an informal Italian verbal salutation or greeting, meaning either "hello", "goodbye", "bye" or "hi". Originally from the Venetian language, it was adopted into the Italian language and eventually entered the vocabulary of English and of many other languages around the world... |
used originally in Venetian to mean 'your servant', 'at your service' |
| contrabando | contraband Contraband The word contraband, reported in English since 1529, from Medieval French contrebande "a smuggling," denotes any item which, relating to its nature, is illegal to be possessed or sold.... |
|
| gazeta | gazette Gazette A gazette is a public journal, a newspaper of record, or simply a newspaper.In English- and French-speaking countries, newspaper publishers have applied the name Gazette since the 17th century; today, numerous weekly and daily newspapers bear the name The Gazette.Gazette is a loanword from the... |
'small Venetian coin'; from the phrase gazeta de la novità 'a penny worth of news' |
| g(h)eto | ghetto Ghetto A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated... |
|
| ziro | giro Giro A Giro or giro transfer is a payment transfer from one bank account to another bank account and instigated by the payer, not the payee... |
'circle, turn, spin'; borrowed in Italianized form; from the name of the bank Banco del Ziro |
| gnoco, -chi | gnocchi Gnocchi Gnocchi are various thick, soft dumplings. They may be made from semolina, ordinary wheat flour, flour and egg, flour, egg, and cheese, potato, bread crumbs, or similar ingredients. The smaller forms are called gnocchetti.... |
'lump, bump, gnocchi'; from Germanic *knokk- 'knuckle, joint' |
| gondola | gondola Gondola The gondola is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian Lagoon. For centuries gondolas were the chief means of transportation and most common watercraft within Venice. In modern times the iconic boats still have a role in public transport in... |
|
| laguna | lagoon Lagoon A lagoon is a body of shallow sea water or brackish water separated from the sea by some form of barrier. The EU's habitat directive defines lagoons as "expanses of shallow coastal salt water, of varying salinity or water volume, wholly or partially separated from the sea by sand banks or shingle,... |
|
| lazareto | Lazaretto Lazaretto A lazaretto or lazaret is a quarantine station for maritime travellers. Lazarets can be ships permanently at anchor, isolated islands, or mainland buildings. Until 1908, lazarets were also used for disinfecting postal items, usually by fumigation... , lazaret |
|
| Lido | lido Lido The Lido is an 11 km long sandbar located in Venice, northern Italy, home to about 20,000 residents. The Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido every September.-Geography:... |
|
| lo(t)to | lotto Lottery A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize.Lottery is outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments... |
from Germanic *lot- 'destiny, fate' |
| malvasia | malmsey | |
| marzapan | marzipan Marzipan Marzipan is a confection consisting primarily of sugar and almond meal. Persipan is a similar, yet less expensive product, in which the almonds are replaced by apricot or peach kernels... |
from Arabic martabān, the name for the porcelain container in which marzipan was transported, from Mataban Mottama Mottama, formerly Martaban, is a small town in the Thaton district of Mon State, Myanmar. Located on the north bank of the Thanlwin river, on the opposite side of Mawlamyaing, Mottama was the first capital of the Hanthawaddy Kingdom in the 13th and 14th centuries, and an entrepôt of international... in the Bay of Bengal where these were made (this is one of several proposed etymologies for the English word) |
| negro ponte | Negroponte Negroponte Negroponte can refer to:*the Greek island of Euboea, called Negroponte in Italian**Chalkis, the island's capital, named Negroponte during the Middle Ages... |
'black bridge' |
| monte negro | Montenegro Montenegro Montenegro Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the... |
'black mountain' |
| Pantalon Pantalone Pantalone, or Pantalone del bisognosi, Italian for 'Pantalone of the needy', is one of the most important principal characters found in commedia del arte... |
pantaloon Pantaloon Pantaloon or Pantaloons may refer to:*Pantaloons, a style of trousers*Pantaloon Retail India, a large retailer in India*The Pantaloons, an English touring theatre company*Pantaloon, a character in the Harlequinade-See also:... |
a character in the Commedia dell'arte Commedia dell'arte Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened... |
| pestachio | pistachio Pistachio The pistachio, Pistacia vera in the Anacardiaceae family, is a small tree originally from Persia , which now can also be found in regions of Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Sicily and possibly Afghanistan , as well as in the United States,... |
ultimately from Middle Persian *pistak |
| quarantena | quarantine Quarantine Quarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian quarantena, meaning forty-day period.... |
|
| regata | regatta Regatta A regatta is a series of boat races. The term typically describes racing events of rowed or sailed water craft, although some powerboat race series are also called regattas... |
originally 'fight, contest' |
| scampo, -i | scampi Scampi Scampi is the term for a particular type of lobster, deriving originally from the Greek word κάμπη 'kampē' meaning a 'bending' or 'winding'. The name is sometimes used loosely to describe a style of preparation typically for seafood, and as a culinary name for some species of crustacean... |
from Greek κάμπη 'caterpillar', lit. 'curved (animal)' |
| zechin | sequin Sequin Sequins are disk-shaped beads used for decorative purposes. They are available in a wide variety of colors and geometrical shapes. Sequins are commonly used on clothing, jewelry, bags, shoes and lots of other accessories. Large sequins, fastened only at the top, have been used on billboards and... |
'Venetian gold ducat'; from Arabic sikkah 'coin, minting die' |
| Zanni Zanni Zanni or Zani is a character type of Commedia dell'arte best known as an astute servant and trickster. The Zanni comes from the countryside. The Zanni is known to be a “dispossessed immigrant worker”. "Immigrant" in Italy at the time of the city-states, did not necessarily mean someone from... |
zany | a character in the Commedia dell'arte Commedia dell'arte Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened... |
| zero | zero | via French zéro; ultimately from Arabic ṣifr 'zero, nothing' |
See also
- Venetian literatureVenetian literatureVenetian literature is the corpus of literature in Venetian, the vernacular language of the region roughly corresponding to Venice, from the 12th century. Venetian literature, after an initial period of splendour in the sixteenth century with the success of artists such as Ruzante, reached its...
- Papa NeroPapa Nero (song)"Papa Nero" is a song by the Venetian reggae band Pitura Freska, with lyrics in the Venetian language.It was performed at the 1997 Sanremo Music Festival, and became very popular throughout Italy...
, a reggae song in Venetian - TalianTalianTalian is a dialect spoken mainly in the wine-producing area of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Talian is sometimes called Vêneto ...
- Chipilo VenetianChipilo Venetian dialectChipilo Venetian or Chipileño is a diaspora language currently spoken by the descendants of some five hundred Venetian 19th century immigrants to Mexico. The Venetians settled in the State of Puebla, founding the city of Chipilo...
- Venetian SnaresVenetian SnaresVenetian Snares is the main performing alias of Canadian electronic musician Aaron Funk .From Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Funk is known for making electronic music often in odd numbered time signatures...
External links
General Language:- Sitoveneto — information on the language, in Venetian, Italian, and English. Advocates a unified script. Venetian Keyboard Layout for Windows
- Vèneto Arkìvio
- Brief description
- General grammar; comparison to other Romance languages; description of the Mexican dialect
- Linguaveneta Online translator(ENG-VEN-ITA),dictionary,grammar,unified script,children teaching
Dictionaries
- Webster's Venetian-English Dictionary
- El Galepin: Venetian-English-Italian Dictionary
- Dizsionario: Dictionary of Venetian language and its varieties
Audio-Video Streaming
- Tornén un pas indrìo! — samples of written and spoken Venetian by Francesco Artico
- Text and audio of some works by Ruzante
- Veneta TV Venetian language video streaming TV
Language and Culture:
- Review of a Goldoni play in Italian and Venetian performed in July 2005 at the Lincoln Center, New YorkLincoln Center for the Performing ArtsLincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City's Upper West Side. Reynold Levy has been its president since 2002.-History and facilities:...
.
- Raixe Venete — Venetian site in Venetian Language
- Quatro Ciàcoe — Venetian language magazine