Talk:Monégasque language

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I'm afraid I have no idea what this sentence means:

"the œ is pronounced as the French é, and not like the French œu as in bœuf, which is how œ is pronounced in Ligurian, which also uses the character ö to represent this sound."

There are too many whiches and thisses to be disentangled. Does Ligurian have an /ø/ written œ? or is Ligurian œ instead pronounced /e/? Does Ligurian have an /ø/ written ö? or does it sound like /e/? Is there an ö/œ distinction in Ligurian that has been lost in Monégasque? QuartierLatin1968 El bien mas preciado es la libertad 15:26, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

"tradiçiùn comes from the Latin traditio[nem] , and not from the Italian tradizione." I disagree strongly with the validity of this statement. Monegasque, along with all Ligurian languages, are derived directly from Italian along with strong influences in vocabulary, grammar and syntax from French and related Gallo-Romance languages. In this case, it is uncertain and difficult to determine whether tradiçiùn is derived straight from tradizione or the French tradition, however the distinction is minimal and of little significance, due to the high conservation of vocabulary and the close contact of the two languages.

No -- Italian and Monegasque are contemporary varieties. One modern language cannot be derived from another modern language. Rather, they share common ancestors. What you have said is akin to saying that humans evolved from great apes.

[edit] Number of speakers

How many speakers are there, inside and outside Monaco? Every other language article in Wikipedia that I have ever seen includes this. 68.122.3.84 03:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Are there any native speakers at all? The article claims that Monegasque was threatened with extinction in the 70s. A language is threatened with extinction when the remaining speakers are elderly. Those who were elderly in the 70s are dead by now. And even if there are a handfull of native speakers left: Is there something like a language community where Monegasque is used in everyday life? Unoffensive text or character 08:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)