| Ligurian | |
|---|---|
| Lìgure, Zenéize | |
| Pronunciation | ['ligyre], [ze'nejze] |
| Spoken in | Italy (Liguria, Piedmont, Tuscany, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Sardinia) France (Alpes Maritimes and Corsica) Monaco Argentina (in the neighborhood of La Boca in Buenos Aires). |
| Native speakers | 1,925,100[1] (date missing) |
| Language family | |
| Official status | |
| Official language in | Officially recognized in Italy (Law 482/1999) and Monaco. |
| Regulated by | No official regulation |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | lij |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-oh & 51-AAA-og |
Ligurian is a Gallo-Romance language spoken in Liguria in Northern Italy, parts of the Mediterranean coastal zone of France, Monaco and in the villages of Carloforte and Calasetta in Sardinia. Genoese (Zenéize), spoken in Genoa, the capital of Liguria, is its most important dialect. It belongs to the Northern Italian group of Romance languages.
Ligurian has almost two million speakers, and is still widely spoken by many, especially the elderly. Nevertheless, the language may be in decline. Notable native speakers of Ligurian include Niccolò Paganini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Eugenio Montale, Giulio Natta, Italo Calvino, and Fabrizio De André.
There is, however, an uninterrupted literary tradition of Ligurian poets and writers that goes from the 13th century to the present, such as Luchetto (the Genoese Anonym), Martin Piaggio and Gian Giacomo Cavalli.
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Besides Liguria (Ligurian Ligùria), the language is traditionally spoken in coastal, northern Tuscany, southern Piedmont (part of the province of Alessandria), western extremes of Emilia-Romagna (some areas in the province of Piacenza), in northern and southern west parts of Sardinia (Italy), the Alpes-Maritimes of France (mostly the Côte d'Azur from the Italian border to and including Monaco), and parts of Corsica (France). It has been adopted formally in Monaco as the Monegasque language; or locally, Munegascu.
The Mentonasc dialect, spoken in the East of the County of Nice, is considered to be a transitional Occitan dialect to Ligurian; conversely, the Roiasc and Pignasc spoken further North in the Eastern margin of the County are Ligurian dialects showing Occitan influences.
In Italy, the language has given way to Standard Italian and in France to French.
Ligurian exhibits distinct Italian features, while also having features of other Romance languages. No link between Romance Ligurian and the Ligurian language of the ancient Ligurian populations, in the form of a substrate or otherwise, can be demonstrated by linguistic evidence. There are, however, toponomastic derivations from ancient Ligurian.
Variants of the Ligurian language are:
The Ligurian alphabet has:
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