Ligurian (Romance language)

This article is about the modern Ligurian language. For the distantly-related ancient language, see Ligurian language (ancient).
Ligurian
Lìgure, Zenéize
Pronunciation [ˈliɡyre], [zeˈnejze]
Native to Italy, Monaco, France
Region Italy:
Liguria
Piedmont (southern part of the Province of Cuneo and Province of Alessandria)
Lombardy (southern part of the Province of Pavia)
Emilia-Romagna (part of the Province of Piacenza and Province of Parma)
Sardinia (part of the Province of Carbonia-Iglesias)
Monaco
France:
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (part of Alpes Maritimes)
Corsica (part of Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud)
Argentina:
Buenos Aires (in the neighborhood of La Boca)
Native speakers
 500,000  (2002)[1]
Dialects
Intemelio
Brigasc
Language codes
ISO 639-3 lij
Glottolog ligu1248[2]
Linguasphere 51-AAA-oh & 51-AAA-og

Ligurian (lìgure or lengoa lìgure) 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.

Ligurian has almost 500,000 speakers, and is still widely spoken by many in Genoa and in many of the small towns and villages in the region. There are also many groups dedicated to the preservation of the language such as Associazione Culturale O Castello in Chiavari, which offers Ligurian (Genovese) language courses. Notable native speakers of Ligurian include Niccolò Paganini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Christopher Columbus, Eugenio Montale, Giulio Natta, Italo Calvino, and Fabrizio De André. There is also a popular musical group, Buio Pesto, who compose songs entirely in the Genoese subdialect.

There is, however, a long 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.

Geographic extent

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 a small are of southern Sardinia (Italy), the Alpes-Maritimes of France (mostly the Côte d'Azur from the Italian border to and including Monaco), and in a township at the south 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.

Linguistic structure

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

Variants of the Ligurian language are:

Alphabet

The Ligurian alphabet has:

Vocabulary

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ligurian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Ligurian". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

External links

Ligurian language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia