Native to Italy Linguasphere 51-AAA-rab | Glottolog None | |
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Region Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, Lazio Native speakers 3,000,000 (date missing) Language family Indo-European
Italic
Romance
Italo-Dalmatian
Central Italian
Romanesco | ||
Romanesco ([romaˈnesko]) is a variety of regional Italian spoken in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, especially in the core city. It is a Central Italian dialect and is thus linguistically close to the Tuscan dialect and Standard Italian. There exist a few notable grammatical and idiomatic differences from Standard Italian. Rich in expressions and sayings, Romanesco is used for informal/colloquial communication by most of the natives of Rome, often with code-switching with the standard language.
Contents
History
The medieval Roman dialect belonged to the central-southern family of Italian dialects, and is much closer to the Neapolitan dialect than to the Florentine. A typical example of Romanesco of that period is Vita di Cola di Rienzo, written by an anonymous Roman during the 14th century. Starting with the 16th century, the Roman dialect underwent a stronger and stronger influence from the Tuscan dialect (from which modern Italian derives) starting with the reigns of the two Medici popes (Leo X and Clement VII) and with the Sack of Rome in 1527, two events which provoked a large immigration of Italians from Central Italy. Therefore, current Romanesco has grammar and roots that are rather different from other dialects in Central Italy.
The path towards a progressive Tuscanization of the dialect can be observed in the works of the major Romanesco writers and poets of the past two centuries: Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791-1863), whose sonetti romaneschi represent the most important work in this dialect and an eternal monument to 19th century Roman people; Cesare Pascarella (1858-1940); Giggi Zanazzo (1860-1911); and Carlo Alberto Salustri (1871-1940), nicknamed Trilussa.
Diffusion
Before Rome became the capital city of Italy, Romanesco was spoken only inside the walls of the city, while the little towns surrounding Rome had their own dialects. Nowadays these dialects have been absorbed, almost disappeared and have been replaced with a variant of Romanesco, which therefore is now spoken in an area larger than the original one, and slightly pervades the everyday language of most of the immigrants who live in the large city.
Pronunciation
Romanesco pronunciation differs from Standard Italian in these cases:
Noteworthy figures
Today, Romanesco is generally considered more of a regional idiom than a true language. Classical Romanesco, which reached high literature with Belli, has disappeared.
External forces such as immigration and the dominance of Italian are playing a role in the transformation.
Ma nun c'è lingua come la romana
Pe' dì una cosa co' ttanto divario
Che ppare un magazzino de dogana.
"Le lingue der monno"
- G.G. Belli
But there is no language like the Roman one
To express a concept with so many variants
So that it seems a customs warehouse.
"Languages of the world"
- G.G. Belli