Venetian language

This article is about the modern Romance language. For the ancient language, see Venetic language.

Venetian
Vèneto
Native to	Veneto Friuli-Venezia Giulia Trentino Istria
Native speakers	2.2 million (2003) (Italy, Croatia, Slovenia)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Gallo-Romance Gallo-Italian? peripheral Gallo-Italian? Venetian group Venetian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	vec
Linguasphere	51-AAA-n

A sign in Venetian reading "Here we also speak Venetian".

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 most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia Giulia, Istria, and some towns of Dalmatia, totalling 6–7 million speakers. 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 (Ven diałeto, It dialetto) even by its speakers, it is in fact a separate language, not a variety or derivative of Italian. Venetian differs both in grammar, phonetics, and vocabulary. It is usually classified as a Western Romance language, a branch of Romance to which Italian does not belong. Some authors include it among the Gallo-Italic languages, but by most authors, it is treated as separate. Typologically, Venetian has little in common with the Gallo-Italic languages of northwestern Italy, but shows some affinity to nearby Istriot.

Venetian is not closely related to Venetic, an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken in the Veneto region until about the 1st century BCE.

History

See also: Venetian literature

A street sign in Venice using the Venetian calle, as opposed to the Italian via.

Venetian descends from Vulgar Latin, influenced by the Celts and possibly the Venetic substratum and by the languages of the Germanic tribes (Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Lombards) who invaded Italy in the 5th century. 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, Venetian 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), and 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.

Geographic distribution

Venetian is spoken mainly in the Italian regions of Veneto 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), Sardinia (Arborea, Tanca Marchese, Fertilia), 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 São Paulo, Brazil or the Talian dialect spoken in Brazilian states of Espírito Santo, São Paulo, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina.

In 2009, the Brazilian city of Serafina Corrêa in the State of Rio Grande do Sul gave Talian co-official status alongside Portuguese. 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.

Classification

Venetian is a Romance language and therefore descends from Vulgar Latin. Specifically, it belongs to the Italo-Romance group, most closely related to Istriot on the one hand and Tuscan-Italian on the other.

Venetian, despite the fact it is surrounded by Gallo-Italic languages, does not share traits with that group. Scholars stress Venetian's characteristic lack of Gallo-Italic traits (agallicità) or traits found further afield in Gallo-Romance (e.g., Occitan, French, Franco-Provençal) or Rhaeto-Romance (e.g., Friulian, Romansch). For example, Venetian did not undergo vowel rounding or nasalization, palatalize /kt/ and /ks/, or develop rising diphthongs /ei/ and /ou/, and it preserved final syllables, whereas, like in Italian, Venetian diphthongization occurs in historically open syllables.

Regional variants

The main regional varieties and subvarieties of Venetian are

• Central (Padua, Vicenza, Polesine), with about 1,500,000 speakers.
• Eastern/Coastal (Venice, Trieste (see), Grado, Istria, Fiume (see)).
• Western (Verona, Trentino).
• North-Central (Treviso, most of Pordenonese).
• Northern (Belluno, comprising Feltre, Agordo, Cadore, Zoldo Alto).

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

• Chioggia
• Pontine Marshes
• Dalmatia
• Rio Grande do Sul (Antônio Prado), Santa Catarina, Paraná e São Paulo, Brazil ("Talian dialect"),
• Chipilo, Mexico (Chipileño)
• Peripheral creole languages along the southern border (nearly extinct).

Grammar

Main article: Venetian grammar

Like most Romance languages, Venetian has mostly abandoned the Latin case system, 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 :

• 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 -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 "clitic 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". For instance, in Venetian the clitic el marks the indicative verb and its masculine singular subject, otherwise there is an imperative preceded by a vocative. Although some grammars regard these clitics as "redundant", they actually provide specific additional information as they mark number and gender, thus providing number-/gender- agreement between the subject(s) and the verb, which does not necessarily show this information on its endings.

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, German, 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 English:

• 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

Some dialects of Venetian have certain sounds not present in Italian, such as the interdental voiceless fricative [θ], often spelled with ç, z, zh, or ž, and similar to English th in thing and thought. This sound occurs, for example, in çena 'supper' (also written zhena, žena), which is pronounced the same as Castilian Spanish cena (same meaning). The voiceless interdental fricative occurs in Bellunese, north-Trevisan, and in some Central Venetian rural areas around Padua, Vicenza and the mouth of the river Po. Because the pronunciation variant [θ] is more typical of older speakers and speakers living outside of major cities, it has come to be socially stigmatized, and most speakers now use [s] or [ts] instead of [θ]. In those dialects with the pronunciation [s], the sound has fallen together with ordinary s, and so it is not uncommon to simply write s (or ss between vowels) instead of ç or zh (e.g. sena).

Similarly some dialects of Venetian also have a voiced interdental fricative, often written z (as in el pianze 'he cries'); but in most dialects this sound is now pronounced either as [dz] (i.e. Italian voiced-Z), or more typically as [z] (i.e. Italian voiced-S, written x, as in el pianxe); in a few dialects the sound appears as [d] and may therefore be written instead with the letter d, as in el piande.

Some varieties of Venetian also distinguish an ordinary [l] vs. a weakened or lenited ("evanescent") l, which in some orthographic norms is indicated with the letter ł; in more conservative dialects, however, both l and ł are merged as ordinary [l]. In those dialects which have both types, the precise phonetic realization of ł depends both on its phonological environment and on the dialect of the speaker. Typical realizations in the region of Venice include a voiced velar approximant or glide [ɰ] (usually described as nearly like an "e" and so often spelled as e), when ł is adjacent (only) to back vowels (a o u), vs. a null realization when ł is adjacent to a front vowel (i e). In dialects further inland ł may be realized as a partially vocalised l, and in some mountainous areas it may be entirely unpronounced. Thus, for example, góndoła 'gondola' may sound like góndoea, góndola or góndoa, [ˈɡondoɰa, ˈɡondola, ˈɡondoa]. In dialects having a null realization of intervocalic ł, although pairs of words such as scóła 'school' and scóa 'broom' are homophonous (both being pronounced [ˈskoa]), they are still distinguished orthographically.

Venetian, like Spanish, does not have the geminate consonants characteristic of standard Italian, Tuscan, Neapolitan and other languages of southern Italy; thus Italian fette, 'slices', palla 'ball' and penna 'pen' correspond to fete, bała, and pena in Venetian. The masculine singular noun ending, corresponding to -o/-e in Italian, is often unpronounced in Venetian, particularly in rural varieties: Italian pieno ('full') corresponds to Venetian pien, Italian altare to Venetian altar. The extent to which final vowels are deleted in pronunciation does however vary by dialect: the central-southern varieties have deletion only after [n], while in the northern variety deletion occurs even after dental stops and velars; the eastern and western varieties exhibit patterns in between these two extremes.

The velar nasal consonant [ŋ] (the final sound in English song) also occurs frequently in Venetian, since word-final /n/ is always velarized and pronounced as [ŋ]. This phenomenon is especially obvious in the pronunciation of many local Venetian surnames which end in n, such as Marin [maˈɾiŋ] and Manin [maˈniŋ], as well as in common Venetian words such as man [ˈmaŋ] 'hand', piron [piˈɾoŋ] 'fork'. Speakers of Italian lack this sound and so usually substitute a (geminate) dental [n] for Venetian [ŋ], changing for example [maˈniŋ] to [maˈninː] and [maˈɾiŋ] to [maˈɾinː]).

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, ancò, ancuo, incoi	today	oggi	hunc + hodie (Latin)
apoteca	pharmacy	farmacia	Apotheke (Greek)
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	anguilla	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 of Italian tirare via
calìgo	fog	nebbia foschia	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	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	Greek word
gòto, bicer	drinking glass	bicchiere	gut(t)us (Latin for "cruet")
insìa	exit	uscita	in + exita (Latin)
mi	I	io	me (Latin accusative form); Italian derives from Latin nominative form (ego)
morsegàr, smorsegàr	to bite	mordere	morsus (Latin "bitten") made into a verb (cf. Italian morsicare)
mustaci, mostaci	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	almutia (lat.) almussa (Provençal) aumusse (French) "horses eye binders (cap)"
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 German blauen
pomo/pón	apple	mela	pomus (Latin)
schei	money	denaro soldi	from German scheidemünze
saltapaiusk	grasshopper	cavalletta	salta hop paiusk paglia grass
sghiràt schirata skirata	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, sifolàr	to whistle	fischiare	sub + flare (Latin)(cf. French siffler)
tòr su	to pick up	raccogliere	tollere (Latin)
técia, téia, tegia	pan	pentola	tecula (Latin)
tosàto, tosàt, fio	lad, boy	ragazzo	from tosare (Italian, "to cut someone's hair")
puto, putèło, putełeto, putèo, butèl	lad, boy	ragazzo	puer, putus (Latin)
matelot	lad, boy	ragazzo	perhaps from matelot (French, "sailor")
vaca	cow	mucca, vacca	vacca (Latin)
Sc-iop, s-ciòpo, sc-iopar, sc-iopòn	gun	fucile-scoppiare	from lat scloppum onomat
troi	track path	sentiero	fr lat trahere Same engl track

Spelling systems

Traditional system

Venetian does not have an official writing system, but it is traditionally written using the Latin script — sometimes with the addition of a couple of letters and/or diacritics for the sounds that do not exist in Italian or do not occur there in an initial position, such as ç/zh for /θ/ or x for /z/ as in English "zero" and "xylophone".

Medieval Venetian texts featured the letters x, ç and z. These correspond to sounds that do not exist in Italian or have there a different distribution.

• The letter x was often employed in words that also nowadays have a voiced /z/-sound, just as it is in English xylopohone; for instance it appeared in words as raxon, Croxe, caxa.
• The letter z often appeared and appears in words that nowadays have a varying voiced pronunciation ranging from /z/ to /dz/ and /ð/ and even to /d/; thus we still see zo (either /zo/ or /dzo/ or /ðo/ or /do/), zovena (either /'zovena/ or /'dzovena/ or /'ðovena/ or /'dovena/), zero (either /zero/ or /dzero/ or /ðero/ and even /dero/).
• Likewise, ç was often encountered in words that nowadays have a varying voiceless pronunciation ranging from /s/ to /ts/ to /θ/; for instance, it showed up in dolçe (either /'dolse/ or /'doltse'/ or /'dolθe/), dolçeça (either /dol'sesa/ or /dol'tsetsa/ or /dol'θeθa/), sperança (either /spe'ransa/ or /spe'rantsa/ or /spe'ranθa/).

This division of labour between letters, however, was not always consistent. Besides, the pronunciation of some words may have evolved over the years. This may have prevented the rise of a modern orthography based on etymology and older texts.

Over the last centuries, the traditional spelling rules are mostly those of Italian, except that x still represents /z/, as in English "zero", "xylophone". The letter z has been used similarly to Italian, that is to indicate both voiced and also voiceless sounds.

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"). Along similar lines, some books display the cluster zz. 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 /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).

Proposed systems

Recently there have been attempts to standardize and simplify the script by reusing older letters, e.g. by using x for [z] and a single s for [s]; then one would write baxa for [ˈbaza] ("s/he kisses") and basa for [ˈbasa] ("low"). Some authors have continued or resumed the use of ç, but only when the resulting word is not too different from the Italian orthography: in modern Venetian writings, it is then easier to find words as çima and çento, rather than força and sperança, even though all these four words display the same phonological variation in the position marked by the letter ç. 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 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.

Sample texts

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 Perasto, by Venetian Captain Giuseppe Viscovich, 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
arsenàl	arsenal	via Italian; from Arabic dār aṣ-ṣināʿah 'house of work/skills, factory'
artichioco	artichoke	from Arabic al-haršūf
balota	ballot	'ball' used in Venetian elections; cf. English 'to black-ball'
casin	casino	'little house'; adopted in Italianized form
s'ciao	ciao	cognate with Italian schiavo 'slave'; used originally in Venetian to mean 'your servant', 'at your service'
contrabando	contraband
gazeta	gazette	'small Venetian coin'; from the phrase gazeta de la novità 'a pennysworth of news'
g(h)eto	ghetto	hypothesized as from either (bor)ghetto 'little city', or from the Venetian term for 'foundry'
ziro	giro	'circle, turn, spin'; adopted in Italianized form; from the name of the bank Banco del Ziro
gnoco, -chi	gnocchi	'lump, bump, gnocchi'; from Germanic *knokk- 'knuckle, joint'
gondola	gondola	possibly related to dondolare 'to rock'
laguna	lagoon	from Latin lacus 'lake'
lazareto	Lazaretto, lazaret	ultimately from the Biblical Lazarus, who was raised from the dead
Lido	lido
lo(t)to	lotto	from Germanic *lot- 'destiny, fate'
malvasia	malmsey
marzapan	marzipan	from Arabic martabān, the name for the porcelain container in which marzipan was transported, from Mataban in the Bay of Bengal where these were made (this is one of several proposed etymologies for the English word)
negroponte	Negroponte	Greek Island called Eubea or Evia in the Aegean Sea
Montenegro	Montenegro	'black mountain' Country on the Eastern side of the Adriatic Sea
Pantalon	pantaloon	a character in the Commedia dell'arte
pestacio/pistacio	pistachio	ultimately from Middle Persian *pistak
quarantena	quarantine	'forty', referring to the number of days a ship with plague victims must remain isolated
regata	regatta	originally 'fight, contest'
scampo, -i	scampi	from Greek κάμπη 'caterpillar', lit. 'curved (animal)'
zechin	sequin	'Venetian gold ducat'; from Arabic sikkah 'coin, minting die'
Zanni	zany	'Johnny'; a character in the Commedia dell'arte
zero	zero	via French zéro; ultimately from Arabic ṣifr 'zero, nothing'

See also

• Venetian literature
• Papa Nero, a reggae song in Venetian
• Talian
• Chipilo Venetian

References

• Artico, Francesco (1976). Tornén un pas indrìo‪: raccolta di conversazioni in dialetto‬. Brescia: Paideia Editrice.
• Ferguson, Ronnie (2007). A Linguistic History Of Venice. Leo S. Olschki. ISBN 978-88-222-5645-4.
• Gordon, Raymond G., Jr., ed. (2005). "Venetian". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Fifteenth ed.). Dallas, Tex.: SIL International.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
• McKay, Carolyn Joyce. ‪Il dialetto veneto di Segusino e Chipilo: fonologia, grammatica, lessico veneto, spagnolo, italiano, inglese‬.

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 York.
• Raixe Venete — Venetian site in Venetian Language
• Quatro Ciàcoe — Venetian language magazine