A quick google on the subject turned up works only in Italian, so I thought I would ask here. The dialect native to the Republic of San Marino has many words that are very different to standard Italian. What fascinates me about it, though, is the fact that many of these words feel more French than Italian. Instead of "tasca" for "pocket", sammarinese uses "sacocha", not unlike the French "sacoche", "satchel." Instead of "naso" (nah-so) the sammarinese is nay-z(phoneticised spelling). "Orologio" (watch) becomes arlog (French orlogie). These are only a few, but an English friend in the area mentioned that he finds the dialect easier to understand than Italian, because of its similarities to French. My question is, how did a small, geographically isolated community hundreds of kilometres from France end up speaking a heavily frenchified sort of Italian?
a heavily frenchified sort of Italian?
Where's that Romance Language Family Tree?
Possibly because, over the centuries, parts of Italy have been heavily Frenchified for extended periods of time ...
Here's a possible clue; the bolding is mine:
About half of San Marino citizens are residents abroad, mainly in Italy, the United States, and France. This is from:
http://www.1upinfo.com/encyclopedia/S/SanMarin-people-economy-and-government.htmlThe site says a community there was formed by the mid-5th. century--rather before anything that relates very closely to modern-day French, is it not? There is no mention of ever having been ruled by France, so I kind of doubt that what you heard is a legacy. I dunno--I'm just stringing together a couple of facts with some rather tenuous logic. Um--I was ...surprised isn't quite strong enough...bemused, maybe--to read that they have a political party called the Christian Democrats. This is a mind-boggling oxymoron, to me.
(And, NO, I am not inviting discussion on that last, here, any more than I was in the other thread; simply posting some thoughts that are new to me. If anyone is offended, let me know and I'll be happy to delete.)
I do not believe that San Marino was ever occupied by the French.
>I do not believe that San Marino was ever occupied by the French.
A guidebook published in the Republic agrees, saying:
San Marino knew its golden hour when Napoleon Bonaparte came to Italy and passed near the tiny Republic. Impressed by the pride of its people and by their freedom-loving tradition, he declared: "We must preserve San Marino as an example of liberty. He sent Monge, his ambassador and a famous mathematician to Mount Titano, giving him the task to express his friendship to its inhabitants. . . . Napoloeon never changed his mind and in 1805, he received with full honours Antonio Onofri, a Sammarinese messenger who was in Milan to reach a useful amendment of the Commercial Treaty already in force between the Cisalpine Republic and the San Marino Republic.
You will note that I didn't actually say that San Marino was occupied by the French. I didn't state that Napoleon invaded Italy, never mind San Marino. I just said that the French had come visiting for extended periods of time. One of the most traumatic of those visits for the Italians was during the Renaissance ... not sure whether San Marino was invaded then, or ever, for that matter.
>You will note that I didn't actually say that San Marino was occupied by the French.
Indeed, I did note that. My post was exclusively in affirmation of the padre's, with no rebuttal of any other post intended.
Having a few spare minutes, I decided to actually visit some of the sites on my page of links. The Easton site had some great links to pages on Italian dialects, among which I found this:
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There are two major groups of Italian dialects, excepting the Sardinian group which is considered another language entirely. These two groups are separated by the Spezia-Rimini line, named for the two cities near which it passes; the line runs east-west across the peninsula, for the most part following the border between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, then cutting into the Marches. Above the divide lie the Northern (Settentrionale) dialects; below it the Central-Southern (Centro-Meridionale) dialects.
The Septentrional or Northern dialects in turn are divided into two main groups: the largest of these geographically is the Gallo-Italic group, encompassing the regions of Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy, and Emilia-Romagna, as well as parts of Trentino-Alto Adige. It is named for the Gauls which once inhabited this part of Italy, and who, it seems, left traces of their Celtic speech in the modern dialects. Next largest is the Venetic group, whose borders loosely follow the region of Veneto. (ea)
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This fits nicely with what I heard, and with what a friend who lives locally told me of his mother's dialect. She comes from a small village near Rimini, and one example of the dialect is the word for "Madonna", which is "Madosca". The error I made was in assuming that Sammarinese was a distinct dialect, when it was always much more likely to be very closely related to the dialect of the region of Italy surrounding it.
some family trees
They look good, but go out for a short beer whilst waiting for them to load.
>a short beer
Or a long coffee. They are worth the wait, though, thanks, dodyskin.
(if your puters can handle it) this is one of my favourite web pages on language. It has no theories or anything, it is just a list of the numbers one to ten in about 4000 languages. You can really see which languages belong together.
http://www.zompist.com/numbers.htm
wow. that is beyond words.
Great link! An overwhelming amount of information there. I am curious about some of the lists, though. For example, they list Moriori, a language that was almost certainly never written, and that has been dead for two hundred years or more, so how do they know?
Moriori, a language that was almost certainly never written, and that has been dead for two hundred years or more, so how do they know?sources listed here
http://www.zompist.com/sources.htm
Thanks, dodyskin. It turns out the person who contributed that particualr language is one of the main contributors to the list overall. Also the list for Moriori may not be very accurate anyway, according to other pages I have Googled. In short, it looks like the answer to my question, "how do they know?", is the one I would have expected: they don't.
The source given is not traceable and is therefore probably not particularly valid. I'm with Max-baby. No one knows how the Moriori counted from one to ten. Or if they
did count from one to ten at all. Or did anything else for that matter, either linguistically or culturally. They've been effectively extinct since about 1750. Or so. The Maori needed the protein. Worse, they coveted the land.
Say, Max, now there's a perfect solution to the ongoing saga of the Waitangi Tribunal!
there's a perfect solution to the ongoing saga of the Waitangi Tribunal!
Guess who's coming to dinner?!
>now there's a perfect solution to the ongoing saga of the Waitangi Tribunal
Ah, but I'm now sold on the whole Maaori rights issue. After months of inactivity from Housing NZ, major repair work on our home is on the way, following contact with my wife's electorate MP, and fellow East Coaster, Parekura Horomia. It ain't what you know, it's who's your whanau.
Yeah, but I was thinking more which of your whanau should also be your kai tangata ...
I'm bringing this back up because of a fascinating link on Uncle jazzbeau's page -
http://www.dialettando.com/dizionario - a dictionary of Italian dialects. Perusing the word list for the dialect of Emilia Romagna, the region of Italy surroudning San Marino, I found many more examples of this French influence, some that were strikingly obvious, such as "pomm-da-téra" for "patata". Below are are a few more Romagnola words that caught my eye for their similarities to various languages, including, in the case of the first two, English.
bütér : burro
dé : giorno
muiér : moglie
narans: arancia
The dialects of northern Italy, especially Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombardian, Emilian, and Venetian belong to a group of Italian dialects called Gallo-Italian, and share features with French (especially Provencal) as well as other Italian dialects. (My grandmother spoke Genoese, one of the Ligurian dialects. Its inventory of vowels is closer to French than to standard Italian, including front and mid rounded vowels.) Standard Italian (developed in the main from Tuscan) is outside of this northern group of dialects.
I know that one ought not make too much of isolated examples, but I wonder, zio, if you know how emilian ended up with "dé" for "day" and "buter" for "butter"? There are one or two words I could add to that list of emilian words. A friend from Rimini says that his mother always says "madosca" for "madonna", and sammarinese uses "arlog" (sp?) for "orologio".
how emilian ended up with "dé" for "day"
Well, the Latin word for day is dies. And Italian does have dì from this word. But it's not the regular word for day, which is giorno from Latin diurnum. The thing to remember about dialects is that they are just as old as standard languages. In this case that means that emiliano has been around as long as tuscano, but just that it lost out in the political contest that that establishes standard languages.
"buter" for "butter"?
Well, Italian burro, like emiliano büter and buter are both from Greek boutyron 'butter', the two words just developed differently. Italian also has butirro which is a more learned word.
The famous French linguist Gillieron said that "each word has its own hisotry."
A friend from Rimini says that his mother always says "madosca" for "madonna"
This seems strange, but I wouldn't say it's impossible.
sammarinese uses "arlog" (sp?) for "orologio".
That doesn't seem too different. Remember, as Max Weinreich once said: "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."