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?