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.