Romanesco
Encyclopedia
Regional language
A regional language is a language spoken in an area of a nation state, whether it be a small area, a federal state or province, or some wider area....
or sociolect
Sociolect
In sociolinguistics, a sociolect or social dialect is a variety of language associated with a social group such as a socioeconomic class, an ethnic group, an age group, etc....
subsumed within the Italian language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
spoken in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. It is part of the Central Italian dialects
Central Italian
Central Italian is a group of Italo-Dalmatian Romance dialects spoken in Lazio, Umbria, central Marche, the far south of Tuscany and a small part of Abruzzo, in central Italy....
and is thus genetically closer to the Tuscan dialect
Tuscan dialect
The Tuscan language , or the Tuscan dialect is an Italo-Dalmatian language spoken in Tuscany, Italy.Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine variety...
and Standard Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
.
There exist a few notable grammatical and idiomatic differences from Standard Italian. Rich in expressions and sayings, Romanesco is used for informal communication by most natives of Rome, often in a mix with Italian.
History
As shown by several medieval manuscripts, the medieval Roman dialect was more similar to southern dialect, such as those spoken in NaplesNaples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
. In the 16th century, it received a strong influence of the Tuscan dialect
Tuscan dialect
The Tuscan language , or the Tuscan dialect is an Italo-Dalmatian language spoken in Tuscany, Italy.Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine variety...
(from which modern Italian derives) after the immigration of people from that region in the wake of the Sack of Rome (1527)
Sack of Rome (1527)
The Sack of Rome on 6 May 1527 was a military event carried out by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, then part of the Papal States...
. Therefore current Romanesco has grammar and roots rather different from other dialects in the Latium
Latium
Lazio is one of the 20 administrative regions of Italy, situated in the central peninsular section of the country. With about 5.7 million residents and a GDP of more than 170 billion euros, Lazio is the third most populated and the second richest region of Italy...
region; further, usually Romanesco is fully understandable for other Italian speakers.
Romanesco also influenced the dialect of the area of modern Latina, which was reclaimed in the early 1920 and mostly populated by immigrants from northern Italy: it became the local dialect as it was spoken by the small but influential clerical bourgeoisie coming from Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
.
Diffusion
Before RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
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 almost disappeared and they have been replaced with a kind of Romanesco, which therefore is now spoken in an area larger than the original one, as well as slightly pervading the everyday language of most of the immigrants that live in the city.
Pronunciation
Romanesco pronunciation is very similar to Standard Italian. In this dialect the letter "J" is still used and is pronounced as an "I". This letter appears between two vowels or at the beginning of a word followed by a vowel. It substitutes the Italian "gl-" sound [ʎ]. Examples: between two vowels figlio [ˈfiʎːo]) is fijo [ˈfijo], meaning "son".The letter "C" followed by -e or -i makes a sound between [tʃ] and [ʃ].
For example, cielo is the same word in both Romanesco and Standard Italian, but in the first case it would be pronounced [ˈʃɛlo] instead of [ˈtʃɛlo].
Geminate [r] ("rolled r" or alveolar trill) does not exist. In Romanesco words like birra (Italian for "beer") or terra ("ground") respectively become bira and tera. This phenomenon has developed recently, as it was not present in the 19th century Romanesco.
Noteworthy figures
Today, Romanesco is generally considered more of a regional idiom than a true language or dialect. Classical Romanesco, that reached the high literature with Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, has disappeared.Romanesco Proper, spoken in the city of Rome and the immediate surrounding areas, is somewhat different from the rest of the Romanesco dialects.
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
Examples
- aò, anvedi chi stà a 'rivà! (Italian: ehi, guarda chi sta arrivando!) English: hey, look who's arriving!
- stò a 'nnà ar cinema co' l'amichi mia (Italian: sto andando al cinema con i miei amici) English: I'm going to the cinema with my friends
- ieri me sò ppijato 'na bira ar bare (Italian: ieri ho preso una birra al bar) English: yesterday I had a beer at the bar
- ma nô sapevi che tu' fija n'è 'nnata a scola? (Italian: ma non lo sapevi che tua figlia non è andata a scuola?) English: didn't you know that your daughter hasn't gone to school?
Romanesco was the language of the satirical Pasquinade
Pasquinade
Pasquino or Pasquin is the name used by Romans to describe a battered Hellenistic-style statue dating to the 3rd century BC, which was unearthed in the Parione district of Rome in the 15th century...
s on the talking statues of Rome
Talking statues of Rome
The talking statues of Rome provided an outlet for a form of anonymous political expression in Rome. Criticisms in the form of poems or witticisms were posted on well-known statues in Rome...
.
Famous Romanesco people
- Ettore Petrolini (actor)
- Aldo FabriziAldo FabriziAldo Fabrizi was an Italian actor and cinema and theatre director.-Actor Filmography:* Avanti, c'è posto... by Mario Bonnard...
(actor and director) - Alberto SordiAlberto SordiAlberto Sordi, also known as Albertone, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian actor. He was also a film director and the dubbing voice of Oliver Hardy in the Italian version of the Laurel & Hardy films....
(actor) - Nino ManfrediNino ManfrediNino Manfredi was an Italian actor, one of the most prominent in the commedia all'italiana genre....
(actor) - Anna MagnaniAnna MagnaniAnna Magnani was an Italian stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo....
(actress) - Tomas MilianTomas MilianTomás Milián is a Cuban-American actor best known for having worked extensively in Italian films from the late 1950s to the 1980s.-Career in Italy:...
(actor) - Elena Fabrizi (actress, cook, better known as Sora Lella)
- Gigi ProiettiGigi ProiettiLuigi "Gigi" Proietti is an Italian actor, director, dubber and singer.-Early life:He was born in Rome to Romano Proietti, a man from Umbria, and Giovanna Ceci, a housewife. During his youth he was keen on singing and on playing guitar, piano, accordion and double bass in several roman night clubs...
(actor, director and comedian) - Enrico MontesanoEnrico MontesanoEnrico Montesano, born in Rome, Italy on 7 June 1945, is a popular actor for theater and cinema in Italy, as well as a showman. He starred in the 1977 film Pane, burro e marmellata and the 1978 film Le braghe del padrone, both times alongside Adolfo Celi.-Career:Montesano comes from a family...
(actor and comedian) - Carlo VerdoneCarlo VerdoneCarlo Verdone is an Italian actor, screenwriter and film director.-Early life:Carlo Verdone was born in Rome to Mario Verdone, an important Italian film critic, and during his youth he earned a degree in Modern Literature at Sapienza University of Rome and a degree in Film Direction at the Centro...
(actor and director) - Sabrina FerilliSabrina FerilliSabrina Ferilli is an Italian theater and movie actress.- Selected filmography :* Natale a Beverly Hills * Tutta la vita davanti * Natale A New York * Dalida...
(actress) - Francesco TottiFrancesco TottiFrancesco Totti, Ufficiale OMRI, is an Italian footballer who is the captain of Serie A club Roma. His primary position is that of a trequartista, though he has also been successfully utilized as a lone striker. Totti has spent his entire career at Roma, is the number-one goalscorer and the most...
(footballer) - TrilussaTrilussaCarlo Alberto Salustri was an Italian dialect poet, better known by his pen name of Trilussa . He is best known for the poems, some of them sonnets, written in the dialect of Rome.-Biography:...
(poet, Carlo Alberto Salustri pen name) - Giuseppe Gioacchino BelliGiuseppe Gioacchino BelliGiuseppe Francesco Antonio Maria Gioachino Raimondo Belli was an Italian poet, famous for his sonnets in Romanesco, the dialect of Rome.- Biography :...
(poet) - Pier Paolo PasoliniPier Paolo PasoliniPier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
(writer, poet, filmmaker) - Cesare PascarellaCesare PascarellaCesare Pascarella , was an Italian dialect poet and a painter. He was appointed to the Royal Academy of Italy in 1930....
(poet)
External links
- A description of the Roman dialect Lucio Felici, Le vicende del dialetto romanesco, in "Capitolium", 1972 (XLVII), n° 4, pp. 26–33 (it is a summary of the history of Romanesco from the origin to nowadays).