Venetian language

File:Targa dialetto veneto.JPG

A sign in Venetian reading "Here Venetian is also spoken"

File:Romance 20c en.png

Distribution of Romance languages in Europe. Venetian is number 15.

Venetian, also known as wider Venetian or Venetan ( or ), is a Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy, mostly in Veneto, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto: in Trentino, Friuli, the Julian March, Istria, and some towns of Slovenia, Dalmatia (Croatia) and Bay of Kotor (Montenegro) by a surviving autochthonous Venetian population, and in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, the United States and the United Kingdom by Venetians in the diaspora.

Although referred to as an "Italian dialect" (Template:Langx; Template:Langx) even by some of its speakers, the label is primarily geographic. Venetian is a separate language from Italian, with many local varieties. Its precise place within the Romance language family remains somewhat controversial. Both Ethnologue and Glottolog group it into the Gallo-Italic branch (and thus, closer to French and Emilian–Romagnol than to Italian). Devoto, Avolio and Ursini reject such classification, and Tagliavini places it in the Italo-Dalmatian branch of Romance.

History

Like all members of the Romance language family, Venetian evolved from Vulgar Latin, and is thus a sister language of Italian and other Romance languages. Venetian is first attested in writing in the 13th century.

The language enjoyed substantial prestige in the days of the Republic of Venice, when it attained the status of a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Sea. Notable Venetian-language authors include the playwrights Ruzante (1502–1542), Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) and Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806). Following the old Italian theatre tradition (), they 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 plays by Goldoni and Gozzi are still performed today all over the world.

Other notable works in Venetian are the translations of the Iliad by Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) and Francesco Boaretti, the translation of the Divine Comedy (1875) by Giuseppe Cappelli and the poems of Biagio Marin (1891–1985). Notable too is a manuscript titled Dialogo de Cecco di Ronchitti da Bruzene in perpuosito de la stella Nuova attributed to Girolamo Spinelli, perhaps with some supervision by Galileo Galilei for scientific details.

Several VenetianTemplate:NdashItalian dictionaries are available in print and online, including those by Boerio, Contarini, Nazari and Piccio.

As a literary language, Venetian was overshadowed by Dante Alighieri's Tuscan dialect (the best known writers of the Renaissance, such as Petrarch, Boccaccio and Machiavelli, were Tuscan and wrote in the Tuscan language) and languages of France like the Occitano-Romance languages and the langues d'oïl including the mixed Franco-Venetian.

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).

Venetian spread to other continents as a result of mass migration from the Veneto region between 1870 and 1905, and between 1945 and 1960. 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.

In the 19th century, large-scale immigration towards Trieste and Muggia extended the presence of the Venetian language eastward. Previously, the dialect of Trieste had been a Rhaeto-Romance dialect known as Tergestino. This dialect became extinct as a result of Venetian migration, which gave rise to the Triestino dialect of Venetian spoken there today.

Internal migrations during the 20th century also saw many Venetian-speakers settle in other regions of Italy, especially in the Pontine Marshes of southern Lazio where they populated new towns such as Latina, Aprilia and Pomezia, forming there the so-called "Venetian-Pontine" community (comunità venetopontine).

Some firms have chosen to use Venetian language in advertising, as a beer did some years agoTemplate:Clarify (, 'only the name is foreign'). In other cases advertisements in Veneto are given a "Venetian flavour" by adding a Venetian word to standard Italian: for instance an airline used the verb ( , "it is always bigger") into an Italian sentence (the correct Venetian being ) to advertise new flights from Marco Polo Airport.

In 2007, Venetian was given recognition by the Regional Council of Veneto with regional law no. 8 of 13 April 2007 "Protection, enhancement and promotion of the linguistic and cultural heritage of Veneto". Though the law does not explicitly grant Venetian any official status, it provides for Venetian as object of protection and enhancement, as an essential component of the cultural, social, historical and civil identity of Veneto.

Geographic distribution

Template:More citations needed section 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 (Mantua), Trentino, Emilia-Romagna (Rimini and Forlì), Sardinia (Arborea, Terralba, Fertilia), Lazio (Pontine Marshes), Tuscany (Grossetan Maremma) and formerly in Romania (Tulcea).

File:Łéngua vèneta nel mondo.svg

Geographical distribution of Venetian language by official status

It is also spoken in North and South America by the descendants of Italian immigrants. Notable examples of this are Argentina and Brazil, particularly the city of São Paulo and the Talian dialect spoken in the Brazilian states of Espírito Santo, São Paulo, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina.

In Mexico, the Chipilo Venetian dialect is spoken in the state of Puebla and the town of Chipilo. The town was settled by immigrants from the Veneto region, and some of their descendants have preserved the language to this day. People from Chipilo have gone on to make satellite colonies in Mexico, especially in the states of Guanajuato, Querétaro, and State of Mexico. Venetian has also survived in the state of Veracruz, where other Italian migrants have settled since the late 19th century. The people of Chipilo preserve their dialect and call it , and it has been preserved as a variant since the 19th century. The variant of Venetian spoken by the () is northern Trevisàn-Feltrìn-Belumàt.

In 2009, the Brazilian city of Serafina Corrêa, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, gave Talian a joint official status alongside Portuguese. Until the middle of the 20th century, Venetian was also spoken on the Greek Island of Corfu, which had long been under the rule of the Republic of Venice. Moreover, Venetian had been adopted by a large proportion of the population of Cephalonia, one of the Ionian Islands, because the island was part of the for almost three centuries.

Classification

File:Romance-lg-classification-en.svg

Chart of Romance languages based on structural and comparative criteria.

Venetian is a Romance language and thus descends from Vulgar Latin. Its classification has always been controversial: According to Tagliavini, for example, it is one of the Italo-Dalmatian languages and most closely related to Istriot on the one hand and Tuscan–Italian on the other. Some authors include it among the Gallo-Italic languages, and according to others, it is not related to either one. Although both Ethnologue and Glottolog group Venetian into the Gallo-Italic languages, the linguists Giacomo Devoto and Francesco Avolio and the Treccani encyclopedia reject the Gallo-Italic classification.

Although the language region is surrounded by Gallo-Italic languages, Venetian does not share some traits with these immediate neighbors. Some scholars stress Venetian's characteristic lack of Gallo-Italic traits () or traits found further afield in Gallo-Romance languages (e.g. French, Franco-Provençal) or the Rhaeto-Romance languages (e.g. Friulian, Romansh). For example, Venetian did not undergo vowel rounding or nasalization, palatalize and , or develop rising diphthongs and , and it preserved final syllables, whereas, as in Italian, Venetian diphthongization occurs in historically open syllables. On the other hand, Venetian does share many other traits with its surrounding Gallo-Italic languages, like interrogative clitics, mandatory unstressed subject pronouns (with some exceptions), the "to be behind to" verbal construction to express the continuous aspect ("El ze drio manjar" = He is eating, lit. he is behind to eat) and the absence of the absolute past tense as well as of geminated consonants.Template:Pages needed In addition, Venetian has some unique traits which are shared by neither Gallo-Italic, nor Italo-Dalmatian languages, such as the use of the impersonal passive forms and the use of the auxiliary verb "to have" for the reflexive voice (both traits shared with German).

Modern Venetian is not a close relative of the extinct Venetic language spoken in Veneto before Roman expansion, although both are Indo-European, and Venetic may have been an Italic language, like Latin, the ancestor of Venetian and most other languages of Italy. The ancient Veneti gave their name to the city and region, which is why the modern language has a similar name, while their language may have also left a few traces in modern Venetian as a substrate.

Regional variants

The main regional varieties and subvarieties of Venetian language:

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

All these variants are mutually intelligible, with a minimum 92% in common among the most diverging ones (Central and Western). Modern speakers reportedly can still understand Venetian texts from the 14th century to some extent.

Other noteworthy variants are:

• the variety spoken in Chioggia
• the variety spoken in the Pontine Marshes
• the variety spoken in Dalmatia
• the Talian dialect of Antônio Prado, Entre Rios, Santa Catarina and Toledo, Paraná, among other southern Brazilian cities
• the Chipilo Venetian dialect (Template:Langx) of Chipilo, Mexico
• the extinct Judeo-Venetian dialect formerly spoken by the Jewish community of Venice

Grammar

File:Calle berlendis, Venice.jpg

A street sign () in Venice using Venetian , as opposed to the Italian

File:Inschrift Venezianerhaus.JPG

(Let them speak), an inscription on the Venetian House in Piran, southwestern Slovenia

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 ) and indefinite (derived from the numeral ).

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 Venetian language:

Venetian	Veneto dialects	Italian	English
			the fat (male) cat
			the fat (female) cat
			the fat (male) cats
			the fat (female) cats

In recent studies on Venetian variants in Veneto, there has been a tendency to write the so-called "evanescent L" as Template:Angle bracket. While it may help novice speakers, Venetian was never written with this letter. In this article, this symbol is used only in Veneto dialects of Venetian language. It will suffice to know that in Venetian language the letter L in word-initial and intervocalic positions usually becomes a "palatal allomorph", and is barely pronounced.

Very few Venetic words seem to have survived in present Venetian, but there may be more 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: ("I have done")
• Venetian Italian:
• Standard Italian:

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. ), on the contrary, are optional. The clitic subject pronoun () 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.

Venetian	Italian	English
		I have
		You have

Venetian	Italian	English
		I am
		You are

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 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:

Venetian	Veneto dialects	Italian	English
	or		Were you dirty?
	or		Was the dog dirty?
			Did you ask yourself?

Auxiliary verbs

Reflexive tenses use the auxiliary verb ("to have"), as in English, the North Germanic languages, Catalan, Spanish, Romanian and Neapolitan; instead of ("to be"), which would be normal in Italian. The past participle is invariable, unlike Italian:

Venetian	Veneto dialects	Italian	English
			You washed yourself
			They woke up

Continuing action

Another peculiarity of the language is the use of the phrase (literally, "to be behind") to indicate continuing action:

Venetian	Veneto dialects	Italian	English
			My father is speaking

Another progressive form in some Venetian dialects uses the construction (Template:Lit):

• Venetian dialect: (Template:Lit).

The use of progressive tenses is more pervasive than in Italian; e.g.

• English: "He wouldn't have been speaking to you".
• Venetian: .

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:

Venetian	Veneto dialects	Italian	English
			I know who you are talking about

As in other Romance languages, the subjunctive mood is widely used in subordinate clauses.

Venetian	Veneto dialects	Italian	English
			I thought he was ...

Phonology

Consonants

Venetian consonant phonemes

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alv. /Palatal	Velar
Nasal		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
	voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Fricative	voiceless	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)	Template:IPA link
	voiced	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)	Template:IPA link
Tap				Template:IPA link
Approximant		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)

Some dialects of Venetian have certain sounds not present in Italian, such as the interdental voiceless fricative Template:IPAblink, often spelled with Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, or Template:Angle bracket, and similar to English th in thing and thought. This sound occurs, for example, in ("supper", also written ), which is pronounced the same as Castilian Spanish (which has the 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 Template:IPAblink 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 Template:IPAblink or Template:IPAblink instead of Template:IPAblink. In those dialects with the pronunciation Template:IPAblink, the sound has fallen together with ordinary Template:Angle bracket, and so it is not uncommon to simply write Template:Angle bracket (or Template:Angle bracket between vowels) instead of Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket (such as ).

Similarly some dialects of Venetian also have a voiced interdental fricative Template:IPAblink, often written Template:Angle bracket (as in 'he cries'); but in most dialects this sound is now pronounced either as Template:IPAblink (Italian voiced-Z), or more typically as Template:IPAblink (Italian voiced-S, written Template:Angle bracket, as in ); in a few dialects the sound appears as Template:IPAblink and may therefore be written instead with the letter Template:Angle bracket, as in .

Some varieties of Venetian also distinguish an ordinary Template:IPAblink vs. a weakened or lenited ("evanescent") Template:Angle bracket, which in some orthographic norms is indicated with the letter Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket; in more conservative dialects, however, Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket are merged as ordinary Template:IPAblink. In those dialects that have both types, the precise phonetic realization of ⟨ł⟩ depends both on its phonological environment and on the dialect of the speaker. In Venice and its mainland as well as in most of central Veneto (excluding the peripheral provinces of Verona, Belluno and some islands of the lagoon) the realization is a non-syllabic Template:Sfn (usually described as nearly like an "e" and so often spelled as Template:Angle bracket), when Template:Angle bracket is adjacent (only) to back vowels (Template:Angle bracket), vs. a null realization when Template:Angle bracket is adjacent to a front vowel (Template:Angle bracket).

In dialects further inland Template:Angle bracket may be realized as a partially vocalised Template:Angle bracket. Thus, for example, 'gondola' may sound like , , or . In dialects having a null realization of intervocalic Template:Angle bracket, although pairs of words such as , "school" and , "broom" are homophonous (both being pronounced ), 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 ("slices"), ("ball") and ("pen") correspond to , , and in Venetian. The masculine singular noun ending, corresponding to -o/-e in Italian, is often unpronounced in Venetian after continuants, particularly in rural varieties: Italian ("full") corresponds to Venetian , Italian to Venetian . The extent to which final vowels are deleted varies by dialect: the central–southern varieties delete vowels only after Template:IPAslink, whereas the northern variety deletes vowels also after dental stops and velars; the eastern and western varieties are in between these two extremes.

The velar nasal Template:IPAblink (the final sound in English "song") occurs frequently in Venetian. A word-final Template:IPAslink is always velarized, which is especially obvious in the pronunciation of many local Venetian surnames that end in Template:Angle bracket, such as Marin and Manin , as well as in common Venetian words such as ( "hand"), ( "fork"). Moreover, Venetian always uses Template:IPAblink in consonant clusters that start with a nasal, whereas Italian only uses Template:IPAblink before velar stops: e.g. "to sing", "winter", "to anoint", "to cope with".

Speakers of Italian generally lack this sound and usually substitute a dental Template:IPAblink for final Venetian Template:IPAblink, changing for example to and to .

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Close-mid	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Open-mid	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)	Template:IPA link
Open		Template:IPA link

An accented á is pronounced as [[[:Template:IPA link]]], (an intervocalic /Template:IPA link/ could be pronounced as a [[[:Template:IPA link]]] sound).

Prosody

Template:More citations needed While written Venetian looks similar to Italian, it sounds very different, with a distinct lilting cadence, almost musical. Compared to Italian, in Venetian syllabic rhythms are more evenly timed, accents are less marked, but on the other hand tonal modulation is much wider and melodic curves are more intricate. Stressed and unstressed syllables sound almost the same; there are no long vowels, and there is no consonant lengthening. Compare the Italian sentence "go there with him" (all long/heavy syllables but final) with Venetian (all short/light syllables).Template:Sfn

File:Venetian text.jpg

Venetian language proverb board outside of a bar in Mestre, Veneto.

Sample etymological lexicon

As a direct descent of regional spoken Latin, 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 ancient Venetic, Greek, Gothic, and German), and has preserved some Latin words not used to the same extent in Italian, resulting in many words that are not cognate with their equivalent words in Italian, such as:

English	Italian	Venetian (DECA)	Venetian word origin
today			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang + Template:Wikt-lang
pharmacy			from Ancient Greek Template:Wikt-lang (apothḗkē)
to drink			from German Template:Wikt-lang "to drink"
apricot			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang
to bore			from Gothic "contest"
peanuts			from Arabic
to be spicy hot			from Italian Template:Wikt-lang, literally "to peck"
spaghetti			from Latin
eel			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang "beast", compare also Italian Template:Wikt-lang, a kind of snake
snake			from Latin "beast", compare also Ital. , a kind of snake
peas			related to the Italian word
lizard			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang, same origin as English Template:Wikt-lang
to throw			local cognate of Italian Template:Wikt-lang
fog			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang
corner/side			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang
find			from Latin *adcaptare
chair			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang and Template:Wikt-lang (borrowings from Greek)
hello, goodbye			from Venetian "slave", from Medieval Latin Template:Wikt-lang
to catch, to take			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang
when (non-interr.)			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang
to kill			from Old Italian Template:Wikt-lang, originally "to behead"
miniskirt			compare English carpet
skirt			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang, "coat, dress"
T-shirt			borrowing from Greek
drinking glass			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang, "cruet"
big	grande	grosi	From German groß(e)
exit			from Latin
I			from Latin "me" (accusative case); Italian is derived from the Latin nominative form
too much			from Greek Template:Wikt-lang (mâza)
to bite			deverbal derivative, from Latin "bitten", compare Italian Template:Wikt-lang
moustaches			from Greek Template:Wikt-lang (moustaki)
cat			perhaps onomatopoeic, from the sound of a cat's meow
big sheaf			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang "cone, pyramid"; cf. Old French Template:Wikt-lang "haystack"
donkey			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang "snout" (compare French Template:Wikt-lang)
bat			derived from "night" (compare Italian )
rat			from Slovene
beat, cheat, sexual intercourse			from French Template:Wikt-lang (compare English Template:Wikt-lang)
fork			from Greek Template:Wikt-lang (piroúni)
dandelion			from French Template:Wikt-lang
truant			from German
apple			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang
to break, to shred			from Gothic ( REDIRECT Template:Wikt-lang Template:Redirect template), related to English to break and German Template:Wikt-lang
money			from German Template:Wikt-lang
grasshopper			from Template:Wikt-lang "hop" + Template:Wikt-lang "grass" (Italian Template:Wikt-lang)
squirrel			Related to Italian word, probably from Greek Template:Wikt-lang (skíouros)
spirit from grapes, brandy			from German Template:Wikt-lang
to shake			from Latin
rail			from German Template:Wikt-lang
tired			from Lombard
line, streak, stroke, strip			from Gothic or German Template:Wikt-lang 'stroke, line'. Example: "to draw a line".
to press			from Gothic or Lombard; cf. German Template:Wikt-lang 'to press', Swedish Template:Wikt-lang. Example: "Strike any key / Press any button".
to whistle			from Latin + , compare French Template:Wikt-lang
to pick up			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang
pan			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang
lad, boy			from Italian , "to cut someone's hair"
lad, boy			from Latin
lad, boy			from French Template:Wikt-lang "sailor"
cow			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang
gun			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang (onomatopoeic)
path(way), trail			from Friulian Template:Wikt-lang, from Gaulish *trogo; cf. Romansh Template:Wikt-lang
to worry			from Latin Template:Wikt-lang

Spelling systems

Modern script (GVIM-DECA)

Since December 2017 the Venetian language adopted a modern writing system, named GVIM (acronym for Grafia del Veneto Internazionale Moderno, i.e. Writing system for Modern International Venetian) thanks to the 2010 2nd Regional ad hoc Commission of the Regione del Veneto. The Academia de ła Bona Creansa – Academy of the Venetian Language,Template:CN an NGO accredited according to the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Venetian language and culture had already worked, tested, applied and certified a full writing system (presented in a scientific publication in linguistics in 2016), known with the DECA acronym (Drio El Costumar de l'Academia, i.e. literally According to the Use of the Academia).

The DECA writing system has been officialized by the Veneto Region under the name Grafia Veneta Internazionale Moderna, by unanimous vote of the Commissione Grafia e Toponomastica(i.e. Script and Topononymy Committee of the Venetian language on December 14, 2017, and available at portal of the Venetian Regional Council dedicated to the Venetian language. The same writing system was then employed for the first grammar of the Venetian language to be published by a university, in Brasil, in 2018

The DECA, then GVIM, had already been used in a trilingual document approved by the Veneto Regional Council (Aprile 2016) in Italian, Venetian, and English.

Traditional system

Venetian currently has an official writing system. Traditionally it is written using the Latin script — sometimes with certain additional letters or diacritics. The basis for some of these conventions can be traced to Old Venetian, while others are modern innovations.

Medieval texts, written in Old Venetian, include the letters Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket to represent sounds that do not exist or have a different distribution in Italian. Specifically:

• The letter Template:Angle bracket was often employed in words that nowadays have a voiced Template:IPAslink-sound (compare English xylophone); for instance Template:Angle bracket appears in words such as , , ("reason", "(holy) Cross" and "house"). The precise phonetic value of Template:Angle bracket in Old Venetian texts remains unknown, however.
• The letter Template:Angle bracket often appeared in words that nowadays have a varying voiced pronunciation ranging from Template:IPAslink to Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink or even to Template:IPAslink; even in contemporary spelling "down" may represent any of or even , depending on the dialect; similarly "young woman" could be any of , or , and "zero" could be , or .
• Likewise, Template:Angle bracket was written for a voiceless sound which now varies, depending on the dialect spoken, from Template:IPAslink to Template:IPAslink to Template:IPAslink, as in for example "sweet", now , "sweetness", now , or "hope", now .

The usage of letters in medieval and early modern texts was not, however, entirely consistent. In particular, as in other northern Italian languages, the letters Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket were often used interchangeably for both voiced and voiceless sounds. Differences between earlier and modern pronunciation, divergences in pronunciation within the modern Venetian-speaking region, differing attitudes about how closely to model spelling on Italian norms, as well as personal preferences, some of which reflect sub-regional identities, have all hindered the adoption of a single unified spelling system.

Nevertheless, in practice, most spelling conventions are the same as in Italian. In some early modern texts letter Template:Angle bracket becomes limited to word-initial position, as in ("is"), where its use was unavoidable because Italian spelling cannot represent Template:IPAslink there. In between vowels, the distinction between Template:IPAslink and Template:IPAslink was ordinarily indicated by doubled Template:Angle bracket for the former and single Template:Angle bracket for the latter. For example, was used to represent ("he/she kisses"), whereas represented ("low"). (Before consonants there is no contrast between Template:IPAslink and Template:IPAslink, as in Italian, so a single Template:Angle bracket is always used in this circumstance, it being understood that the Template:Angle bracket will agree in voicing with the following consonant. For example, Template:Angle bracket represents only , but Template:Angle bracket represents .)

Traditionally the letter Template:Angle bracket was ambiguous, having the same values as in Italian (both voiced and voiceless affricates Template:IPAslink and Template:IPAslink). Nevertheless, in some books the two pronunciations are sometimes distinguished (in between vowels at least) by using doubled Template:Angle bracket to indicate Template:IPAslink (or in some dialects Template:IPAslink) but a single Template:Angle bracket for Template:IPAslink (or Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink).

In more recent practice the use of Template:Angle bracket to represent Template:IPAslink, both in word-initial as well as in intervocalic contexts, has become increasingly common, but no entirely uniform convention has emerged for the representation of the voiced vs. voiceless affricates (or interdental fricatives), although a return to using Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket remains an option under consideration.

Regarding the spelling of the vowel sounds, because in Venetian, as in Italian, there is no contrast between tense and lax vowels in unstressed syllables, the orthographic grave and acute accents can be used to mark both stress and vowel quality at the same time: à Template:IPAslink, á Template:IPAslink, è Template:IPAslink, é Template:IPAslink, í Template:IPAslink, ò Template:IPAslink, ó Template:IPAslink, ú Template:IPAslink. Different orthographic norms prescribe slightly different rules for when stressed vowels must be written with accents or may be left unmarked, and no single system has been accepted by all speakers.

Venetian allows the consonant cluster (not present in Italian), which is sometimes written Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket before i or e, and Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket before other vowels. Examples include (Italian , "to clear up"), (, "plain clear"), (, "gun") and (, "[your] servant", , "hello", "goodbye"). The hyphen or apostrophe is used because the combination Template:Angle bracket is conventionally used for the Template:IPAslink sound, as in Italian spelling; e.g. (, "stupid"); whereas Template:Angle bracket before a, o and u represents : (, "box"), (, "to hide"), (, "to forgive").

Proposed systems

Recently there have been attempts to standardize and simplify the script by reusing older letters, e.g. by using Template:Angle bracket for Template:IPAblink and a single Template:Angle bracket for Template:IPAblink; then one would write for ("[third person singular] kisses") and for ("low"). Some authors have continued or resumed the use of Template:Angle bracket, 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 and , rather than and , even though all these four words display the same phonological variation in the position marked by the letter Template:Angle bracket. Another recent convention is to use Template:Angle bracket (in place of older Template:Angle bracket ) 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.

More recently, on December 14, 2017, the Modern International Manual of Venetian Spelling was approved by the new Commission for Spelling of 2010. It was translated into three languages (Italian, Venetian and English) and it exemplifies and explains every single letter and every sound of the Venetian language. The graphic accentuation and punctuation systems are added as corollaries. Overall, the system was greatly simplified from previous ones to allow both Italian and foreign speakers to learn and understand the Venetian spelling and alphabet in a more straightforward way.

The Venetian speakers of Chipilo use a system based on Spanish orthography, even though it does not contain letters for Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink. 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.

Orthographies comparison

[IPA]		Official (GVIM-DECA)	classic	Brunelli	Chipilo	Talian	Latin origin	Examples
		à	à	à	á	à	ă , ā
		b	b	b	b, v	b	b- , bb	barba (beard, uncle) from barba
	+ a \ o \ u	c	c	c	c	c	c- , cc , tc , xc	poch (little) from paucus
	+ i \ e \ y \ ø	ch	ch	ch	qu	ch	ch , qu	chiete (quiet) from quiētem
	(between vowels)	c(h)	cc(h)	c(h)	c / qu	c(h)	cc , ch , qu	tacüin (notebook) from taccuinum
/kw/		cu	qu		cu		qu /kw/	quatro (four) from quattuor
	+ a \ o \ u	ts~th~s	ç, (z)	ç	-~zh~-	–	ti , th
	+ i \ e \ y \ ø		c, (z)				c- , cc , ti , th , tc , xc
	(between vowels)		zz				ti , th
	(before a vowel)	s	s	s	s	s	s- , ss , sc , ps , x	supiar (to whistle) from sub-flare
	(between vowels)		ss			ss		casa (cash des) from capsa
	(before unvoiced consonant)		s			s
	+ a \ o \ u	ci	chi	ci	ch	ci	cl- , ccl	sciào (slave) from sclavus
	+ i \ e \ y \ ø	c		c		c		cieza (church) from ecclēsia
	(between vowels)	c(i)	cchi	c(i)		c(i)
	(ending of word)	c'	cch'	c'	ch	c'		moc' (snot) from *mucceus
		d	d	d	–	d	d , -t- , (g , di , z )	cadena (chain) from catēna
		è	è	è	è	è	ĕ , ae
		é	é	é	é	é	ē , ĭ , oe	pévare (pepper) from piper
	–	f	f	f	f	f	f- , ff , ph-	finco (finch) from fringilla
	(between vowels)		ff				ff , pph
	+ a \ o \ u	g	g	g	g	g	g , -c- , ch	ruga (bean weevil) from brūchus
	+ i \ e \ y \ ø	gh	gh	gh	gu	gh	gu , ch
	+ a \ o \ u	dz~dh~z	z	z	-~d~-	–	z , di	zorno from diurnus
	+ i \ e \ y \ ø						z , g , di	gengiva (gum) from gingiva
	(before a vowel)	z	x	x	z	z	?, (z /dz/, g /ɉ/, di /dj/)	el xe (he is) from ipse est
	(between vowels)		s			s	-c- (before e/i), -s- , x	paxe (peace) from pāx, pācis
	(before voiced consonant)			s	s	s	s- , x	sgorlar (to shake) from ex-crollare
	+ a \ o \ u	gi	ghi	gi	gi	j	gl , -cl-	giatso (ice) from glaciēs
	+ i \ e \ y \ ø	g		g	g	gi		giiro (dormouse) from glīris
		j~g(i)	g(i)	j	–	j	i , li	ajo / agio (garlic) from ālium
		j, i	j, i	i	y, i	i	i
		í	í	í	í	í	ī , ȳ	fio (son) from fīlius
–		h	h	h	h	h	h	màchina (machine) from māchina
		l	l	l	l	l	l
Template:Sfn		ł	l	ł	–	–	l
		li~j~g(i)	li	lj	ly	li	li ,	Talia / Taja / Talgia (Italy) from Itālia
	(before vowels)	m	m	m	m	m	m
	(before vowels)	n	n	n	n	n	n
	(at the end of the syllable)	n' / 'n	–	n'	n'	n'	n	don' (we go) from *andamo
	(at the end of the syllable)	n / n-	m, n	n	n	n	m , n , g	don (we went) from andavamo
		ni~ng(i)	ni	n-j	ny	n-j	ni
		nj	gn	gn	ñ	gn	gn , ni	cugnà (brother-in-law) from cognātus
		ò	ò	ò	ò	ò	ŏ
		ó	ó	ó	ó	ó	ō , ŭ
	–	p	p	p	p	p	p- , pp
	(between vowels)		pp
		r	r	r	r	r	r
		ri~rg(i)	(ri)	rj	ry	rj
	–	t	t	t	t	t	t- , tt , ct , pt	sète (seven) from septem
	(between vowels)		tt
		ú	ú	ú	ú	ú	ū
	(after , or before o)	u	u	u	u	u	u
		v	v	v	v	v	u , -b- , -f- , -p-
	(dialectal)	â / á	–	–	–	–	ē , an	stâla (star) from stēlla
		(ø)	(oe)	(o)	–	–	o	chør (heart) from Latin cor
		(y / ý)	(ue)	(u)	–	–	ū	schyro (dark) from obscūrus
		h / fh	–	–	–	–	f	hèr (iron) from ferrus
		lj	–	–	–	–	li	batalja (battle) from battālia
		sj	–	(sh)	–	–	s
		zj	–	(xh)	–	–	g	xjal (rooster) from gallus

Sample texts

File:Fiera Santa Lucia.jpg

Venetian sign in ticket office, Santa Lucia di Piave

Ruzante returning from war

The following sample, in the old dialect of Padua, comes from a play by Ruzante (Angelo Beolco), titled ("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:

The following sample is taken from the Perasto Speech (), 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").

Francesco Artico

The following is a contemporary text by Francesco Artico. The elderly narrator is recalling the church choir singers of his youth. (see the full original text with audio):

Miscellaneous

Due to the diacritic letter Ł being present in few languages besides Polish and Venetian, the latter of which does not have any official recognition by software producers like Microsoft and Apple, the Polish magazine KomputerSwiat noted that the Venice region has the highest usage of Polish keyboard settings outside of Poland on iPhones and Windows, although the same article found in an unrepresentative sample that when needing the letter without the keyboard, some Venetians google the Polish złoty or the exchange rate in order to copy-paste the letter.

Venetian lexical exports to English

Many words were exported to English, either directly or via Italian or French.Template:Sfn The list below shows some examples of imported words, with the date of first appearance in English according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Venetian (DECA)	English	Year	Origin, notes
	arsenal	1506	Arabic Template:Transliteration "house of manufacture, factory"
	artichoke	1531	Arabic Template:Transliteration; previously entered Castillian as and then French as
	ballot	1549	ball used in Venetian elections; cf. English to "black-ball"
	casino	1789	"little house"; adopted in Italianized form
	contraband	1529	illegal traffic of goods
	gazette	1605	a small Venetian coin; from the price of early newssheets "a penny worth of news"
	ghetto	1611	from Gheto, the area of Cannaregio in Venice that became the first district confined to Jews; named after the foundry or once sited there
	gnocchi	1891	lumps, bumps, gnocchi; from Germanic knokk- 'knuckle, joint'
	gondola	1549	from Medieval Greek Template:Wikt-lang
	lagoon	1612	Latin "lake"
	lazaret	1611	through French; a quarantine station for maritime travellers, ultimately from the Biblical Lazarus of Bethany, who was raised from the dead; the first one was on the island of Lazareto Vechio in Venice
	lido	1930	Latin "shore"; the name of one of the three islands enclosing the Venetian lagoon, now a beach resort
	lotto	1778	Germanic lot- "destiny, fate"
	malmsey	1475	ultimately from the name Monemvasia, a small Greek island off the Peloponnese once owned by the Venetian Republic and a source of strong, sweet white wine from Greece and the eastern Mediterranean
	marzipan	1891	from the name for the porcelain container in which marzipan was transported, from Arabic Template:Transliteration, or from Mataban in the Bay of Bengal where these were made (these are some of several proposed etymologies for the English word)
	Montenegro		"black mountain"; country on the Eastern side of the Adriatic Sea
	Negroponte		"black bridge"; Greek island called Euboea or Evvia in the Aegean Sea
	pantaloon	1590	a character in the Commedia dell'arte
	pistachio	1533	ultimately from Middle Persian
	quarantine	1609	forty day isolation period for a ship with infectious diseases like plague
	regatta	1652	originally "fight, contest"
	scampi	1930	Greek Template:Wikt-lang "caterpillar", lit. "curved (animal)"
	ciao	1929	cognate with Italian "slave"; used originally in Venetian to mean "your servant", "at your service"; original word pronounced "s-ciao"
	zany	1588	"Johnny"; a character in the Commedia dell'arte
	sequin	1671	Venetian gold ducat; from Arabic Template:Transliteration "coin, minting die"
	giro	1896	"circle, turn, spin"; adopted in Italianized form; from the name of the bank or at Rialto

See also

• Venetian literature
• Venetic language
• Talian dialect
• Chipilo Venetian dialect
• — Venetian language magazine

Further reading

• Template:Cite JIPA

External links

• General grammar; comparison to other Romance languages; description of the Venetian dialect Template:Webarchive
• —samples of written and spoken Venetian by Francesco Artico
• Text and audio of some works by Ruzante