Romanesco or
Romanesque is a dialect of
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
spoken in
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
. It is one of the
Central Italian dialectsCentral Italian is a group of Italo-Western Romance dialects spoken in Lazio, Umbria, central Marche, the far south of Tuscany and a small part of Abruzzo, in central Italy....
, but considered closer to
TuscanThe Tuscan dialect or the Tuscan language is an Italian dialect spoken in Tuscany, Italy. In many respects it wandered less than other Romance dialects from the Latin language and evolved linearly and homogeneously, without major influences from other foreign languages.Italian is in practice a...
and
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
.
There exist a few notable grammatical and idiomatic differences. Rich in expressions and sayings, Romanesco is used informally by most natives of Rome, in a mix with Italian.
As shown by several medieval manuscripts, the medieval Roman dialect was more similar to southern dialect, such as those spoken in
NaplesNaples in Italy, is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture, architecture, music and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old...
.
Romanesco or
Romanesque is a dialect of
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
spoken in
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
. It is one of the
Central Italian dialectsCentral Italian is a group of Italo-Western Romance dialects spoken in Lazio, Umbria, central Marche, the far south of Tuscany and a small part of Abruzzo, in central Italy....
, but considered closer to
TuscanThe Tuscan dialect or the Tuscan language is an Italian dialect spoken in Tuscany, Italy. In many respects it wandered less than other Romance dialects from the Latin language and evolved linearly and homogeneously, without major influences from other foreign languages.Italian is in practice a...
and
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
.
There exist a few notable grammatical and idiomatic differences. Rich in expressions and sayings, Romanesco is used informally by most natives of Rome, 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 in Italy, is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture, architecture, music and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old...
. In the 16th century, it received a strong influence of the
Tuscan dialectThe Tuscan dialect or the Tuscan language is an Italian dialect spoken in Tuscany, Italy. In many respects it wandered less than other Romance dialects from the Latin language and evolved linearly and homogeneously, without major influences from other foreign languages.Italian is in practice a...
(from which modern Italian derives) after the immigration of people from that region in the wake of the
Sack of Rome (1527)The Sack of Rome on 5 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
LatiumLazio , is a region of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche to the north, Abruzzo to the east, Campania to the south, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west.- Geography :...
region; further, usually Romanesco is fully understandable for other Italian speakers.
Romanesco also influenced the dialect of the area of modern
LatinaLatina is the capital of the province of Latina in the Lazio region, in central Italy. The city has about 115.426 inhabitants and is thus the second largest city of the region...
, 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 clerk bourgesy coming from
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
.
Diffusion
Before
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
became the capital city of Italy, Romanesco was spoken only inside the walls of the city, while the little towns surrounding the
Eternal City 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.
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 (
ly). Examples: between two vowels
figlio (fee-ly-oh) is
fijo (fee-yoh), meaning "son".
The letter "C" followed by
-e or
-i makes a sound between
ch and
sh.
For example,
cielo is the same word in both Romanesco and Standard Italian, but in the first case it will be pronounced "ʃɛ-lo" instead of "ʈʃɛ-lo".
Double "R" does not exist. In Romanesco words like
birra (Italian for "beer") or
terra ("ground") respectively become
bira and
tera. This phenomen 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 greater literature by Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, is 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 one of the Romans
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: guarda chi sta arrivando!) english: 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
- jeri 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 su' fija n' è 'nnata a scola? (italian: ma non lo sapevi che sua figlia non è andata a scuola?) english: didn't you know that her daughter hasn't gone to school?
Romanesco was the language of the satirical
PasquinadePasquinade refers to an anonymous lampoon, whether in verse or in prose. Pasquin was the name ordinary Romans gave to a battered ancient statue dug up in the course of paving the Parione district and erected at the corner of Piazza di Pasquino and Palazzo Braschi, on the...
s on the
talking statues of RomeThe 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. It was begun in the 16th century and continues to the present day...
.
Famous Romanesco People
- Aldo Fabrizi
Aldo Fabrizi was an Italian actor and cinema and theatre director.-Actor Filmography:* Avanti, c'è posto... by Mario Bonnard...
(actor and director)
- Alberto Sordi
Alberto Sordi, also known as Albertone, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian actor, likely the most popular of the 20th Century...
(actor)
- Nino Manfredi
Nino Manfredi was an Italian actor, one of the most prominent in the commedia all'italiana genre....
(actor)
- Anna Magnani
Anna Magnani was an Italian stage and film actress. Magnani won the Oscar for her lusty portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo.-Biography:...
(actress)
- Elena Fabrizi (actress, better known as Sora Lella)
- Gigi Proietti
Gigi Proietti is an Italian actor, director, dubber and singer. He was born in Rome....
(actor, director and comedian)
- Enrico Montesano
Enrico 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....
(actor and comedian)
- Carlo Verdone
Carlo Verdone is an Italian actor, screenwriter and film director. He was born in Rome.-Director:* Un sacco bello * Bianco, rosso e Verdone * Borotalco * Acqua e sapone ...
(actor and director)
- Sabrina Ferilli
Sabrina Ferilli is an Italian theater and movie actress.- Biography :Ferilli's father was the speaker of the Lazio regional council of the Italian Communist Party...
(actress)
- Francesco Totti
Francesco Totti,
Cavaliere Ufficiale OMRI, is an Italian World Cup-winning footballer who is the current captain of Italian Serie A club Roma. His position is that of a striker or an attacking midfielder, though he is best known for playing as a second striker...
(footballer)
External links