Ticinese dialect

Ticinese
Ticinese
Ticinees
Native to	Switzerland
Region	Switzerland:; Ticino (Sopraceneri)
Native speakers	108,000 (2011)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Romance Italo-Western Western Romance Gallo-Romance Gallo-Italic Lombard–Piedmontese? Lombard Western Lombard Ticinese; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	tici1238

The Ticinese dialect is the set of dialects, belonging to the Alpine and Western branch of the Lombard language,^[3] spoken in the northern part of the Canton of Ticino^[4] (Sopraceneri); the dialects of the region can generally vary from valley to valley, often even between single localities,^[4] while retaining the mutual intelligibility that is typical of the Lombard linguistic continuum.^[5]

Ticinese koiné refers instead to a koiné form used by speakers of local dialects (particularly those diverging from the koiné itself, as, e.g., Leventinese, etc.) when communicating with speakers of other Western Lombard dialects of Ticino, the Grisons (collectively known as Swiss Italian) or Italian Lombardy.^[6]

Status

Ticinese is generally more lively than the Western Lombard varieties spoken in Italy, with a significant number of young speakers. Some radio and television programmes in Ticinese, mostly comedies are broadcast by the Italian language broadcasting company RTSI.

A dictionary and some studies on the Ticinese variants are published by CDE – Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia, a cantonal research institution.

Examples

Some possible expressions and idioms:

English	Ticinese	Italiano
Delicious potatoes	Patati delizioos	Patate deliziose
To be naive	Beev l'acqua dal cudee	Credere a tutto ed a tutti
One makes nothing out of nothing	Chi gh'à al goss al gh'à quaicoss, se i gh'à nagott al gh'à al goss da carezz	Con niente si fa nulla

References

^ "Population résidante permanente de 15 ans et plus, ventilée selon les langues parlées à la maison". Office fédéral de la statistique. Retrieved 13 August 2013. Multiple choices were allowed, up to a limit of 3 languages.
^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (2023-07-10). "Glottolog 4.8 - Piemontese-Lombard". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7398962. Archived from the original on 2023-10-29. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
^ "Lombardi, dialetti" [lombard dialects]. treccani.it. A nord i dialetti definiti lombardo-alpini a partire da Merlo (1960-1961), parlati nell'Ossola superiore, nelle valli ticinesi a nord di Locarno e Bellinzona, nei Grigioni italiani e nell'alta Valtellina, caratterizzati da tratti arcaici e da una certa affinità con il romancio svizzero.
^ ^a ^b Biondelli, Bernarino (1853). Saggio sui dialetti gallo-italici (in Italian). p. 4. Il dialetto principale rappresentante il gruppo occidentale si è il Milanese, e ad esso più o meno affini sono: il Lodigiano, il Comasco, il Valtellinese, il Bormiese, il Ticinese e il Verbanese.[...] Il Comasco esténdesi in quasi tutta la provincia di Como, tranne l'estrema punta settentrionale al di là di Menagio e di Bellano a destra ed a sinistra del Lario; e in quella vece comprende la parte meridionale del Cantone Ticinese, sino al monte Cènere. [...] Il Ticinese è parlato nella parte settentrionale del Cantone Svizzero d'egual nome, al norte del Monte Cènere, in parecchie varietà, tra le quali distinguonsi sopra tutto le favelle delle valli Maggia, Verzasca, Leventina, Blenio ed Onsernone.
^ Jones, Mary C.; Soria, Claudia (2015). "Assessing the effect of official recognition on the vitality of endangered languages: a case of study from Italy". Policy and Planning for Endangered Languages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN 9781316352410. Archived from the original on 2017-04-21. Lombard (Lumbard, ISO 639-9 lmo) is a cluster of essentially homogeneous varieties (Tamburelli 2014: 9) belonging to the Gallo-Italic group. It is spoken in the Italian region of Lombardy, in the Novara province of Piedmont, and in Switzerland. Mutual intelligibility between speakers of Lombard and monolingual Italian speakers has been reported as very low (Tamburelli 2014). Although some Lombard varieties, Milanese in particular, enjoy a rather long and prestigious literary tradition, Lombard is now mostly used in informal domains. According to Ethnologue, Piedmontese and Lombard are spoken by between 1,600,000 and 2,000,000 speakers and around 3,500,000 speakers, respectively. These are very high figures for languages that have never been recognised officially nor systematically taught in school
^ Petrini, Dario (1988). La Koinè Ticinese. Livellamento dialettale e dinamiche Innovative (in Italian). Bern: Francke. ISBN 9783317016599.

Bibliography

Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia, LSI – Lessico dialettale della Svizzera italiana, Bellinzona 2004.
Comrie, Bernard, Matthews, Stephen and Polinsky, Maria: The Atlas of Languages: The Origin and Development of Languages Throughout the World. Rev. ed., New York 2003.
Lurà, Franco: Il dialetto del Mendrisiotto, Mendrisio–Chiasso 1987.
Lurati, Ottavio: Dialetto e italiano regionale nella Svizzera italiana, Lugano 1976.
Petrini, Dario: La koinè ticinese (Romanica Helvetica vol. 105), Bern 1988.
VSI – Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana, Lugano / Bellinzona 1952–.