Venetian language

This article is about the modern Romance language. For the ancient language, see Venetic language.

Venetian
Vèneto
Native to	Italy, Slovenia and Croatia
Region	Veneto Friuli-Venezia Giulia Trentino Istria
Native speakers	3.9 million (2002)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Romance Venetian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	vec
Glottolog	vene1258
Linguasphere	51-AAA-n

A sign in Venetian reading "Here we also speak Venetian".

Map showing the spreading of Romance languages; Venetian is number 15

Venetian or Venetan (Venetian: vèneto, vènet or łéngua vèneta) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by almost four million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia Giulia, Istria, and some towns of Dalmatia. Venetian is usually referred to as an Italian dialect although it is a Western Romance language, a different branch of Romance from that of Italian. Some authors include it among the Gallo-Italic languages, but by most authors, it is treated as separate. Typologically, Venetian has little in common with the Gallo-Italic languages of northwestern Italy, but shows some affinity to nearby Istriot.

Modern Venetian is not a close relative of the extinct Venetic language spoken in the Veneto region 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 earlier Venetic people gave their name to the city and region, which is why the modern language has a similar name.

History

See also: Venetian literature

A street sign (nizioléto) in Venice using the Venetian calle, as opposed to the Italian via.

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

Venetian is descended from Vulgar Latin and influenced by the Italian language. Venetian is attested as a written language in the 13th century. There are also influences and parallelisms with Greek and Albanian in words such as pirón (fork), inpiràr (to fork), caréga (chair) and fanèla (T-shirt).

The language enjoyed substantial prestige in the days of the Venetian Republic, when it attained the status of a lingua franca in the Mediterranean. 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 (Commedia dell'Arte), 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 Casanova (1725–1798) and Francesco Boaretti, and the poems of Biagio Marin (1891–1985). Notable too is a manuscript titled "Dialogue of Cecco di Ronchitti of Brugine about the New Star" attributed to Girolamo Spinelli, perhaps with some supervision by Galileo Galilei for scientific details.

However, as a literary language Venetian was overshadowed by Dante'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 the French languages like Provençal and the Oïl languages.

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).

Virtually all modern Venetian speakers are diglossic with Italian. The present situation raises questions about the language's medium term survival. Despite recent steps to recognize it, Venetian remains far below the threshold of inter-generational transfer with younger generations preferring standard Italian in many situations. The dilemma is further complicated by the ongoing large-scale arrival of immigrants, who only speak or learn standard Italian.

In the past however, Venetian was able to spread to other continents as a result of mass migration from the Veneto region between 1870 and 1905 and 1945 and 1960. This itself was a by-product of the 1866 annexation, because the latter subjected the poorest sectors of the population to the vagaries of a newly integrated, developing national industrial economy centered on north-western Italy. Tens of thousands of peasants and craftsmen were thrown off their lands or out of their workshops, forced to seek better fortune overseas.

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. Internal migrations under the Fascist regime also sent many Venetian speakers to other regions of Italy, like southern Lazio.

Presently, some firms have chosen to use the Venetian language in advertising as a famous beer did some years ago (Xe foresto solo el nome - only the name is foreign){{}}. In other cases advertisements in the Venice region are given a "Venetian flavour" by adding a Venetian word to standard Italian: for instance an airline used the verb "xe" (Xe sempre più grande - It is always bigger) into an Italian sentence (the correct Venetian being el xe sempre più grando) to advertise new flights from Marco Polo Airport.

On March 28, 2007 the Regional Council of Vèneto officially recognized the existence of the Venetian language (Łéngua Vèneta) by passing with an almost unanimous vote a law on the "Tutela e valorizzazione della lingua e della cultura veneta" (Law on the Protection and Valorisation of the Venetian Language and Culture) with the vote of both governing and opposition parties.

Geographic distribution

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, Trentino, Emilia-Romagna (in Mantua, Rimini, and Forlì), Sardinia (Arborea, Terralba, Fertilia), Lazio (Pontine Marshes), and formerly in Romania (Tulcea).

It is also spoken in North and South America by the descendants of Italian immigrants. Notable examples of this are the city of São Paulo, Brazil, 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 from the late 1800s. The people of Chipilo preserve their dialect and call it chipileño and it has been preserved as a variant since the 19th century. The variant of the Venetan language spoken by the Cipiłàn (Chipileños) 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 Stato da Màr for almost three centuries.

Classification

Venetian is a Romance language and thus descends from Vulgar Latin. It is one of the Italo-Dalmatian languages and most closely related to Istriot on the one hand and Tuscan–Italian on the other.

Despite the language region being surrounded by Gallo-Italic languages, Venetian does not share traits with these immediate neighbors. Scholars stress Venetian's characteristic lack of Gallo-Italic traits (agallicità) or traits found further afield in Gallo-Romance languages (e.g. Occitan, French, Franco-Provençal) or the Rhaeto-Romance languages (e.g. Friulian, Romansch). For example, Venetian did not undergo vowel rounding or nasalization, palatalize /kt/ and /ks/, or develop rising diphthongs /ei/ and /ou/, and it preserved final syllables, whereas, like in Italian, Venetian diphthongization occurs in historically open syllables.

Regional variants

The main regional varieties and subvarieties of Venetian are

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

All these variants are mutually intelligible, with a minimum 92% between 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 (Spanish Chipileño) of Chipilo, Mexico
• Peripheral creole languages along the southern border (nearly extinct).

Grammar

Main article: Venetian grammar

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 ille) and indefinite (derived from the numeral unus).

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 the Venetian Language :

• el gato graso, the fat (male) cat.
• ła gata grasa, the fat (female) cat.
• i gati grasi, the fat (male) cats.
• łe gate grase, the fat (female) cats.

In conservative Venetian, the article alone may convey the gender:

• i gat gras, the fat (all males or males and females) cats.
• łe gat gras, the fat (female) cats.
• el gatòn graso, the fat big (male) cat.
• ła gatòna grasa, the fat big (female) cat.
• un bel gateło, a nice small (male) cat.
• na beła gateła, a nice small (female) cat.

No native Venetic words seem to have survived in present Venetian, but there may be some 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: Mi go fazesto ('I have done')
• Venetian Italian: Mi go fato
• Standard Italian: Io ho fatto

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. ti), on the contrary, are optional. The clitic subject pronoun (te, el/ła, i/łe) 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. (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 el 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:

Italian	Venetian
(Tu) eri sporco? ("Were you dirty?")	(Ti) jèristu onto? or (Ti) xèrito spazo? (lit. "You were-you dirty?")
Il cane era sporco? ("Was the dog dirty?")	El can jèreło onto? (lit. "The dog was-he dirty?") or Jèreło onto el can ? (lit. "Was-he dirty the dog ?")
(Tu) ti sei domandato? ("Have you asked yourself?")	(Ti) te seto domandà? (lit. "You to-yourself have-you asked?")

Auxiliary verbs

Reflexive tenses use the auxiliary verb avér ("to have"), as in English, German, and Spanish; instead of èssar ("to be"), which would be normal in Italian. The past participle is invariable, unlike Italian:

Italian	Venetian
(Tu) ti sei lavato (lit. "(You) yourself are washed")	(Ti) te te à/gà/ghè lavà (lit. "(You) you yourself have washed")
(Loro) si sono svegliati (lit. "(They) themselves are awakened")	(Lori) i se gà/à svejà (lit. "(They) they themselves have awakened")

Continuing action

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

• Italian: Mio padre sta parlando ("My father is speaking").
• Venetian: Mé pare 'l xe drìo(invià) parlàr (lit. "My father he is busy speaking").

Indeed, the word drio=busy/engaged also appears in other sentences:

• Venetian: So' drio far i mistieri lit. means "I am busy doing the housework" (=I'm doing it)
• Venetian: Vo drio i mistieri lit. means "I go busy with the housework" (=I'm going to do it)
• Venetian: Mé pare l'è in leto drio (invià) dormir lit. means "My father is in bed, busy sleeping" (=My father is sleeping in bed)

Another progressive form uses the construction "essar là che" (lit. "to be there that"):

• Venetian: Me pàre 'l è là che 'l parla (lit. "My father he is there that he speaks").

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

• English: "He wouldn't possibly have been speaking to you".
• Venetian: No 'l sarìa mìa stat/stà drìo parlarte (lit. "Not-he would possibly have been behind to speak-to-you").

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:

• Italian: So di chi parli ("(I) know about whom (you) speak").
• Venetian: So de chi che te parla (lit. "(I) know about whom that you-speak").

As in other Romance languages, the subjunctive mood is widely used in subordinate clauses (although not always). Remarkably, although the use of subjunctive is weakening in many colloquial varieties of Italian, the Venetian subjunctive seems to be more resisting. For example, many Italian speakers often hesitate between subjunctive che fosse 'that...were' and indicative che era 'that...was' (though this phenomenon is generally sanctioned in the standard form), whereas almost no Venetian speaker would use the indicative in the following examples. Notice that it is hardly possible to distinguish a colloquial and a standard form, Venetian being used especially in the spoken form.

• Std.Italian: Credevo che fosse... ("I thought that he were...")
• Coll. Ital.: Credevo che era... ("I thought that he was...")
• Venetian: Credéa/évo che 'l fuse... ("I thought that he were...")
• Venetian: Credéa/évo che 'l *xera...

For the same reasons, although Italian speakers may accept both vada and vado 'I go-subj/indic.' in the colloquial style, nearly everybody would reject the Venetian indicative *vo in the following context.

• Std.Italian: E' meglio che vada ("I'd better go", lit. "it is better that I go" subj.)
• Std.Italian: E' meglio che vado ("I'd better go", lit. "it is better that I go" indic.)
• Venetian: Xe mejo che vaga/vae ("I'd better go"-subj.)
• Venetian: Xe mejo che *vo

Phonology

Consonant phonemes

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental/ Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m		n		ɲ
Plosive	voiceless	p		t			k
	voiced	b		d			ɡ
Affricate	voiceless				t͡ʃ
	voiced				d͡ʒ
Fricative	voiceless		f	s
	voiced		v	z
Approximant	central					j
	lateral			l
Trill				r

Some dialects of Venetian have certain sounds not present in Italian, such as the interdental voiceless fricative θ, often spelled with ç, z, zh, or ž, and similar to English th in thing and thought. This sound occurs, for example, in çéna 'supper' (also written zhena, žena), which is pronounced the same as Castilian Spanish cena (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 θ 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 s or ts instead of θ. In those dialects with the pronunciation s, the sound has fallen together with ordinary s, and so it is not uncommon to simply write s (or ss between vowels) instead of ç or zh (e.g. sena).

Similarly some dialects of Venetian also have a voiced interdental fricative, often written z (as in el pianze 'he cries'); but in most dialects this sound is now pronounced either as dz (i.e. Italian voiced-Z), or more typically as z (i.e. Italian voiced-S, written x, as in el pianxe); in a few dialects the sound appears as d and may therefore be written instead with the letter d, as in el piande.

Some varieties of Venetian also distinguish an ordinary l vs. a weakened or lenited ("evanescent") l, which in some orthographic norms is indicated with the letter ł; in more conservative dialects, however, both l and ł are merged as ordinary l. 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. Typical realizations in the region of Venice include a voiced velar approximant or glide ɰ (usually described as nearly like an "e" and so often spelled as e), when ł is adjacent (only) to back vowels (a o u), vs. a null realization when ł is adjacent to a front vowel (i e). In dialects further inland ł may be realized as a partially vocalised l. Thus, for example, góndoła 'gondola' may sound like góndoea, góndola or góndoa, [ˈɡondoɰa], [ˈɡondola], [ˈɡondoa]. In dialects having a null realization of intervocalic ł, although pairs of words such as scóła 'school' and scóa 'broom' are homophonous (both being pronounced [ˈskoa]), 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 fette, 'slices', palla 'ball' and penna 'pen' correspond to féte, bała, and péna in Venetian. The masculine singular noun ending, corresponding to -o/-e in Italian, is often unpronounced in Venetian, particularly in rural varieties: Italian pieno ('full') corresponds to Venetian pien, Italian altare to Venetian altar. The extent to which final vowels are deleted varies by dialect: the central–southern varieties delete vowels only after n, whereas the northern variety delete vowels also after dental stops and velars; the eastern and western varieties are in between these two extremes.

The velar nasal consonant ŋ (the final sound in English song) also occurs frequently in Venetian, because word-final /n/ is always velarized and pronounced as ŋ. This phenomenon is especially obvious in the pronunciation of many local Venetian surnames that end in n, such as Marin [maˈɾiŋ] and Manin [maˈniŋ], as well as in common Venetian words such as man [ˈmaŋ] 'hand', piron [piˈɾoŋ] 'fork'. Besides, Venetian always uses ŋ in nasal plus consonant clusters, whereas Italian only uses ŋ before velar stops: e.g. [kaŋˈtaɾ] 'to sing', [iŋˈvɛɾno] 'winter', [ˈoŋzaɾ] 'to anoint' [ɾaŋˈd͡ʒaɾse] 'to cope with'.

Speakers of Italian generally lack this sound and usually substitute a dental n for final Venetian ŋ, changing for example [maˈniŋ] to [maˈninː] and [maˈɾiŋ] to [maˈrinː].

Sample etymological lexicon

As a direct descent of regional spoken Latin, the 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 Greek, Gothic, and German) that are not cognate with their equivalent words in Italian, such as:

Venetian	English	Italian	Venetian word origin
uncò, 'ncò, incò, ancò, ancùo, incoi	today	oggi	from Latin hunc + hodie
apotèca	pharmacy	farmacia	from Greek apotheke
trincàr	to drink	bere	from German trinken 'to drink'
armelìn	apricot	albicocca	from Latin armenīnus
astiàr	to bore	dare noia, seccare	from Gothic haifsts meaning 'contest'
bagìgi	peanuts	arachidi	from Arabic, habb-ajiz
becàr	to be spicy hot	essere piccante	from Italian beccare, literally 'to peck'
bìgolo	spaghetti	vermicello, spaghetti	from Latin (bom)byculus
bisàto, bisàta	eel	anguilla	from Latin bestia 'beast', cf. also Ital. biscia (a kind of snake)
bìssa, bìsso	snake	serpente	from Latin bestia 'beast', cf. also Ital. biscia (a kind of snake)
bìsi	peas	piselli	related to the Italian word
isarda, risardola	lizard	lucertola	from Latin lacertus, same origin as English lizard
trar via	to throw	tirare	local cognate of Italian tirare via
calìgo	fog	nebbia foschia	from Latin caligo
cantón	corner/side	angolo/parte	from Latin cantus
catàr	find+take	trovare+prendere	from Latin adcaptare
caréga, trón	chair	sedia	from L cathedra and thronus (borrowings from Greek)
ciao	hello, goodbye	ciao	from Venetian s-ciao 'slave' from popular Latin sclavus
ciapàr	to catch, to take	prendere	from Latin capere
co	when (non-interr.)	quando	from Latin cum
copàr	to kill	uccidere	from Old Italian accoppare, originally 'to behead'
carpéta	miniskirt	gonna mini	cf. English carpet
còtoła	skirt	sottana	from Latin cotta 'coat, dress'
fanèla	T-shirt	maglietta	borrowing from Greek
gòto, bicèr	drinking glass	bicchiere	from Latin gut(t)us 'cruet'
insìa	exit	uscita	from Latin in + exita
mi	I	io	from Latin me 'me' (accusative case); Italian io is derived from the Latin nominative form ego
massa	too much	troppo	from Greek maza
morsegàr, smorsegàr	to bite	mordere	derverbal derivative, from Latin morsus 'bitten' (cf. Italian morsicare)
mustaci, mostaci	moustaches	baffi	from Greek moustaki
munìn, gato, gatìn	cat	gatto	perhaps onomatopoeic, from the sound of a cat's meow
meda	big sheaf	grosso covone	from messe, mietere, cf. English meadow
musso	donkey	asino	from Latin almutia 'horses eye binders (cap)' (cf. Provençal almussa, French aumusse)
nòtoła, notol, barbastrìo, signàpoła	bat	pipistrello	derived from not 'night' (cf. Ital. notte)
pantegàna	rat	ratto	from Slovene podgana
pinciàr	beat, cheat, sexual intercourse	imbrogliare, superare in gara, amplesso	from French pincer (cf. English pinch)
pirón	fork	forchetta	from Greek peirouni
pisalet	dandelion	tarassaco	from French pissenlit
plao far	truant	marinare scuola	from German blau machen
pomo/pón	apple	mela	from Latin pomus
sbregàr	to break, to shred	strappare	from Gothic brikan, related to English to break and German brechen
schèi	money	denaro soldi	from German Scheidemünze
saltapaiusk	grasshopper	cavalletta	from salta 'hop' + paiusk 'grass' (Ital. paglia)
sghiràt schirata skirata	squirrel	scoiattolo	Related to Italian word, probably from Greek skiouros
sgnapa	spirit from grapes, brandy	grappa acquavite	from German Schnaps
sgorlàr, scorlàr	to shake	scuotere	from Latin ex + crollare
sina	rail	rotaia	from German Schiene
straco	tired	stanco	from Lombard strak
strica	line, streak, stroke, strip	linea, striscia	from the proto-Germanic root *strik, related to English streak, and stroke (of a pen). Example: Tirar na strica 'to draw a line'.
strucàr	to press	premere, schiacciare	from proto-Germanic þrukjaną ('to press, crowd') through the Gothic or Langobardic language, related to Middle English thrucchen ('to push, rush'), German drücken ('to press'). Example: Struca un tasto / boton 'Strike any key/Press any button'.
supiàr, subiàr, sficiàr, sifolàr	to whistle	fischiare	from Latin sub + flare (cf. French siffler)
tòr su	to pick up	raccogliere	from Latin tollere
técia, téia, tegia	pan	pentola	from Latin tecula
tosàt(o) (toxato), fio	lad, boy	ragazzo	from tosare (Italian, 'to cut someone's hair')
puto, putèło, putełeto, butèl	lad, boy	ragazzo	from Latin puer, putus
matelot	lad, boy	ragazzo	perhaps from French matelot ('sailor')
vaca	cow	mucca, vacca	from Latin vacca
s-ciop, s-ciòpo, s-ciopàr, s-ciopón	gun	fucile-scoppiare	from Lat scloppum (onomatopoeic)
troi	track path	sentiero	from Latin trahere 'to draw, pull', cf. English track
zavariàr	to worry	preoccuparsi, vaneggiare	from Latin variare

Spelling systems

Traditional system

Venetian does not have an official writing system, but it is traditionally 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 purely modern innovations.

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

• The letter x was often employed in words that nowadays have a voiced z-sound (cf. English xylophone); for instance x appears in words such as raxon, Croxe, caxa ("reason", "(holy) Cross" and "house"). The precise phonetic value of x in Old Venetian texts remains unknown, however.
• The letter z often appeared in words that nowadays have a varying voiced pronunciation ranging from z to dz or ð or even to d; even in contemporary spelling zo "down" may represent any of /zo, dzo, ðo/ or even /do/, depending on the dialect; similarly zovena "young woman" could be any of /ˈzovena/, /ˈdzovena/ or /ˈðovena/, and zero "zero" could be /ˈzɛro/, /ˈdzɛro/ or /ˈðɛro/.
• Likewise, ç was written for a voiceless sound which now varies, depending on the dialect spoken, from s to ts to θ, as in for example dolçe "sweet", now /ˈdolse~ˈdoltse~ˈdolθe/, dolçeça "sweetness", now /dolˈsesa~dolˈtsetsa~dolˈθeθa/, or sperança "hope", now /speˈransa~speˈrantsa~speˈranθa/.

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 z and ç 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 x becomes limited to word-initial position, as in xe ("is"), where its use was unavoidable because Italian spelling cannot represent z there. In between vowels, the distinction between s and z was ordinarily indicated by doubled ss for the former and single s for the latter. For example, basa was used to represent /ˈbaza/ ("he/she kisses"), whereas bassa represented /ˈbasa/ ("low"). (Before consonants there is no contrast between s and z, as in Italian, so a single s is always used in this circumstance, it being understood that the s will agree in voicing with the following consonant. For example, st represents only /st/, but sn represents /zn/.)

Traditionally the letter z was ambiguous, having the same values as in Italian (both voiced and voiceless affricates ts and dz). Nevertheless, in some books the two pronunciations are sometimes distinguished (in between vowels at least) by using doubled zz to indicate ts (or in some dialects θ) but a single z for dz (or ð, d).

In more recent practice the use of x to represent z, 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 ç and z 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 a, á ɐ, è ɛ, é e, ò ɔ, ó o, ù u. 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 /stʃ/ (not present in Italian), which is sometimes written s-c or s'c before i or e, and s-ci or s'ci before other vowels. Examples include s-ciarir (Italian schiarire, "to clear up"), s-cèt (schietto, "plain clear"), s-ciòp (schioppo, "gun") and s-ciao (schiavo, "[your] servant", ciao, "hello", "goodbye"). The hyphen or apostrophe is used because the combination sc(i) is conventionally used for the ʃ sound, as in Italian spelling; e.g. scèmo (scemo, "stupid"); whereas sc before a, o and u represents /sk/: scàtoła (scatola, "box"), scóndar (nascondere, "to hide"), scusàr (scusare, "to forgive").

Proposed systems

Recently there have been attempts to standardize and simplify the script by reusing older letters, e.g. by using x for z and a single s for s; then one would write baxa for [ˈbaza] ("[third person singular] kisses") and basa for [ˈbasa] ("low"). Some authors have continued or resumed the use of ç, 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 çima and çento, rather than força and sperança, even though all these four words display the same phonological variation in the position marked by the letter ç. Another recent convention is to use ł 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.

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

Sample texts

Ruzante returning from war

The following sample, in the old dialect of Padua, comes from a play by Ruzante (Angelo Beolco), titled Parlamento de Ruzante che iera vegnù de campo ("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:

Orbéntena, el no serae mal
star in campo per sto robare,
se 'l no foesse che el se ha pur
de gran paure. Càncaro ala roba!
A' son chialò mi, ala segura,
e squase che no a' no cherzo
esserghe gnan. [...]
Se mi mo' no foesse mi?
E che a foesse stò amazò in campo?
E che a foesse el me spirito?
Lo sarae ben bela.
No, càncaro, spiriti no magna.

"Really, it would not be that bad
to be in the battlefield looting,
were it not that one gets also
big scares. Damn the loot!
I am right here, in safety,
and almost can't believe
I am. [...]
And if I were not me?
And if I had been killed in battle?
And if I were my ghost?
That would be just great.
No, damn, ghosts don't eat."

Discorso de Perasto

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

Par trezentosetantasete ani
le nostre sostanse, el nostro sangue,
le nostre vite le xè sempre stàe
par Ti, S. Marco; e fedelisimi
senpre se gavemo reputà,
Ti co nu, nu co Ti,
e sempre co Ti sul mar
semo stài lustri e virtuosi.
Nisun co Ti ne gà visto scanpar,
nisun co Ti ne gà visto vinti e spaurosi!

"For three hundred and seventy seven years
our bodies, our blood
our lives have always been
for You, St. Mark; and very faithful
we have always thought ourselves,
You with us, we with You,
And always with You on the sea
we have been illustrious and virtuous.
No one has seen us with You flee,
No one has seen us with You defeated and fearful!"

Francesco Artico

The following is a contemporary text by Francesco Artico. The elderly narrator is recalling the church choir singers of his youth, who, needless to say, sang much better than those of today:

Sti cantori vèci da na volta,
co i cioéa su le profezie,
in mezo al coro, davanti al restèl,
co'a ose i 'ndéa a cior volta
no so 'ndove e ghe voéa un bèl tóc
prima che i tornésse in qua
e che i rivésse in cao,
màssima se i jèra pareciàdi onti
co mezo litro de quel bon
tant par farse coràjo.

"These old singers of the past,
when they picked up the Prophecies,
in the middle of the choir, in front of the gate,
with their voice they went off
who knows where, and it was a long time
before they came back
and landed on the ground,
especially if they had been previously "oiled"
with half a litre of the good one [wine]
just to make courage."

English words of Venetian origin

Venetian source	English loanword	Notes
arsenàl	arsenal	via Italian; from Arabic دار الصناعة dār al-ṣināʻah 'house of manufacture, factory'
artichioco/articiòco	artichoke	from Arabic الخرشوف al-kharshūf
balòta	ballot	'ball' used in Venetian elections; cf. English 'to black-ball'
casìn	casino	'little house'; adopted in Italianized form
s'ciào	ciao	cognate with Italian schiavo 'slave'; used originally in Venetian to mean 'your servant', 'at your service'
contrabando	contraband
gazéta	gazette	'small Venetian coin'; from the phrase gazeta de la novità 'a pennysworth of news'
g(h)èto	ghetto	hypothesized as from either (bor)ghetto 'little city', or from the Venetian term for 'foundry'
ziro	giro	'circle, turn, spin'; adopted in Italianized form; from the name of the bank Banco del Ziro
gnòco, -chi	gnocchi	'lump, bump, gnocchi'; from Germanic *knokk- 'knuckle, joint'
góndoła	gondola	possibly related to dondolare 'to rock'
laguna	lagoon	from Latin lacus 'lake'
lazaréto	Lazaretto, lazaret	ultimately from the Biblical Lazarus, who was raised from the dead
Lido	lido	from Latin litus 'shore'
lò(t)to	lotto	from Germanic *lot- 'destiny, fate'
malvasìa	malmsey	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
marzapàn	marzipan	from the name for the porcelain container in which marzipan was transported, from Arabic موثبان mawthabān, or from Mataban in the Bay of Bengal where these were made (these are some of several proposed etymologies for the English word)
Negropónte	Negroponte	Greek island called Euboea or Evvia in the Aegean Sea
Montenégro	Montenegro	'black mountain'; country on the Eastern side of the Adriatic Sea
Pantalón	pantaloon	a character in the Commedia dell'arte
pestàcio/pistàcio	pistachio	ultimately from Middle Persian *pistak
quaranténa	quarantine	'forty', referring to the number of days a ship with plague victims must remain isolated
regata	regatta	originally 'fight, contest'
scampo, -i	scampi	from Greek κάμπη 'caterpillar', lit. 'curved (animal)'
zechìn	sequin	'Venetian gold ducat'; from Arabic سكّة sikkah 'coin, minting die'
Zanni	zany	'Johnny'; a character in the Commedia dell'arte

See also

• Venetian literature
• Talian
• Chipilo Venetian
• Quatro Ciàcoe — Venetian language magazine

Bibliography

• Artico, Francesco (1976). Tornén un pas indrìo: raccolta di conversazioni in dialetto. Brescia: Paideia Editrice.
• Ferguson, Ronnie (2007). A Linguistic History Of Venice. Leo S. Olschki. ISBN 978-88-222-5645-4.
• McKay, Carolyn Joyce. Il dialetto veneto di Segusino e Chipilo: fonologia, grammatica, lessico veneto, spagnolo, italiano, inglese.

External links

• General grammar; comparison to other Romance languages; description of the Mexican dialect
• Tornén un pas indrìo!—samples of written and spoken Venetian by Francesco Artico
• Text and audio of some works by Ruzante