It’s a problem Italian language learners have always faced.
You’ve diligently studied your Italian grammar, and carefully practiced your phrases ahead of your first visit to Italy, only to realise upon arrival that the Italians around you seem to be speaking a different language entirely.
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Italy’s dialects are more than just heavily-accented Italian. They seem like totally different languages because, in fact, that’s exactly what they are.
It’s not quite correct to call them ‘dialects’, which are variants on a standard language. These are different languages altogether, many of which evolved separately from modern-day Italian and may have their roots in German, French, Greek, Slovenian, Catalan, or something else.
Even when they switch to Italian, speakers of these dialects or languages often speak with a heavy accent, much to the dismay of anyone still getting to grips with with basic Italian.
Even in a big city like Florence or Rome, Italian spoken in a thick local accent can be hard to decipher – and that’s not just for foreigners, as native Italian speakers from other areas can tell you.
As the map below shows, every region – and many provinces within those regions – has a local language. Some have more than one, and each town within a province may also have a variation.
Many of these are part of language ‘families’ and some are more closely related to Italian, or to Latin, than others.
The map below classifies Italy’s dialects further and also shows how languages in different regions are connected.
Map: Antonio Ciccolella/Wikimedia Commons
This might look complicated, but anyone who lives in a small Italian town may be thinking that a more detailed map is needed: there are actually many more, smaller variations within these categories.
Do people in Italy really still speak all of these dialects?
The language we know as standard Italian derives from 13th-century Florentine. Until then, there had been no written rules, and the languages of what is now Italy had mainly evolved by being spoken.
When Italy was unified in 1861, only 2.5 percent of the population could actually speak the Italian language. All spoke their regional languages. Now, that figure is in the high 90s, though around five percent still speak only or predominantly in their regional language.
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Theoretical language practice (from books and stsndard tapes) never neatly equates with the practising of the language in, well – practice. I spent a year in Naples as a result of being offered a transfer from Florence. Little did I know what was in store linguistically. Fortunately most people I came into professional contact with spoke fairly standard Italian but for me to practise even standard Italian with a Neapolitan speaking the same language, but heavily accented, was a challenge almost too far when added to the responsibilities of the job I had to do. But this is a fascinating and additional delight in many ways. The maps above are probably eye openers to many of us and make Italy even more intriguing.
Interesting in that it missed the ‘Bresciano’ dialect obviously from Brescia area. I do speak a bit of it with my relatives.