Lombard
Lombard/Lumbaart (WL), Lombard (EL)
Spoken in	Italy  Switzerland
Region	Italy:[1][2][3] Lombardy Piedmont Trentino Switzerland:[1][2][3] Canton Ticino Graubünden
Native speakers	3.5 million[4]  (2007)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Romance Gallo-Iberian Gallo-Romance Gallo-Italic Lombard
Language codes
ISO 639-3	lmo
Linguasphere	51-AAA-oc & 51-AAA-od
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Lombard is a member of the Cisalpine or Gallo-Italic group within the Romance languages. It is spoken natively in Northern Italy (most of Lombardy and some areas of neighbouring regions, notably the eastern side of Piedmont) and Southern Switzerland (Ticino and Graubünden).

The two main varieties (Western Lombard language and Eastern Lombard language) show differences and are often, but not always, mutually comprehensible^{[citation needed]}.

Present situation[link]

Status[link]

Lombard is considered a minority language, structurally separated from Italian, by the Ethnologue reference catalogue and by the UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages. However, the Italian Republic and Swiss Confederation do not recognise Lombard speakers as a linguistic minority. This official line is the same as for most other minority languages in Italy,^[5] which are officially considered Italian dialects in spite of the fact that they belong to different sub-groups of the Romance language family, and in their historical development are in no way derivative of Italian ^[6][ (this fact being obscured to some extent by the use of Italian orthography to write these languages, and by influence from Italian^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]}).

Speakers[link]

Lombard in Europe

Historically, the vast majority of Lombards spoke only Lombard,^[7] though strictly monolingual Lombard speakers are now for all practical purposes non-existent — with everyone in Italy and Switzerland being able to understand Italian, though a very small minority may be uncomfortable speaking it^{[citation needed]}. Surveys in Italy find that all Lombard speakers also speak Italian, and their command of each of the two languages varies according to their geographical position as well as their socio-economic situation, the most reliable predictor being the speakers' age.^[8]

Position on the Romance language tree[link]

From the point of view of language genealogy, Lombard and Italian are in some ways not as closely related, although both are neither Eastern nor Southern Romance^{[citation needed]}. Romansh, Friulian, French, Franco-Provençal, and Occitan are closer relatives of Lombard in many aspects than Italian^[9].

Varieties[link]

The varieties of the Italian cities of Milan, Varese, Como, Lecco, Lodi, Monza, Pavia and Mantua belong to the Western subgroup, while the ones of Bergamo, Brescia and Crema are Eastern.

All the varieties spoken in the Swiss areas (both in canton Ticino and canton Graubünden) are Western, while both Western and Eastern varieties are found in the Italian areas.

The varieties of the alpine valleys of Valchiavenna and Valtellina (province of Sondrio) and upper-Valcamonica (province of Brescia), together with the four Lombard valleys of Swiss canton Graubünden, although showing some peculiarities of their own and some traits in common with Eastern Lombard, should be considered as Western^{[citation needed]}. Also, dialects from the Piedmontese provinces of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and Novara, and the Valsesia valley (province of Vercelli) are closer to Western Lombard than to Piedmontese.^{[citation needed]}

Literature[link]

(See Western Lombard literature ). The Lombard variety with the oldest literary tradition (dating back to the thirteenth century) is that of Milan, where nowadays Milanese, the native Lombard variety of the area, has almost completely been superseded by Italian due to the heavy influx of immigrants from other parts of Italy (Puglia, Sicily, Campania, etc.) during the fast industrialization after World War II. Ticinese is a comprehensive denomination for the Lombard varieties spoken in Swiss Canton Ticino (Tessin), while the Ticinese koiné is the Western Lombard koiné used by speakers of local dialects (particularly those diverging from the koiné itself) when communicating with speakers of other Lombard dialects of Ticino, Grigioni, or Italian Lombardy. This koiné is not very unlike Milanese and the varieties of the neighbouring provinces on the Italian side of the border.

There is extant literature in other varieties of Lombard, for example La masséra da bé, a theatrical work in early Eastern Lombard, written by Galeazzo dagli Orzi (1492 - ?) presumably in 1554.^[10]

Lombard in writing[link]

Lombard-speaking communities (or, more precisely, the small portion of their members who could read and write) have been using for centuries some form of Latin or Tuscan (later known as Italian) as the language of written communication, not developing a standard written Lombard variety.

A restaurant sign in Lombard, Poschiavo (GR), Switzerland

There is no generally recognised standard orthography^{[citation needed]}, but rather a few well-established conventions (like the one that word-final [t͡ʃ] and [k] should be written as -c and -ch respectively) and some competing traditions (e.g. [ø] and [y] are written oeu and u respectively according to the traditional Milanese orthography (well established in Milanese literature), while in Switzerland and in many Italian areas ö and ü are used respectively; this is also the most generalised trend nowadays).

The Town Hall sign in the local Lombard variety of Livigno (SO), Italy

The CDE - Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia of Bellinzona, Switzerland (cf. below) has devised a rather advanced orthographic system used in its publications. This system does not break with the established conventions and at the same time it is able to render the actual phonological structures rather faithfully. The CDE system, however, is flawed by some inherent deficiencies, in particular as far as prosody is concerned, and in some situations it fails to distinguish between long and short vowels (e.g. the syllable rhyme -asc is written identically in casc [kaʃ] 'leaf-bud' and masc [maːʃ] 'May', although the vowel is actually short in the former case and long in the latter).

An improved system trying to reconcile the main features of the CDE system with the necessary amendments was published in 2003 (cf. Bibliography). This is the system used in the present article. It is the only system proposed so far featuring a unified set of writing rules meant to cover all the Lombard varieties of both Switzerland and Italy. According to this system, the words for 'May' and 'leaf-bud' in the example above are spelled, respectively, maasc and casc.

Features[link]

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (February 2011)

Note: unless otherwise specified, all examples below are forms common to most Western Lombard varieties, including the Ticinese koiné. The orthography is a compromise between traditional orthographies and a recently proposed unified system for all Lombard varieties, with phonetic transcriptions (when given) in IPA.^{[original research?]}

Phonetics and phonology[link]

Unlike most Romance languages, Lombard dialects have vowel quantity oppositions, e.g. paas [paːs] 'peace' vs. pass [pas] 'step', 'mountain pass'; ciapaa [t͡ʃaˈpaː] 'caught, got m.' vs. ciapà [t͡ʃaˈpa] 'to catch, get'.

The phoneme inventory of most Lombard varieties includes the front rounded vowels [y] and [ø].

Syntax and lexicon[link]

Another uncommon feature for a Romance language, possibly derived from Lombardic, is the extensive use of idiomatic phrasal verbs (verb-particle constructions) much in the same way as in English and other Germanic languages. E.g. trà 'to draw, to pull', trà via 'to waste, to throw away', trà sü 'to vomit, to throw up', trà fö(ra) 'to remove, to take away'; majà 'to eat', majà fö(ra) 'to squander'.

Usage[link]

Standard Italian is widely used in Lombard-speaking areas. However, the status of Lombard is quite different between the Swiss and Italian areas. This justifies the view that nowadays the Swiss areas have become the real stronghold of Lombard.

In Switzerland[link]

The LSI, published in 2004

In the Swiss areas, the local Lombard varieties are generally better preserved and more vital than in Italy. No negative feelings are associated with the use of Lombard in everyday life, even when interacting with complete strangers. Some radio and television programmes in Lombard, particularly comedies, are occasionally broadcast by the Swiss Italian-speaking broadcasting company. Moreover, it is not uncommon for people from the street to answer in Lombard in spontaneous interviews. Even some television ads in Lombard have been reported. The major research institution working on Lombard dialects is located in Bellinzona, Switzerland (CDE - Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia, a governmental (cantonal) institution); there is no comparable institution in Italy. In December 2004, the CDE released the LSI, a dictionary in 5 volumes covering all the Lombard varieties spoken in the Swiss areas. This is so far the most comprehensive Lombard language resource ever published (more than 4,500 pages and about 57,000 lexemes with over 190,000 spoken variants).

In Italy[link]

Today, in most urban areas of Italian Lombardy, people below forty years old speak almost exclusively Italian in their daily lives, because of schooling and television broadcasts in Italian. However, in Periferic Lombardy (Valtellina, Lake Como, Bergamo, Brescia, Lodi) Lombard language is still vital.

This is due to a number of historical and social reasons: its usage has been historically discouraged by Italian politicians, probably as it was regarded as an obstacle to the attempt to create a 'national identity', to the point that speaking a non-standard variety was considered a sign of poor schooling or low social status^{[citation needed]}. Presently the political party most supportive of Lombard (and of the varieties of Northern Italy in general) is the Northern League^{[citation needed]} (in the past, on the other hand, the leftist parties were the ones giving support to local varieties^{[citation needed]}); for this reason, speaking a dialect of certain non-Italian minority languages might be politically controversial in Italy.^{[citation needed]}

A certain revival of the use of Lombard has been observed in the last decade, when the use of Lombard has become a way to express one's local identity and to distance oneself from Mediterranean-oriented mainstream Italian culture; the popularity of modern artists singing their lyrics in some Lombard variety (in Italian "rock dialettale", the most well-known of such artists being Davide Van de Sfroos) is also a relatively new but growing phenomenon involving both the Swiss and Italian areas.

See also[link]

• Eastern Lombard
• Emiliano-Romagnolo
• Gallo-Italic of Sicily
• La Spezia-Rimini Line
• Languages of Europe
• Ligurian language (Romance)
• List of languages in Europe
• Padania
• Lombardy
• Piedmontese
• Pierre Bec
• Diachronics of plural inflection in the Gallo-Italian languages
• Romance plurals
• Venetian language
• Western Lombard

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Bernard Comrie, Stephen Matthews, Maria Polinsky (eds.), The Atlas of languages: the origin and development of languages throughout the world. New York 2003, Facts On File. p. 40.
• Brevini, Franco - Lo stile lombardo: la tradizione letteraria da Bonvesin da la Riva a Franco Loi / Franco Brevini - Pantarei, Lugan - 1984 (Lombard style: literary tradition from Bonvesin da la Riva to Franco Loi )
• Glauco Sanga: La lingua Lombarda, in Koiné in Italia, dalle origini al 500 (Koinés in Italy, from the origin to 1500), Lubrina publisher, Bèrghem.
• Claudio Beretta: Letteratura dialettale milanese. Itinerario antologico-critico dalle origini ai nostri giorni - Hoepli, 2003.
• G. Hull: the linguistic unity of northern Italy and Rhaetia, PhD thesis, University of Sidney West, 1982
• Jørgen G. Bosoni: «Una proposta di grafia unificata per le varietà linguistiche lombarde: regole per la trascrizione», in Bollettino della Società Storica dell’Alta Valtellina 6/2003, p. 195-298 (Società Storica Alta Valtellina: Bormio, 2003). A comprehensive description of a unified set of writing rules for all the Lombard varieties of Switzerland and Italy, with IPA transcriptions and examples.
• NED Editori: I quatter Vangeli de Mattee, March, Luca E Gioann - 2002.
• Stephen A. Wurm: Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Paris 2001, UNESCO Publishing, p. 29.
• Studi di lingua e letteratura lombarda offerti a Maurizio Vitale, (Studies in Lombard language and literature) Pisa: Giardini, 1983
• A cura di Pierluigi Beltrami, Bruno Ferrari, Luciano Tibiletti, Giorgio D'Ilario: Canzoniere Lombardo - Varesina Grafica Editrice, 1970.

External links[link]

Lombard language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Learn Lombard online
• Learn Lombard Italian site
• Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia del Cantone Ticino.
• Repubblica e Cantone Ticino Documenti orali della Svizzera italiana. (Italian)
• Istituto di dialettologia e di etnografia valtellinese e valchiavennasca.
• Lombard language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
• LSI - Lessico dialettale della Svizzera italiana.
• RTSI: Acquarelli popolari, some video and audio documents (interviews, recordings, etc. of writers from Ticino) in Ticinese varieties (please notice that the metalanguage of this site is Italian, and that some of the interviews are in Italian rather than in Ticinese Lombard).
• UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages: Europe. Potentially endangered languages, where Lombard is classified as a potentially endangered language.
• VSI - Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana.

Jazz guitarist Franco Cerri in Milano, Italy in September 2008

Franco Cerri (born January 29, 1926) is an Italian guitarist, born in Milan.

Franco Cerri is considered as “the best Italian guitarist”^[1] and “one of the best guitarist that European jazz has produced” and became popular in Italy thanks to his participation to the television show Buone Vacanze.^[2] He was not only one of the world's most popular and the most authoritative Italian guitarists, but was also one of the most important stylists of the European jazz world.

He began his long and prolific career in 1945 with Gorni Kramer and in 1949 he accompanied Django Reinhardt. In the 1950s he was near great jazz masters. Working with musicians from Chet Baker to Gerry Mulligan, and from Billie Holiday to Lee Konitz, and in modern jazz quartet or quintet, with musicians such as Tullio De Piscopo, Pino Presti, Gianluigi Trovesi, Flavio Ambrosetti and Jean-Luc Ponty,^[3] he became a leader in the Italian and European jazz world.

On January 1, 2006 he was named "Commendatore della Repubblica" (official title awarded for service to Italy) by President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• 1952 - The Franco Cerri Quintet'
• 1958 - Jazzin' with Cerri
• 1959 - Franco Cerri and his European Jazz Stars
• 1960 - Franco Cerri Quartet
• 1960 - Franco Cerri Quartet and Choristers
• 1961 - Franco Cerri International Jazz Meeting
• 1963 - Bossa nova (Columbia, QPX 8043)
• 1964 - Chitarra, QPX 8059)
• 1966 - 12 bacchette per una chitarra
• 1968 - La sera a casa con te (CGD, POP 73)
• 1970 - Franco Cerri Jazz (Dire^{[disambiguation needed ]}, FO 338)
• 1973 - Metti una sera Cerri (Music, LPM 2012)
• 1974 - From Cathetus to Cicero
• 1975 - A Limen
• 1975 - Querce platani e cerri
• 1976 - Nuages (Dischi Ricordi)
• 1977 - Un suo modo di dire (Dire, FO 347)
• 1978 - Noi duero
• 1979 - Demoiselle
• 1981 - Omaggio a Bill Evans (Dire, FO 361; with Enrico Intra)
• 1982 - Effetto Alfa
• 1984 - Franco Cerri Today! (Dire, FO 372)
• 1985 - From Milan to Frankfurt
• 1990 - Jazz in Italy (with Enrico Intra quartet; Ariston Records, ARJ/701)
• 1990 - Di jazz in jazz (Dire^{[disambiguation needed ]} FO386)
• 1993 - Cerri & Cerri
• 1995 - A Django, en souvenir de Milan
• 1997 - From Milan to Brussels
• 1998 - Images
• 1999 - Di Jazz in Cerri...di Cerri in Jazz
• 2000 - In punta di Cerri
• 2003 - From Cathetus to Cicero (riedizione in cd)
• 2004 - Ieri & oggi (ried. in cd di Metti una sera Cerri + bonus track)
• 2006 - Just Smile (ospite)
• 2011 - Bossa with Strings (Blue Serge)
• 2012 - Cerrimedioatutto (M.A.P. Golden Jazz)

Sources[link]

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