Lingue d'Italia

Le lingue dell'Italia costituiscono uno dei più ricchi e variegati patrimoni linguistici all'interno del panorama europeo^[1]^[2]^[3].

Le complesse vicende storiche del paese hanno portato infatti ad un esteso multilinguismo, risultante da circa dieci secoli di divisioni politiche e diversità culturali; questa peculiarità non è data solo dalla coesistenza tra la lingua italiana e le minoranze linguistiche alloglotte (stanziate lungo i confini settentrionali o in zone di antichi insediamenti centro-meridionali), ma è dovuta anche alla presenza di tre lingue minoritarie autoctone, sviluppatesi in isolamento rispetto alle aree linguistiche vicine, e all’esistenza di diverse lingue non ufficiali e non standardizzate ancora definite “dialetti” dalla maggior parte della popolazione e delle istituzioni (comprese quelle accademiche), e poste in rapporto di diglossia con l’italiano^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7].

Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, nel ‘’Proemio” del primo volume dell’Archivio glottologico italiano, negli anni 70 del XIX secolo, osservava che alla frammentazione linguistica del paese corrispondeva la secolare mancanza di una capitale accentratrice capace di promuovere un modello linguistico di riferimento per gli altri territori, contrariamente a quanto avvenuto precedentemente in Francia; oltre a ciò, il glottologo ravvisava l’assenza in Italia di un movimento religioso e culturale, quale fu la Riforma protestante per la Germania, che permise la circolazione di una lingua omogenea e la diffusione dell’istruzione elementare pur in assenza di un’unione politica e pur esistendo in quel paese una divisione delle Chiese^[8]. A tali considerazioni, nel XX secolo, Tullio De Mauro aggiungeva questioni geografiche: non solo i confini politico-amministrativi tra gli stati preunitari, ma anche la discontinuità paesaggistica e naturale avrebbero condizionato i particolarismi regionali e dunque ostacolato l’espansione di una lingua nazionale, favorendo invece l’abbondanza di idiomi locali fortemente differenziati gli uni dagli altri^[9].

Ad eccezione di taluni idiomi stranieri legati ai moderni flussi migratori, le lingue che vi si parlano comunemente sono in via esclusiva di ceppo indoeuropeo e appartenenti in larga prevalenza alla famiglia delle lingue romanze; sono presenti, altresì, varietà albanesi, germaniche, greche e slave.

La lingua ufficiale (de iure) della Repubblica Italiana, l'italiano, discende storicamente dalla variante letteraria del volgare toscano, il cui uso in letteratura è iniziato con le cosiddette "Tre Corone" (Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio) verso il XIII secolo, e si è in seguito evoluto storicamente nella lingua italiana moderna; questa, con l'eccezione di alcune aree di più tarda italianizzazione^[10], sarebbe stata ufficialmente adottata come codice linguistico di prestigio presso i vari Stati preunitari a partire dal XVI secolo.^[11]

Ciononostante, la lingua italiana, utilizzata in letteratura e nell'amministrazione in maniera principalmente scritta, al momento dell'unificazione politica di gran parte dell'Italia nel Regno sabaudo, nel 1860, era parlata da una minoranza della popolazione costituita fondamentalmente dalle classi colte o semplicemente istruite^[12]: secondo De Mauro gli italofoni ammontavano al 2,5%^[13], mentre Arrigo Castellani ne stimava un 10%^[14]. Essa poté in seguito diffondersi tra le masse popolari mediante l'istruzione obbligatoria, l’urbanesimo, le migrazioni interne, la burocrazia, il servizio militare e i mezzi di comunicazione di massa (a stampa e audiovisivi)^[15].

Dal punto di vista degli idiomi locali preesistenti esclusivamente nel parlato, ne consegue un processo di erosione linguistica e di minorizzazione, processo accelerato sensibilmente dall'ampia disponibilità di mezzi di comunicazione di massa in lingua italiana e dalla mobilità della popolazione, oltre ad una scarsa volontà politica di riconoscere una minima valenza culturale ai "dialetti". Questo tipo di cambiamenti e volontà politica ha ridotto sensibilmente l'uso degli idiomi locali, molti dei quali sono ormai considerati in pericolo di estinzione, principalmente a causa dell'avanzare della lingua italiana anche nell'ambito strettamente sociale e relazionale^[16].

^ Maiden-Parry 1997, p. 1: «Italy holds especial treasures for linguists. There is probably no other area of Europe in which such a profusion of linguistic variation is concentrated into so small a geographical area». (EN)
^ Avolio 2015, p. 11: «[...] il paese europeo più ricco e differenziato dal punto di vista delle varietà di lingua».
^ Berruto 2018, p. 494.
^ (EN) Arturo Tosi, The Language Situation in Italy, in Current Issues in Language Planning, 22 dicembre 2008, pp. 247-248.
«In Italy, multilingualism is widespread and is the result of complex historical circumstances. A bird’s eye view of the situation suggests that several historical minorities of the north are situated in areas where the borders have fluctuated (Bavarian, Cimbrian, Franco-Provençal, French, German, Mocheno, Provençal, Slovenian and Walser), and those in the centre and south have preserved ancestral languages of old foreign settlements (Catalan, Greek, Albanian, Serbo Croatian). In addition, Italy has three domestic minority languages (Friulian, Ladin and Sardinian), which are traditionally recognised as autonomous languages and which have grown in conditions of extreme isolation from neighbouring linguistic areas. Multilingualism in Italy is not, however, related only to the coexistence of Italian and minority languages: it is rooted in the historical background of a country whose late unification maintained a situation of linguistic diversity that is unique within Europe. Several unofficial languages (still ambiguously called ‘dialects’) are widely spoken in everyday life and interpenetrate the national language giving it a strong regional flavor in different areas of the peninsula. In the north, there are Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian and Venetian. The central area, in addition to Tuscan dialects, also includes Umbrian and the dialects of northern Latium and the Marches. Further south, the most prominent dialects are Abruzzese, Neapolitan, Pugliese, Calabrese and Sicilian. These linguistic differences are evidence of the heritage of some ten centuries of political division and cultural diversity, which could not be erased by the official recognition of Tuscan as Italy’s national language in 1861.»
^ (EN) Paolo Coluzzi, Endangered minority and regional languages (‘dialects’) in Italy, in Modern Italy, vol. 14, n. 1, 1º febbraio 2009, pp. 39-46.
«Italy could be claimed to be the richest country in Europe linguistically speaking – a country where all living representatives of the Indo-European families in Europe are found, apart from the Baltic and the Celtic one (which disappeared following Roman colonisation in Northern Italy). It is not easy to state the exact number of languages spoken in Italy, as most of them are part of a continuum and are not standardised or officially recognised. According to Lepschy (1994, 9), the non-recognised local languages known as ‘dialects’ are ‘fifteen or so’, while De Mauro (1994, 61) reckons that ‘a dozen dialects’ are spoken in Italy. To these figures, at least 13 minority languages should be added, arriving at a total figure of 26–29 languages, standard Italian included. Ethnologue, the survey carried out by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, on the other hand, lists 32 languages for Italy, in addition to Italian sign language for deaf people. Of these, seven are ‘dialects’ (i.e., Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Lombard, Napoletano-Calabrese,Piedmontese, Sicilian and Venetian). However, one should consider that 13 is a conservative figure for the minority languages present in Italy, as under some of these language designations are ‘dialects’ that (exactly in the same way as Italian ‘dialects’) do not derive from the respective standards and feature significant differences from them. For example, under ‘German’, we find the standard as well as Alemannic, Bavarian and Carinthian varieties – that is, at least four languages instead of one – and similar considerations apply to other minority languages, particularly Slovene, Romany and Sardinian. Moreover, some argue that the Gallo-Italian dialects spoken in some areas in the South of Italy and Tabarchino spoken on the Sulcis Islands in Southern Sardinia would need to be added. In this case, the total number of languages spoken in Italy (and sometimes written) would be much higher, probably exceeding 40, and this is excluding Italian sign language and the languages of recent immigrants. It should be pointed out here, however, that so-called Italian ‘dialects’ are not dialects of Italian at all, as they all come directly from Latin, the same as fourteenth-century Florentine, which was to become what we know today as Italian – the common language of all Italians. Nowadays in the Italian repertoire they represent the ‘low’ varieties, which are in a diglossic relationship with Italian, the ‘high’ variety, and are mostly spoken by older, less educated people living in smaller towns and villages, particularly in northeast Italy and the south.»
^ (EN) Paolo Coluzzi, Language planning for Italian regional languages (‘dialects’), in Language Problems and Language Planning, vol. 32, n. 3, 2008, p. 39-46. URL consultato il 15 luglio 2024.
«Even excluding recent immigration, Italy is one of the most heterogeneous and diverse countries in Europe in linguistic terms. In addition to Italian, spoken in its standard form or in a regional variety by virtually all the Italian population of almost sixty million people, a number of minority and regional languages are spoken by almost half of them. It is difficult to give an exact figure for these languages. State Law 482 of 1999 on the protection of minority languages, recognized as such twelve languages: French, Provençal, Franco-Provençal, German, Ladin, Friulian, Slovene, Sardinian, Catalan, Albanian, Greek and Croatian. However, considering that Romany was excluded for political reasons and that under some of these linguistic items quite different varieties were grouped together, this number should at least be doubled. On the other hand, with regard to those which are still known as “Italian dialects”, and which it would be more correct to term “regional languages” as they do not derive from Italian but are independent Romance varieties that developed directly from Latin (the same as fourteenth century Florentine which became what we know today as Italian), giving a figure is even more problematic. All Italian regional languages in fact are fragmented into hundreds of dialects — in this sense and in this sense only the term “dialect” could be considered appropriate — which their speakers consider diferent from those spoken in the nearby villages and towns.»
^ (EN) Paolo Coluzzi, Lissander Brasca, Marco Trizzino, Simona Scuri, Language planning for Italian regional languages: the case of Lombard and Sicilian, in Stern von Dieter, Nomachi Motoki, Bojan Belić, Linguistic Regionalism in Eastern Europe and Beyond. Minority, Regional and Literary Microlanguages, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2018, pp. 275-276.
«On the other hand, regional languages, which are still termed ‘dialects’ by most people and institutions (including academia) in Italy, historically tend to have a stronger relationship with Italian, whose speakers on the whole do not object to being seen as ‘Italians’ (and at the same time as ‘Lombard’, ‘Sicilian etc.). […] Going back to the term ‘dialects’ (dialetti), which is still in common use in Italy to refer to its regional languages, even though we are aware that the term is sometimes used to refer to non-recognized local languages, we are strongly opposed to its use, as the term is not precise on the one hand, and carries negative connotations on the other, referring to a language variety that is spoken only in low domains by a restricted number of people, often with low levels of education. Another feature that the term ‘dialect’ seems to imply is that the language varieties referred to in such a way do not possess any economic value.»
^ Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, Proemio, in Archivio Glottologico Italiano, n. 1, Ermanno Loescher, 1873, pp. 9-16. URL consultato il 15 luglio 2024.
^ Tullio De Mauro, Una lingua d’elezione, in Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita, I, 4ª ed., Bari, Editori Laterza, 1976 [1960], pp. 16-21.
^ A titolo di esempio, si potrebbe citare la situazione occorrente nel Regno di Sardegna sabaudo. Nel possedimento insulare del Regno, il ruolo di lingua tetto era stato adempiuto non dall'italiano, a differenza della vicina Corsica, bensì dalle lingue iberiche fino alla seconda metà del Settecento; fu intorno a tale periodo che l'italiano vi sarebbe stato introdotto ufficialmente per mezzo di norme mirate alla diffusione di detta lingua tra gli isolani: tale manovra ineriva a un allineamento di tale territorio verso l'orbita egemonica del Piemonte, nel quale l'italiano era, invece, già stato eletto come lingua ufficiale ben due secoli prima. In Valle d'Aosta e Savoia, al contrario, era e sarebbe stato ancora il francese a occupare a lungo una posizione di prestigio. Cfr. Ines Loi Corvetto, I Savoia e le "vie" dell'unificazione linguistica, in Ignazio Putzu, Gabriella Mazzon, Lingue, letterature, nazioni. Centri e periferie tra Europa e Mediterraneo, 2012.; Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, Peter Koch, Daniela Marzo, Manuale di linguistica sarda, De Gruyter, 2017.; Tullio De Mauro, Storia linguistica dell'Italia unita, Bari, Editori Laterza, 1991.
^ Enciclopedia Treccani: Storia della lingua italiana e del suo utilizzo negli Stati preunitari, su treccani.it.
^ M. Voghera - Università di Salerno. 4. Le lingue d'Italia (italiano - dialetti): Com'è noto l'Italia ha vissuto fino ad anni molto recenti una situazione di diffusa e profonda diglossia) (PDF), su parlaritaliano.it.
^ Tullio De Mauro, Una lingua d’elezione, in Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita, I, 4ª ed., Bari, Editori Laterza, 1976 [1960], p. 43.
^ Pietro Trifone, Italiano e dialetto dal 1861 ad oggi, su Treccani.it, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
^ Corrado Grassi, Alberto A. Sobrero, Tullio Telmon, Latino, italiano, dialetti, in Introduzione alla dialettologia italiana, I, 5ª ed., Bari, Editori Laterza, 2003, pp. 26-30.
^ Dialetti, su Treccani. URL consultato il 20 marzo 2024.

[1] Maiden-Parry 1997, p. 1: «Italy holds especial treasures for linguists. There is probably no other area of Europe in which such a profusion of linguistic variation is concentrated into so small a geographical area». (EN)

[2] Avolio 2015, p. 11: «[...] il paese europeo più ricco e differenziato dal punto di vista delle varietà di lingua».

[3] Berruto 2018, p. 494.

[4] (EN) Arturo Tosi, The Language Situation in Italy, in Current Issues in Language Planning, 22 dicembre 2008, pp. 247-248.
«In Italy, multilingualism is widespread and is the result of complex historical circumstances. A bird’s eye view of the situation suggests that several historical minorities of the north are situated in areas where the borders have fluctuated (Bavarian, Cimbrian, Franco-Provençal, French, German, Mocheno, Provençal, Slovenian and Walser), and those in the centre and south have preserved ancestral languages of old foreign settlements (Catalan, Greek, Albanian, Serbo Croatian). In addition, Italy has three domestic minority languages (Friulian, Ladin and Sardinian), which are traditionally recognised as autonomous languages and which have grown in conditions of extreme isolation from neighbouring linguistic areas. Multilingualism in Italy is not, however, related only to the coexistence of Italian and minority languages: it is rooted in the historical background of a country whose late unification maintained a situation of linguistic diversity that is unique within Europe. Several unofficial languages (still ambiguously called ‘dialects’) are widely spoken in everyday life and interpenetrate the national language giving it a strong regional flavor in different areas of the peninsula. In the north, there are Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian and Venetian. The central area, in addition to Tuscan dialects, also includes Umbrian and the dialects of northern Latium and the Marches. Further south, the most prominent dialects are Abruzzese, Neapolitan, Pugliese, Calabrese and Sicilian. These linguistic differences are evidence of the heritage of some ten centuries of political division and cultural diversity, which could not be erased by the official recognition of Tuscan as Italy’s national language in 1861.»

[5] (EN) Paolo Coluzzi, Endangered minority and regional languages (‘dialects’) in Italy, in Modern Italy, vol. 14, n. 1, 1º febbraio 2009, pp. 39-46.
«Italy could be claimed to be the richest country in Europe linguistically speaking – a country where all living representatives of the Indo-European families in Europe are found, apart from the Baltic and the Celtic one (which disappeared following Roman colonisation in Northern Italy). It is not easy to state the exact number of languages spoken in Italy, as most of them are part of a continuum and are not standardised or officially recognised. According to Lepschy (1994, 9), the non-recognised local languages known as ‘dialects’ are ‘fifteen or so’, while De Mauro (1994, 61) reckons that ‘a dozen dialects’ are spoken in Italy. To these figures, at least 13 minority languages should be added, arriving at a total figure of 26–29 languages, standard Italian included. Ethnologue, the survey carried out by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, on the other hand, lists 32 languages for Italy, in addition to Italian sign language for deaf people. Of these, seven are ‘dialects’ (i.e., Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Lombard, Napoletano-Calabrese,Piedmontese, Sicilian and Venetian). However, one should consider that 13 is a conservative figure for the minority languages present in Italy, as under some of these language designations are ‘dialects’ that (exactly in the same way as Italian ‘dialects’) do not derive from the respective standards and feature significant differences from them. For example, under ‘German’, we find the standard as well as Alemannic, Bavarian and Carinthian varieties – that is, at least four languages instead of one – and similar considerations apply to other minority languages, particularly Slovene, Romany and Sardinian. Moreover, some argue that the Gallo-Italian dialects spoken in some areas in the South of Italy and Tabarchino spoken on the Sulcis Islands in Southern Sardinia would need to be added. In this case, the total number of languages spoken in Italy (and sometimes written) would be much higher, probably exceeding 40, and this is excluding Italian sign language and the languages of recent immigrants. It should be pointed out here, however, that so-called Italian ‘dialects’ are not dialects of Italian at all, as they all come directly from Latin, the same as fourteenth-century Florentine, which was to become what we know today as Italian – the common language of all Italians. Nowadays in the Italian repertoire they represent the ‘low’ varieties, which are in a diglossic relationship with Italian, the ‘high’ variety, and are mostly spoken by older, less educated people living in smaller towns and villages, particularly in northeast Italy and the south.»

[6] (EN) Paolo Coluzzi, Language planning for Italian regional languages (‘dialects’), in Language Problems and Language Planning, vol. 32, n. 3, 2008, p. 39-46. URL consultato il 15 luglio 2024.
«Even excluding recent immigration, Italy is one of the most heterogeneous and diverse countries in Europe in linguistic terms. In addition to Italian, spoken in its standard form or in a regional variety by virtually all the Italian population of almost sixty million people, a number of minority and regional languages are spoken by almost half of them. It is difficult to give an exact figure for these languages. State Law 482 of 1999 on the protection of minority languages, recognized as such twelve languages: French, Provençal, Franco-Provençal, German, Ladin, Friulian, Slovene, Sardinian, Catalan, Albanian, Greek and Croatian. However, considering that Romany was excluded for political reasons and that under some of these linguistic items quite different varieties were grouped together, this number should at least be doubled. On the other hand, with regard to those which are still known as “Italian dialects”, and which it would be more correct to term “regional languages” as they do not derive from Italian but are independent Romance varieties that developed directly from Latin (the same as fourteenth century Florentine which became what we know today as Italian), giving a figure is even more problematic. All Italian regional languages in fact are fragmented into hundreds of dialects — in this sense and in this sense only the term “dialect” could be considered appropriate — which their speakers consider diferent from those spoken in the nearby villages and towns.»

[7] (EN) Paolo Coluzzi, Lissander Brasca, Marco Trizzino, Simona Scuri, Language planning for Italian regional languages: the case of Lombard and Sicilian, in Stern von Dieter, Nomachi Motoki, Bojan Belić, Linguistic Regionalism in Eastern Europe and Beyond. Minority, Regional and Literary Microlanguages, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2018, pp. 275-276.
«On the other hand, regional languages, which are still termed ‘dialects’ by most people and institutions (including academia) in Italy, historically tend to have a stronger relationship with Italian, whose speakers on the whole do not object to being seen as ‘Italians’ (and at the same time as ‘Lombard’, ‘Sicilian etc.). […] Going back to the term ‘dialects’ (dialetti), which is still in common use in Italy to refer to its regional languages, even though we are aware that the term is sometimes used to refer to non-recognized local languages, we are strongly opposed to its use, as the term is not precise on the one hand, and carries negative connotations on the other, referring to a language variety that is spoken only in low domains by a restricted number of people, often with low levels of education. Another feature that the term ‘dialect’ seems to imply is that the language varieties referred to in such a way do not possess any economic value.»

[8] Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, Proemio, in Archivio Glottologico Italiano, n. 1, Ermanno Loescher, 1873, pp. 9-16. URL consultato il 15 luglio 2024.

[9] Tullio De Mauro, Una lingua d’elezione, in Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita, I, 4ª ed., Bari, Editori Laterza, 1976 [1960], pp. 16-21.

[10] A titolo di esempio, si potrebbe citare la situazione occorrente nel Regno di Sardegna sabaudo. Nel possedimento insulare del Regno, il ruolo di lingua tetto era stato adempiuto non dall'italiano, a differenza della vicina Corsica, bensì dalle lingue iberiche fino alla seconda metà del Settecento; fu intorno a tale periodo che l'italiano vi sarebbe stato introdotto ufficialmente per mezzo di norme mirate alla diffusione di detta lingua tra gli isolani: tale manovra ineriva a un allineamento di tale territorio verso l'orbita egemonica del Piemonte, nel quale l'italiano era, invece, già stato eletto come lingua ufficiale ben due secoli prima. In Valle d'Aosta e Savoia, al contrario, era e sarebbe stato ancora il francese a occupare a lungo una posizione di prestigio. Cfr. Ines Loi Corvetto, I Savoia e le "vie" dell'unificazione linguistica, in Ignazio Putzu, Gabriella Mazzon, Lingue, letterature, nazioni. Centri e periferie tra Europa e Mediterraneo, 2012.; Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, Peter Koch, Daniela Marzo, Manuale di linguistica sarda, De Gruyter, 2017.; Tullio De Mauro, Storia linguistica dell'Italia unita, Bari, Editori Laterza, 1991.

[11] Enciclopedia Treccani: Storia della lingua italiana e del suo utilizzo negli Stati preunitari, su treccani.it.

[12] M. Voghera - Università di Salerno. 4. Le lingue d'Italia (italiano - dialetti): Com'è noto l'Italia ha vissuto fino ad anni molto recenti una situazione di diffusa e profonda diglossia) (PDF), su parlaritaliano.it.

[13] Tullio De Mauro, Una lingua d’elezione, in Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita, I, 4ª ed., Bari, Editori Laterza, 1976 [1960], p. 43.

[14] Pietro Trifone, Italiano e dialetto dal 1861 ad oggi, su Treccani.it, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.

[15] Corrado Grassi, Alberto A. Sobrero, Tullio Telmon, Latino, italiano, dialetti, in Introduzione alla dialettologia italiana, I, 5ª ed., Bari, Editori Laterza, 2003, pp. 26-30.

[16] Dialetti, su Treccani. URL consultato il 20 marzo 2024.

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