Talk:Torre Valley dialect

Westernmost Slavic dialect
The source cited in the article (Jakopin 1998) claims that the Torre Valley dialect is the westernmost Slavic dialect. This needs additional clarification. The westernmost point in the Municipality of Lusavera is about 13° 12' 19" E, whereas the westernmost point in the Czech Republic (in a nářečně různorodé oblasti 'mixed dialect area') is 12° 05' 29" E, or about 80 km further west. Doremo (talk) 15:29, 17 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The sentence is completely clear, but it may be inaccurate. A source is needed to rebut the claim in the article. --Eleassar my talk 16:06, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

It should probably simply be deleted; it's of no practical importance, is probably inaccurate (as stated), and is a factoid often claimed for various Slavic languages/dialects: In terms of geographic territory, the Czech Republic is clearly furthest west, and the Czech spoken there is clearly further geographically west than Torre Valley Slovene. However, the various dialects spoken in that part of the Czech Republic are probably recent imports that replaced Sudeten German after 1945. So Jakopin's claim could be justified if it refers only to living Slavic dialects indigenous to a territory. However, that's not something he specifies. Doremo (talk) 16:32, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * "the westernmost Slavic language, Upper Sorbian" (John Hewson & Vít Bubeník. 1997. Tense and aspect in Indo-European languages: theory, typology, diachrony)
 * "westernmost Slavic dialect (Resian)" (Anton Perdih. 2004. Zbornik mednarodnego posveta Sledovi evropske preteklosti)
 * "Czech, the westernmost Slavic language" (Vít Bubeník. 2001. Morphological and syntactic change in Medieval Greek and South Slavic languages)
 * "the westernmost Slavic nation, the Drevlans at Hamburg" (Frank A. Kmietowicz. 1982. Slavic mythical beliefs)


 * I'll remove 'Slavic', but will leave 'the most western Slovene dialect', because it describes the extent of Slovene language. If I find a source describing it as the most western reach of South Slavic languages, I'll add this too. --Eleassar my talk 17:39, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree that it's accurately described as the westernmost Slovene dialect. As for other South Slavic, the only unexpected contender would be the Molise Croatian dialect (14° 39' E), and both Torre Valley Slovene and Istrian Croatian (13° 30' E) are further west than that. Doremo (talk) 18:15, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I've expanded the article a bit and added some references. Further work would be welcome. It's really interesting to me that there are Croatian-speaking villages at the eastern Italian coast. --Eleassar my talk 18:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Italy continually surprises me with its very old linguistic enclaves: Cimbrian language, Griko language, etc. Doremo (talk) 05:52, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * One has to take into account that until 1945, the western areas of Bohemia were inhabited by Sudeten Germans, so no autochthonous Czech dialect was spoken there. Even now, I'd guess that either standard Czech or the standard colloquial (obecná čestina) is spoken there. The two Sorbian languages are located much more eastwards, close to the border between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. So, I think it's safe to say that the Torre Valley dialect was, until the mid 1940s, the westernmost Slavic dialect. Now, it's probably not true any more: Czech is spoken several kilometers westrwards than before 1945, and in addition, many of the westernmost Slovene villages (those in the municipality of Montenars / Gorjani) have been Italianized (especially after the massive emigration after 1975). Viator slovenicus (talk) 17:20, 19 March 2012 (UTC)