Talk:Venetian language

apoteca
Text says "apoteca	pharmacy	farmacia	Apotheke (German)"

Why German and not Greek (just as Apotheke is from Greek, bodega in Spanish, apothicaire in French, etc.) ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.143.217.180 (talk) 00:02, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Color in Infobox
Someone changed the color in this page's infobox, complaining that lawngreen is an eyesore. I agree, it's not the best color, but the reason it was there is that is the (current) color in the template for all Indo-European languages. If you have any better suggestions for a better color scheme (one that gives a unique color for all the known language families), please contribute to the discussion at the WikiProject Languages. And, I encourage anyone interested to help out with the project. There are still a lot of languages with articles not using the template.--Tox 11:11, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia in Venetian
If you are interested to support the creation of a Venetian Wikipedia you can go to:click here to see the request for a ven.wikipedia. Skafa 12:23, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Padovano?
I would be interested to see a discussion of Padovano in this article. Linguistically I expect it's just a dialect of Veneto, but I think it has some distinctive features. --Trovatore 23:10, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I think that, discussing about dialetto padovano, we would have to have more users coming from Padua :-) Giving you a short outlook on it, there is not a "unique" dialect in the area of Padua: it is a bit different going from "higher" plain (e.g. they say "eo xé", the x being like the s in "rose") to the "lower" plain (e.g. "eo zé", the z being pronounced like ts in "tsar"), as well as coming inside the city from the countryside (e.g. in the hurban area we use "iù/lù" for "he", while they use "eo/elo" for "he"); but even inside the city area we have different kinds of dialect, depending on disctricts but also on social classes (e.g. polite Paduan dialect is very near to the one spoken by dominant classes in Venice, another city where spoken dialect depends on many factors). But we are anyway speaking about different kinds of the same language, so we have no problem to communicate :-) even if nowadays the city area has Italian as primary language. A famous writer in Padovano (once called Pavano) was of course Ruzante, but there are minor authors even in recent times. Filippo83 (talk) 14:16, 31 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Trovatore, you're right, sort of. The main problem is that this article is mislabeled. It's really about Venetan, of which Paduan and Venetian are sub-varieties. It would come as quite a surprise -- varying from amusing to offensive -- to padovani to learn that they speak Venetian. 47.32.20.133 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:54, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Veronese Riddle
This article claims the Veronese Riddle is in Venetian; the article on the Riddle says it's a transition between late Latin and early Italian. Which is it? Binabik80 16:03, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Now I remember i inserted that link. I tried to be succint and in doing so i could not explain everything. I believe what is being said here is not at odds with the other article, see my comment here. By the way, this article has told me something i was not quite aware of. I live in Verona and i have always noticed strong similarities between Spanish and Venetian. Fascinating. --Wikipedius 23:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Language family tree
I inserted a tree because the "X branches off after Y" language does not make sense to me. It's true there is a partial tree in the box (if a tree pruned of all branches but one can be called a tree) but that tree does not show how Venetian is related to French and Spanish. &mdash;Tamfang 17:57, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Um, ok. I tried to clarify the intended meaning; see if it makes sense now. (By the way, that parag was not mine.) But perhaps we should omit the explanation althogether and just keep the conclusion, namely: "In the traditional classification, Venetian is more closely related to French and Spanish (in that order) than to Italian." After all, the internal node names like "Gallo-Iberian" and "Gallo-Romance" are just hypothetical entities, not real languages. Moreover, i gather that the tree assumed in this paragraph is only an opinion of some linguists, not the Absolute Truth. In fact, it seems that Romance is one of the examples that are usually invoked to show that language evolution cannot be described by a tree. All the best, Jorge Stolfi 23:01, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm satisfied with your new language. Thanks.  &mdash;Tamfang 04:45, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

French examples
Given/if that the closest big language to Venetian is French & not Italian, it might be nice to have French example sentences along with the Italian ones. If there are no objections I might add those in. --Adamgarrigus 18:09, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I would agree on saying that venetian bears a good deal of resemblance to French and Spanish (and even more to Occitan and catalan), yet I would not agree on describing it as a Gallo-romance language, provided that celts never succeeded in invading the land, which could explain why it differs from neighbouring languages such as Emilian, Lombard and Piedmontese, but retains area-related similarities with them.  exemples : sounding intra-vowel consonants [kaZa](=house), but vowel endings present in other common words [latE](=milk) instead of  italian gallo-romance "lat", "let" and franch "lait". for reference see Graffi-Scalise (don't remember the title, sorry). s-ciao vostro. morteaglistolti

Veneto isn't Spanish
To set the record straight (until someone disagrees with me!), to say that Veneto and Spanish are "are mutually comprehensible to some extent" is completely inappropriate. This is true in so far as they are both Romance languages, but it gives the impression (and believe me, this is its intent) that they are somehow more closely related than Veneto is to Italian. This is quite frankly ridiculous. I am a native speaker of Spanish and have lived in Veneto for several years now. When I speak in Spanish, I might as well be speaking in Greek. Of course they get a word here or there, but I should hope so since they are both derived from Latin. And quite frankly, when I hear Veneto being spoken (rather frequently) I understand what I understand not because I know Spanish, but because I know Italian.

The reason for this desperate attempt to try to link Veneto to Spanish and simultaneously distance it from Italian is, in my opinion, not based on evidence but on wishful thinking. The fact that Veneto has erroneously been coupled up with Spanish, Catalan (see their language version!) and French (rather less for some reason)is a recent mistake made by people who are not linguists. It is based on geographical location rather than hard evidence. If someone disagrees with me, please cite a reliable source. (To save you lots of wasted time, don't bother, because you won't find one). Certainly Veneto (and other north eastern languages like Friulano) have a lot in common with Iberian languages, but that is to be expected. If you do a very simple pseudo-linguistic exercise by comparing random phrases in Spanish, Veneto and Italian, it becomes immediately obvious which ones look (and sound) more similar.

So why is it necessary to include these comparisons between Spanish and Veneto? Here's my theory. Veneto is a minority language with no official status (not even in Veneto). It has traditionally been referred to (as it still is by most Veneti) a "dialect" (dialetto), and there are lots of patriotic Veneti who want to distance it from Italian, which is for some absurd reason treated like an enemy. The fact of the matter is that fewer and fewer young Veneti are capable or indeed want to speak Veneto, which is continuously being seen by young generations as provincial.

All of this is related to the ridiculous idea that many north eastern Italians have that they are "Celtic". Besides being historically and genetically incorrect, it becomes immediately obvious to the visitor of Veneto that the people have absolutely nothing in common with the residual Celtic peoples of Europe. The reason for this legend about Italian Celts is based on xenophobia and racism. The Celtic cross (which remains a purely religious symbol in Ireland) has been perverted into a symbol of fascism by various far right-wing Italians. The racism is rife (take a look at the recent situation in Via Anelli in Padova where a Berlin-type wall was erected to separate the Italians from the foreigners.) There have even been people making claims that there are astounding links between Veneto and the Celtic languages!

So, to conclude my ranting, is it really necessary to include all of this "mutually comprehensible" rubbish in an otherwise serious (and well written) article? And if so, is it asking too much to include a reliable reference or source, rather than pure fantastical speculation? (I would include a translation in Spanish, but I don't know if very many Veneti would have dictionaries to translate it!) Massimo377 02:04, 10 February 2007 (UTC) Apart from the fact that Romans wiped out Celts from northern Italy very early(if i'm not wrong), but were'nt Veneti an italic people unrelated to Celts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.44.22.252 (talk) 03:46, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Veneto is like Written Italian pronounced with the spanish phonology.Kasumi-genx (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:35, 25 February 2010 (UTC).

Goldoni and Commedia dell'arte
Jorge/everybody: Perhaps I shouldn't have deleted the old version straight away but the wording was really awkard. Pierrot (I still can't figure out what Pierrot has to do with venetian language...), Arlecchino etc were not invented by Goldoni (therefore can't be considered his characters), and Goldoni himself is famous because he reformed the commedia dell'arte. The current version is much better than the previous, anyway, although Arlecchino had a significant role in Goldoni's plays (no doubt about it), i think the "commedia dell'arte" as mentioned in the article should be considered "italian" rather than venetian. Also, I am not so sure that Goldoni's plays made Arlecchino become part of world's folklore... I presume this is questionable... perhaps contributed to make. I think the text can be improved further. Your thoughts?Lorenzino 21:06, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I do not know, really. Pierrot was indeed a big mistake of mine, and Colombina seems to be too. But I still believe that the world knows Arlecchino as a theatrical character almost only through Goldoni's plays; see e.g. . Indeed, the world seems to believe (as I did until yesterday) that Goldoni's theater is typical "Commedia dell'Arte"; whereas now I have learned from Carlo Goldoni that he has even been called its nemesis.


 * Arlecchino is also well known as a Mardi Gras costume, and indeed he and his love Colombina are traditional items in Brazilian Carnaval's folklore. But I do not know whether that folklore came to Portugal from France, or directly from Venetian/Italian Carnevale.  In the former case, Goldoni may have helped. How popular was the Commedia dell'Arte (other than Goldoni's) in France?


 * All the best, Jorge Stolfi 05:19, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Writing system
Jorge, I amendend your contribution. Your clarification was inconsistent with the article itself: "Otherwise, the spelling rules are mostly those of Italian, except that x traditionally sounds similar to the z in English zero. As in Italian, the letter s between vowels usually represents the [z] sound, so one writes ss in those contexts to get a simple [s]: basa = [baza] ("(he/she) kisses"), bassa = [basa] ("low")." We had just stated that the [z] sound is written with an x, and one line below now I read it's represented with an s. I wrote about the two different systems used although i believe the x/s is the better and it's also the one used in the Wikipedia Veneta http://vec.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiuto:Convenzsion_de_scritura. Cheers Lorenzino 14:43, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
 * The wording was a bit confusing, but not inconsistent. The letter x, which is not used in Italian, is pronounced [z] if used in Venetian, e.g. in Venice tradition "el ghe xe". But still, in all traditions, s between two vowels is pronounced [z], too, according to the Italian model; as in baso ("kiss"). On the other hand, in all traditions, s at the beginning of a word is usually pronounced [s] -- again, as in Italian.
 * Note that while there never was an "official" spelling, there is' a centuries-old tradition of spelling Venetian with some approximation of the Italian spelling (Keep in mind that, for the last 150 years or more, anyone who knew how to write had learned the Italian system at school. Check for example the site of Francesco Artico, which is representative of all Venetial texts I have seen so far.
 * The modern systems, like the one adopted for the Venetian Wikipedia, may be popular among those dreaming to revive Venetian, Lega Nord style or whatever. But I don't quite see the point of that effort.  Presently Venetian is valuable (a) for its literary heritage (which, while not negligible, is dwarfed by that of Tuscan); and (b) to old folks like me, for its sentimental value. Introducing a new spelling system will negate (a) and (b). So what is the point?
 * 100 years ago one may have debated whether teaching Italian to the Venetans was worth the effort. Perhaps it was a stupid decision, but anyway it was taken. Now that the effort has been done, going back would be triple stupid: all the effort again (to teeach them the "new standard Venetian"), only to get to a situation where the "market" for each citizen would be reduced from a community of 50 million(?) to one of 2 million, with a much smaller literary baggage, zero world recognition, etc.  Even the most ardent separatist must see that exchanging Italian for Venetian does not make economic sense.  No, thanks. I am happy to enjoy what is left of Venetian while I live (obviously, spelled the way I am used to); but I will not feel very sorry if the language dies before I do.  All the best, Jorge Stolfi 15:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Sir, I don't know what you are talking about. I'm not a separatist and I don't vote for Lega Nord. I thought this was a discussion about the language but here I find your political moanings. Fair enough. Going back to the point I personally prefer the x/s system as it reflects the phonetics with basically no exceptions. And spelling systems are agreed to reflect a spoken language, not the other way round. The s/ss leads to lots of exceptions, more than in italian. And, just for your reference, in the proper italian diction the intervocalic s should be pronounced sorda not sonora. Casa shouldn't be pronounced [kaza] but [kasa] and it IS still pronounced like that in many regions in Italy. The italian intervocalic s is different from the venetan. It's like trying to fit a suit to someone who's a different size. Different languages can have different rules...! I don't find irrespectful for anybody, not even for old literature that I love anyway. I find your final sentence much more offensive, if a bomb were dropped on the colosseum I'd feel DEEPLY sorry. And IMHO (and in Unesco's too...) linguistic heritage is as precious as architectural one. But these are ony opinions and they don't matter anyway. The fact is that this system exists and is used, therefore I think this should be reported. Anyway I'm happy enough with the current version. Regards. Lorenzino 23:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Dear Mr. Lorenzino, sorry if my words souded offensive; that was absolutely not my intent. Rest assured that I did not mean to say that anyone who loves dialect or who favors a new spelling votes for Lega Nord or whatever!


 * As for the spelling system, my point is that at the moment the spelling system of Venetian is the traditional one, based on the Italian spelling. With all its faults and inconsistencies, it has the weight of some 500 years of literature, and I believe that it is the most "natural" for most speakers, because they learned it at school.  I agree that the new spelling systems are more logical, but they are still proposals, and it is not clear whether they will (or should) be widely accepted; therefore they should not be given precedence over the traditional system. (They could be a separate subsection, or, if that is more than a couple of paragraphs, a separate article.)
 * As for my final comment, the difference between a language like Venetian and a building like the Coliseum is that the latter is made of bricks, the former is made of people. It is certainly worth "wasting" a few bricks to preserve an important building, for our enjoyment; but it is not acceptable to impoverish some people's lives for the sake of preserving a language.  If someone chooses freely to learn Venetian, preserve it, document it, etc. (like we have been doing here), that is  wonderful.  But if someone tries to impose Venetian on other people, or tries to prevent people from switching to Italian, or just tries to convince people to use it, that is not so wonderful anymore: it means trying to use other people as building material for a museum, for one's own enjoyment.  It is like trying to convince women to use 19th century-style baleen corsets, because some men think that they look nicer that way.  Or like lamenting the end of slavery — which, by te way, was far more fundamental to the culture of the Americas than Venetian is to the culture of Veneto.


 * Man has been speaking languages for the last 100,000 years at least, and it seems that no language can live longer than 1000-2000 years. Within that time span, if a language does not lose ground to another language, it mutates to the point of incomprehensibility.  So, in the history of mankind there have been probably a hundred dead languages for every language that is alive today. On the other hand, about a hundred new creole languages have been born in the past 500 years alone, and many major languages are clearly diverging and will probbaly split in a few centuries more. All this is to say the loss of a language is nowhere as bad as the esxtinction of an animal species, but more like the death of a person: a sad event for its friends, but something we must learn to accept as part of the natural order of things.  All the best, Jorge Stolfi 06:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * two more things.


 * first of all, venetian is still alive, although we youngsters speak it in a different way from our grand-parents, using words and concepts they didn't know of "a so ndà zercare na storia in internèt ma me go ciapà on virus che me ga incatillà el ardisc". still it is a language, spoken by 2 million people (although according to an inquiry led by Il Gazzettino, whose quality has often proven to be dubious but still is a major area newspaper, roughly 75% of the venetian population speaks it at home, thus much more than 3 millions) and it should therefore be granted at least local official status, such as city council use. nowadays catalan, which was forbidden by Franco, is still spoken by 6 million people, in spite of 40 years of prohibition, and is now flourishing. it is not because it is some idiots who defend italian dialects that they must not be defended, in order to spite their face!!!


 * secondly, the θ sound that was described as regular in the central variant, is seen as mispronounciation (ła zhepoła) in my zone (polesine) where it is substituted by an allophone, whose symbol is unknown to me. it's another hissing sound, pronounced as an english "th", where the tongue is not placed between the teeth but right behind them, and makes it similar to a regular s, which is also, by the way, substituted by a weird sh-like sound   (sorry, can't find the IPA) . any clues? s-ciao vostro. morteaglistolti.

Venetian in Dalmatia?
I am from Dalmatia, and so far I haven't heard there exist any remnants of Venetian language here. Some citation or source to confirm it would be in order, otherwise it should be removed. --Arny 14:12, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

it's confirmed by Ethnologue - Lorenzino 23:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, Ethnologue is not always accurate. Maybe we should write something like "According to Ethnologue, ...". --zeno 19:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, Venetian slowly supplanted the Istrian and Dalmatian spoken in those areas (due to their being parts of the Venetian Republic until the end of the 18th C.) Of course, by then the numbers of Romance speakers compared to Croats was very small and combine this with the ethnic cleansing of the area by Tito's Yugoslavia after WWII and there's not likely to be much trace left by now. Seek100 17:44, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Venetian used to be the main language of Dalmatia (almost the only one spoken in the coastal areas). The region had a clear latin legacy and its original romance language (dalmatian) gradually transformed and was absorbed in the venetian language. even in areas out of the venetian control (ragusa)the venetian language was the main language and the slavs living in the rural internal areas (their immigration was helped and sustained by the venetian republic) when moved to the towns to study learnt the language, as it was the cultural language for both latin and non-latin inhabitants. Its importance decreased in the nineteenth century when the croats coming from the internal areas became majority (with the help of the austrians, historically enemy of the italians, seen as a possible destabilizing element) and was (almost totally) erased from Dalmatia during the yugoslav years after years of fight between italians and croats (both behaved in a terrible way...forcing, periodically, the other part to speak their own language if they didn't want to be killed or persecuted). with the final yugoslav victory the italians (sons of the former "venetian dalmatians") were forced to leave the country and many of them were killed. even if the venetian presence in dalmatia has, by now, almost disappeared its presence is stil clearly visible  (the majority of the towns has a distinct venetian heritage). the places which remained empty after the ethnic cleansing were populated by slavs coming from other regions  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.14.36.152 (talk) 14:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Of course, this is not true. In Dalmatia Croats were clear majority since settlement and in coastal cities from 11th and 12th century onward. Sure, Venetian dominance influenced the population, many Italians came, but nevertheless they were always minority, 10-15% maximum. Even in cities were minority. Only in Zadar between world wars Italians were majority because many Croatians left the city after Italian occupation, others were expelled later by Italian authorities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.60.11.104 (talk) 23:36, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Some errors
Please, follow the changes in Italian Wikipedia. This article has a lot of mistakes and this is similar to the old italian version. --Ilario 01:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Help with translation
I'm currently working on a script intended to create short articles on political parties on a variety of wikipedias simultaneously. However, in order for the technique to work I need help with translations to various languages. If you know any of the languages listed at User:Soman/Lang-Help, then please help by filling in the blanks. For example I need help with Venetian. Thanks, --Soman 15:08, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Questionable sentence in intro
"'Although commonly referred to as an Italian dialect (diałeto, dialetto), even by its speakers, it does not descend from the Italian language but has its own morphology, syntax and lexicon.'"

This sentence makes absolutely no sense at all. I'm trying to count how many non sequiturs there are in there: I'm trying to come up with a better formulation, but maybe somebody else has some ideas too. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Having its own morphology, syntax and lexicon is neither a criterion for not being a dialect, nor for not being descended from Italian. Dialects too have their own morphologies, syntax and lexica, and so do things that are descended from something else.
 * 2) The sentence is playing fast and loose with the concept of "Italian" in the first place. If by "Italian" is meant the modern standard variety of Italian, then of course Veneziano isn't descended from it; they are obviously sister varieties descended from whatever historical ancestor(s) they had. If by "Italian" is meant the historical ancestor of today's standard Italian, well, that needs to be explained in the "Classification" section.
 * 3) In dialect geography, "having dialect status within a single language unit" and "being descended from a single, unique historical ancestor" are not really the same thing anyway.


 * It should be noted that according to the article, just less than half of the people in the Veneto speak Venetian. I would argue that number is even less, since the overwhelming majority of the natives speak Venetian Italian (or an Italianized Venetian), not Venetian per say. 66.183.217.31 20:24, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * "They are obviously sister varieties descended from whatever historical ancestors they had"; the problem is that Venetian has a more recent common ancestor with varieties of Romance spoken outside of Italy than with Tuscan/Italian itself. As far as I can see, it's classified as Gallo-Romance along with Oïl varieties (French), Gallo-Italic (Lombard, Ligurian, Piedmontese), Franco-Provençal/Arpitan, Occitano-Romance (Catalan, Occitan) and Rhaeto-Romance (Romansh, Friulian, Ladin). This group is distinct from standard Italian, which as a literary form of Tuscan is an Italo-Dalmatian variety along with Neapolitan, Sicilian and Corsican. saɪm duʃan Talk|Contribs 04:51, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Tulcea, Romania??
"Venetian was spread through the world by the massive emigration from the Veneto region between 1870 and 1905. Those migrants created large Venetian-speaking communities in Brazil, Mexico, and Romania..." This statement is incorrect regarding Romania. There was no migration to Romania during this period and any traces of Venetian/ Italian language are rooted in trading outposts established much earlier (11th-17th centuries). Nonetheless, the article on Tulcea makes no reference to any Venetian connection, so I don't know if the statement about Tulcea or Romania is valid at all. Can anyone confirm? 66.183.217.31 20:36, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

One more thing... It should also be noted that in Mexico and Brazil, the Venetian that may be spoken should likely be categorized as a variation (i.e. Mexican Venetian, Brasilian Venetian). If it does indeed exist in some form in Romania, the same would apply; however, we are speaking about centuries, so at best it would be Venetian-influenced Romanian. 66.183.217.31 20:45, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Croatia and Slovenia
Well it makes sense that there should be speakers of Venetian in these two countries judging by the centuries of their rule. Is there however any proof from their individual censa that Venetian language is declared? Or is it simply taken for granted to be Venetian when infact the locals have actually declared Italian? I always thought that the number of indigenous Western Romance language speakers of the Adriatic were mostly descended from the Italians who settled there during the interwar period; I was led to believe that the pre-settled Western Romance speakers who surely did speak Venetian embraced the Standard Italian language and an Italian national identity. Evlekis 17:00, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Curiosity
Just a small addend here. Recently I went to Italy together with my mother for the first time, who speaks the 'Talian' (Venetian variant spoken in Brazil). We had an appointment with relatives from my father´s side, which are from the Vicenza vicinity. My mother is discendant from the Verona vicinity. When we met these people, after 130 years that my mother´s family had left the Veneto region, they identified strong Veronese accent/dialect on her talk. That was surprising.

Besides that, a common belief here in Brazil is that Venetian became the most spoken italian dialect here because there was a massive wave of immigrants from the Veneto. The italians from other regions had to adapt to be understood, so it is not odd to have people here which family roots are from Calabria, Friuli or Toscana that DO speak Venetian.

Sadly, during the WWII, there was strong political persecution against italian, german and japanese heritage here in Brazil, so very few people still do talk some Venetian. Most people who do still speak some venetian are in their fifties or older.

I myself, understand a few words, but most of the time I talk regular Italian (did a course) when I want to make my 'nonno' happy (son of a Veronese immigrant).

Ciao! --HSeganfredo (talk) 04:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Western Romance
I thought the Western Romance languages were supposed to be defined by a plural in -s. But here Venetian is listed as a Western Romance language while it seems to exhibit an Italian plural: gati, gate. So what's the matter? Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 18:52, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The classification of Romance languages seems rather arbitrary. One can arrange any set of odd things, by any random set of criteria, into a nice-looking tree.  However, that is a pointless exercise that is likely to confound rather than enlighten.  Over-detailed trees, like SIL's, are inherently arbitrary and full of contradictions (like the one you note).  Depending on which grammatical features you consider important, you will get a different tree.  It seems fairly certain that the Romance languages branched off from a Vulgar Latin between ~400 CE and ~1200 CE, but since there are practically no written records of that process, we do not know the branching sequence and pattern.  Very likely it was a largely simultaneous N-way split, as the Empire broke into N independent countries, rather than a sequence of binary splits.  Moreover, Vulgar Latin was the language of Roman soldiers, who were mostly foreigners and were often shuffled across the Empire; which meant that Vulgar Latin was not a well-defined entity, and was not geographically organized.  It is also likely that neighboring Romance languages kept influencing each other for centuries, before their identities were fixed.  So the only meaningful tree that we can draw is a single big box, with one thick fuzzy branch coming in (Vulgar Latin) and a few dozen branches coming out (the Romance languages) some 8 centuries later.  --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:35, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

B-class: that's why
The matter is that this article is not very scientific and objective as it is disturbed by politics. That's why, rightly, this is a B-class article! I give you two examples of true statements which cannot be found in the article: - the Venetian language is not officially recognised in Italy as a minority language; - Italian (Tuscan) was adopted by Venetians (as official and culture language) well before the unification of Italy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.140.0.27 (talk) 14:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Language or dialect
Let me get this straight, 2 million Italians in Veneto don't speak Italian? Can we get some official information on this, preferrably from the Italian government, as it's kind of strange. If not, we should move. I'd first like to see if there's some good reason for this. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 16:09, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Nobody said this. 80.117.95.181 (talk) 18:18, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, so the primary language of 2 million Italians is not Italian?! Its just a matter of wording, you know what I mean. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 18:46, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The primary language of many more Italians is not Italian. The use of the so-called "dialects" is very widespread, not as once, but still very widespread. 87.15.237.185 (talk) 08:49, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Absolutely right! I'm Venetian and my mother tongue is Venetian. We are very proud of our language: I can speak Venetian of course in Veneto, Trentino, Pordenone, Gorizia, Trieste, Istria and also somewhere in Dalmatia (I spoke Venetian in Hvar). Here you can find your source: .--151.30.168.5 (talk) 22:12, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I understand, I meant no offense, Venetian is beautiful and colorful. I'm just finding it a little hard to believe that its not a form of Italian. I mean, its very strange to state that 2,000,000 ethnic Italians, or more(!), do not speak the Italian language as their primary language. Surely Venetian and Italian do not have the same relationship as, for example, Italian and Portuguese? All I'm asking is for some kind of official state document or maybe a census on spoken language that will confirm the title of the article. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 22:37, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * . Do you understand the Italian language?--151.30.168.5 (talk) 23:45, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The first article:
 * Venetian language is recognised by Regione Veneto but not by Italian Republic. Living here, I would even say that (on almost 5million inhabitants of Veneto) 3 to 4 million people, just here (we would have then to add the speakers at least in Trentino, west and south Friuli, Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, Fiume/Rijeka and some town in Dalmatia, and even we would not include the settlers in Brasil and Mexico who speak a kind of Venetian language) speak Venetian as their native language, because just in the cities and bigger towns Italian is the primary language: but there is no real census on it. I think we can consider the whole of Venetian population as bilingual (Venetian-speakers, Italian-speakers, Italian or foreign immigrants): but still I have to find a precise research on it; it is common sense for us, but I agree Wikipedia has other rules. Also, I can assure you that in the most part of Trentino, Friuli, Venezia Giulia (even Slovenian side) and Istria, the Venetian language is, if not spoken, well understood: so I modified the incipit just a few minutes ago.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Filippo83 (talk • contribs) 01:02, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I know enough of it to understand the word "dialetto". Could you tell me on which page is the reference to the phrase "Venetian language." -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 23:50, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe you have to read the article: '"Although commonly referred to as an Italian dialect (diałeto, dialetto), even by its speakers, it displays notable structural differences from Italian proper. It belongs to the Northern Italian group within Romance languages. On March 28, 2007 the Regional Council of Vèneto officially recognized the existence of the Venetian Language (Łéngua Vèneta) by passing with a vast majority the law on the "tutela e valorizzazione della lingua e della cultura veneta" with the vote of both ruling and opposition parties.".--151.30.168.5 (talk) 01:10, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Again, I'm simply asking for a source. This is Wikipedia. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 01:14, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This is the law.


 * Art. 2 - Lingua veneta. (Venetian language) 1. Le specifiche parlate storicamente utilizzate nel territorio veneto e nei luoghi in cui esse sono state mantenute da comunità che hanno conservato in modo rilevante la medesima matrice costituiscono il veneto o lingua veneta.
 * What is your problem with this article?--151.30.168.5 (talk) 01:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you, may I suggest you post it in the article to prevent any misunderstandings? Or, since you're indefinitely banned, would you like me to do it? I'm asking because its your source. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 01:30, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I kindly suggest to read the article, because we just find that: "On March 28, 2007 the Regional Council of Vèneto officially recognized the existence of the Venetian Language (Łéngua Vèneta) by passing with a vast majority the law on the "tutela e valorizzazione della lingua e della cultura veneta" with the vote of both ruling and opposition parties.". Do you want to write another time the same thing, maybe?--151.30.168.5 (talk) 01:44, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I said to add the source, not the text. Maybe I'm being too complicated, my apologies. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 02:32, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Your requests were:
 * Let me get this straight, 2 million Italians in Veneto don't speak Italian? Can we get some official information on this
 * All I'm asking is for some kind of official state document or maybe a census on spoken language that will confirm the title of the article.
 * Could you tell me on which page is the reference to the phrase "Venetian language.
 * So, only your third request was for a source about the phrase Venetian language. Are you too complicated? It could be... But your apologies are accepted, as I'm concerned.--151.30.184.37 (talk) 08:24, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Sporc vs Onto
Someone replaced sporc[o] by onto in several examples that refer to a dirty dog. Is this correct? To my ears, sporc means "dirty" in general sense, while ont[o] (akin to Italian unto) is more specific, namely "greasy". I would not use onto for mud. Is this correct? Is it a matter of regional variation? (I am Brazilian-born but my parents were recent immigrants from Treviso and I grew up speaking Venetian at home.) --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 03:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Willowin (talk) 08:40, 24 September 2009 (UTC)I wasn't the one who did it, but "sporc" is definitively not Venetian, it's Venetian Italian. "Onto" means dirty, as well as greasy(greasy being dirty by grease). My mum referred to me as "a te si' tuto onto"(=you are all dirty) when I was simply dirty after playing in the fields with my friends. And no grease was involved. I grew up in Veneto (40km from Venice)and lived there for 26years,my mother tongue is Venetian(a language, not a dialect).08:40, 24 September 2009 (UTC)08:40, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Bias tag in History section.
There are portions of this section that need some more careful word choices and phrasing

Examples:

"the once proud language was eclipsed" "Tuscan which was imposed"

and so on. "once proud" and "imposed" are a bit strong in meaning. There are a few other examples within that section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.61.141.157 (talk) 16:07, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Neuter gender?
The article claimed that
 * Some pronouns retain a neuter form reserved for abstract nouns (par questo "for this reason", de queło "about that fact" n.) different from the masculin (par 'sto qua "for this boy/dog" , de queło là "about that man/book" m.) while in Italian masculine forms also work for the neuter (per questo="for this boy/reason"; di quello="about that man/fact").

I see no evidence here for a neuter gender. The difference between "'sto" and "questo" is euphonic and/or sense (like Italian "cosa fai" and "cos'è"). To show a neuter gender one has to show a 3rd declension for adjectives or artiles, other than masculine/feminine, used for a special set of nouns. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 19:49, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Venetian Italian should be discussed in a separate alrticle
Trying to discuss conservative Venetian and Venetian Italian in the same article is realy confusing. The latter should be only mentioned here, and dicsussed in a separate article. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 19:49, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Incipit of the article
The form I suggest, before it is once more "undone": ''Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as native language by over two million people,[1] mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where on almost five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometime spoken and anyway well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia Giulia, Istria and some town of Dalmatia, an area of six to seven million people.'' I think it is neutral, and it is a good compromise between "numbering" effective Venetian-speakers (in my opinion, since I live in Padua, they are more than just 2million people in Veneto) and talking about areas where it is mostly understood if not spoken (I can understand it is a difficult concept for the ones who do not live in an area like the one among Italy, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia).

P.S. I beg your pardon if my English is not perfect :-) correct my phrases if you find some mistake!

How many speakers in North-East Italy?
The article talks about 2million people speaking Venetian language, but I think they are a larger number. Anyway, the only data I found (since there is no official census) is this (may 2009) poll: http://www.demos.it/a00334.php

The question was: "how frequently do you use [your] dialect?"; and it was referred to the regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and the province of Trento. These percentages refer to the people who usually speak dialect in this area:


 * in family: 67.2% (74.3% in 2001);
 * with friends: 72.8% (78.7% in 2001);
 * on the work place: 43.7% (57% in 2001).

In Friuli-VG we have a census on spoken languages, because Friulian is recognised by Italy: usually Venetian-spekers are included among the Italian-speakers ( http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friuli_Venezia_Giulia#Lingue ); non-romance minorities in Veneto and the province of Trento are present but count very few people; so we have a total of about 6,050,000 people to consider. Of them, about 4,400,000 people usually speak Venetian at least with their friends, but they were up to 4,750,000 people in 2001. And we are talking about North-East Italy only (excluding Istria etc.). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Filippo83 (talk • contribs) 09:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Inconsistency: Venetian not Gallo-Italic, but Gallo-Italian (Ethonologue classification and terminology
Hello everyone: I would like to point out an inconsistency in this article. The language table (top right) shows Venetian as a "Gallo-Italic" language, which it is not, at least not according to the Ethonologue classification, which is as follows (see Northern Italian and Ethnologue):

* Gallo-Italic group (as a subset group) o Piedmontese o Ligurian o Lombard + Western Lombard + Eastern Lombard o Emiliano-Romagnolo + Emiliano + Romagnolo * Venetian group (included as Gallo-Italian according to Ethnologue) o Venetian proper o Istriot (which classification is quite controversial and difficult)

The reason for this is that Venetian has a different substrate language (Venetic), while the others have a Gallic (Celtic) substrate. Could somebody - not me - please correct the table, as I need to cite the CORRECT classification and terminology in other languages. I think you will all agree that pan-Wiki consistency is a good thing.

For completeness, I should add that there are other classifications - Pellegrini, Geoffrey Hull, etc. - but if we are using the Ethnologue classification, then we should follow their terminology, shouldn't we? Thank you.--LombardBeige (talk) 06:39, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Montenegro
I've read somewhere that the name of the modern country of Montenegro, in Europe, comes from the venetian language. Can this be confirmed or is the name spanish? "Montenegro" would sound the same in spanish, but not in italian (where it would be "Monte Nero"). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.65.194.248 (talk) 15:43, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The origin of the name in most western languages is from the Venetian Monte Negro (not the Spanish!). Have a look at Montenegro. Mariokempes (talk) 22:56, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Number of speakers
i think there are many more venetian speakers than 2 millions...something like 90% or more of the sole population of veneto region (5 million people) can understand it and,for sure,more than 2 millions use it everyday (not counting the ones using it in the other italian regions of friuli and trentino or abroad)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.14.36.152 (talk) 17:11, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Basis of Standard Italian
the article says that modern italian is based on tuscan and sardinian (??)...that is totally incorrect. modern italian is based on tuscan (florentine) and has been influenced from the other main italian regional languages from the north (lombard,venetian) and from the south (the sicilian influence was particularly important) but sardinian,which is an isolated language, spoken in one of the most closed italian regions (sardinia is an island and had historically far less influence on italy itself than many other regions, comprising also the other "big island" sicily) gave (for that reason) very little to the new national language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.14.36.152 (talk) 14:21, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Article self-contradiction
I placed the template. The article's opening infobox says it's one of the Gallo-Italic languages, while the Classification section of the article text says it's one of the Italo-Dalmatian languages. I'm not an expert on this, which is why I didn't fix it myself. - Gilgamesh (talk) 18:31, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It should be a Gallo-Italic language, see the map on the article on Gallo-Italic languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.89.216.62 (talk) 16:50, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There are differing opinions about the classification of Venetian; I have now resolved the contradiction by explaining this in the introduction and removing everything but the consensus classification from the infobox. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:13, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Origins of the Venetian language
A highlighted concern expressed by Wikipedia states "Venetian descends from Vulgar Latin, influenced by the Celts and possibly the Venetic substratum and by the languages of the Germanic tribes (Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Lombards) who invaded Italy in the 5th century.[citation needed]." The statement appears to state the Vulgar Latin was influenced by the Celts. Many Latin scholars would disagree, arguing that Vulgar Latin was the ordinary, everyday speech of ancient Romans. Vulgar Latin evolved into the later Romance languages of Europe, through a process of diffusion from trade and conquest. The statement also attributes origins of the Venetian language to languages spoken by Celtic and Germanic cultural groups, instead of attributing the origins of the language to its actual linguistic antecedents. Linguistic antecedents of Venetian would be languages, not patterns of cultural contact, that shaped the Venetian language over time.

A resource that is commonly used by anthropologists, linguists, sociolinguists and other scholars to investigate linguistic origins of languages is Ethnologue, an online resource. The resources brought to bear in Ethnologue come from the more than a century of academic research by scholars of linguistics who conducted systematic comparisons of the linguistic origins of many languages, ancient and modern. This is the link for the Venetian language, http://www.ethnologue.com/show_lang_family.asp?code=vec

The linguistic path of influence on Venetian begins with early Indo-European roots and then proceeds through Indo-European, Italic, Romance (evolving from spoken or vulgar Latin that was widely spoken during the Roman Empire and in Europe after the fall of the empire), Italo-Western, Western, Gallo-Iberian, Gallo-Romance, Gallo-Italian, and finally Venetian itself. The linguistic summary reported by Ethnologue suggests that origins of Venetian are less likely to be influenced by Germanic cultural contact, and more likely to be influenced by contact with languages spoken in France, Provencal, Portugal, the eastern Adriatic coast (e.g., Dalmatian), as well the local Italian languages spoken in regions that neighbor on what is now Venice.

One should always keep in mind that, when languages evolve, their grammars, phonology and vocabularies are fluid. Systematic comparisons of languages provide the more powerful glimpses into the evolution of a single language; and linguistic comparions also serve to document cultural contact, rather than the other way around. Adonofrio (talk) 19:26, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, substrata and superstrata do have an influence on the development of languages, but whether Celtic and Venetic (or Germanic) did have an influence on the split of Gallo-Italic (and other Gallo-Romance languages) and Venetian respectively from other Western Romance languages is simply uncertain. This is merely a traditional assumption in Romance historical linguistics (though likely not the standard view or consensus any longer), and since geographically and historically, the assumption that Venetian had a Venetic substratum and Gallo-Italic had not (but that it had a Celtic substratum instead) is suggestive (though not actually demonstrated), the classification of Venetian as separate from Gallo-Italic has become widespread. However, the suggestion of a different substratum itself is not sufficient to justify the separation of Venetian from Gallo-Italic; the isoglosses used for this classification are what really matters.
 * We do not even know when Celtic and Venetic really became extinct in the Padan Plain. Nor do we know when Gallo-Italic and Venetian acquired their defining characteristics – especially the earliest defining characteristics; many characteristics may be more recent developments, possibly acquired through contact with other Western Romance languages only in the medieval period. The difficulty in using modern or medieval isoglosses for subgrouping is that it must be ascertained that the isoglosses are really old and not later convergent developments (possibly spread through contact within a dialect continuum, or among closely related languages), which is dependent on establishing a relative chronology of changes. Only ascertainably old developments may be used for this purpose (subgrouping).
 * As for the classification in Ethnologue, it should not be relied on, as it is often idiosyncratic and in no way represents a consensus among the relevant experts. Especially Romance subgrouping is notoriously difficult and controversial, with many Romance linguists refusing to assume a tree-like divergence model for Romance at all. However, that may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because it is very difficult to do subgrouping within a dialect continuum does not mean that it is altogether impossible, and some preconceived or traditional notions and groups may have to be given up as nodes in the tree, similarly as with the traditional and convenient evolutionary grades in biology. For example, it is strange to insist in separating Catalan and Occitan when it is clear that Catalan started out as essentially an Occitan dialect in the early medieval period; the supposed Iberian vs. Celtic substrata are clearly misleading here.
 * Also, the tree structure in Ethnologue, even if it were 100% correct, does not suggest influence from Romance dialects spoken in Portugal, for example. You seem to be reading something into the tree that it does not actually say. In fact, a tree says nothing about influence from neighbouring languages and dialects; it says only something about direct descent (although it is often really so that closely related languages and dialects have a strong influence, because multilingualism with and interference from closely related languages occurs more easily). Moreover, while you are correct to point out that "cultural groups" should not be directly relevant to language history, the statement quoted by you says nothing of the sort: it mentions only languages (of groups that probably were not only cultural but also ethnolinguistic, at least to some extent). Your phrasing sounds a bit awkward to me, and I am not sure I get your point, but while it is certainly correct that the most immediate origin of Venetian is its direct ancestor, a form of Latin, "origins" also cover influences from other languages that shaped the language in question and helped establish it as a separate entity with individual characteristics (just as the "origins of English" lie not exclusively in Old English or Proto-Germanic, and modern English cannot be sufficiently described in its individuality by reference to its ancestors – the unique history of any language comprises both linear inheritance and lateral, contact influence). Finally, Vulgar Latin was influenced by the Celts (or more precisely, the Celtic languages). There are many words even in Classical Latin, but especially in later forms of Latin and Romance, for which Celtic origin is considered possible, likely or even certain. (Again, similarity between Celtic and Latin may well have facilitated contacts.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:01, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Venetian vs. Venetan
Are Venetian and Venetan really used completely synonymously in English, even in specialist literature? I would have expected that Venetian corresponds to Italian veneziano and refers only to the dialect of Venice, while Venetan corresponds to Italian veneto and refers to the language – hence allowing to distinguish between the narrower and the wider sense. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:22, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I believe "Venetan" is used with a more general meaning, including other north Italian dialects (or languages, depending on your use of the word "language"), such as Veronese and Trevisan, as well as Venetian. Moonraker (talk) 07:05, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Venetian is the language of Venice and the immediate Venetian Lagoon. Venetan is a cover term for (most of) the autochthonous Romance of the Veneto, thus Venetian -- like Paduan, Veronese, Vicentine... etc. -- is subsumed in Venetan. This really should be cleared up in the intro. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 01:19, 5 June 2018 (UTC)


 * I've finally taken the time to chase down documentation of the obvious: Venetan is the normal preferred term amongst those who know the subject matter for the language(s) of the Veneto as a whole.
 * https://benjamins.com/catalog/silv.1.02ben
 * http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2010/pdf/556_Paper.pdf
 * Salvatore Aglioti, Alberto Beltramello, Flavia Girardi and Franco Fabbro. 1996. "Neurolinguistic and follow-up study of an unusual pattern of recovery from bilingual subcortical aphasia". Brain 119.1551-1564. p. 1552:
 * "Venetan is a Romance language spoken in north-eastern Italy. It includes the dialects spoken in Venice (Venetian), Verona (Veronese), Treviso (Trevisan) and Padua (Paduan)..."
 * Patrizia Cordin. 1997. "Trentino". In The Dialects of Italy, ed. Martin Maiden and Mair Parry, pp. 260-262. London/New York: Routledge. p. 260:
 * "Trentino is an area where different linguistic (and cultural) currents intersect and overlap. Four particularly relevant ones are: [...] Venetan, entering from Vallagarina in the south..."
 * Giampaolo Salvi, "Ladin", in Maiden and Parry, eds., 1997, 286-294. p. 286:
 * "...despite their traditional 'Ladin' classification, Noneso and Solandro are considered under Trentino, and Ampezzano [...] under Venetan."
 * Paola Benincà, Mair Parry and Diego Pescarini. 2016. "The dialects of Northern Italy." In The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, ed. Adam Ledgeway and Martin Maiden, pp. 185-205. Oxford: OUP.
 * "The linguistic sub-areas that can be identified in northern Italy since the very first records are Piedmontese, Occitan, Lombard, Venetan, Friulian, Ligurian, and Emilian-Romagnol (Map 13.1)." (p. 185)
 * "[-t]- > [-d]- > [-ð]- > Ø (although in the absence of apocope of the following vowel, restoration as [d] is common, especially in Lombard and Venetan)..." (p. 189)
 * "Front rounded vowels [y] < Ū and [ø] < Ŏ are further distinctive northern features, although absent from Romagnol and Venetan varieties." (p. 190)
 * "Table 13.2 Paradigm of ‘to go’ in Ladin, Venetan, and Lombard dialects" (p. 194)
 * "In many Venetan dialects, for instance, the genitive/partitive clitic is formed by a combination of the locative clitic ghe /ge/ and the partitive element ne." (p. 196)
 * (etc. etc. etc.) 47.32.20.133 (talk) 20:35, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I am aware of all that, but, broadly speaking, "Venetan" is an obscure and only seldomly used adjective, while "Venetian" is more frequently used as the translation of both veneto and veneziano. Most of the times, English speakers refer to people/things related to Veneto as "Venetian", not "Venetan". As of today, by tracking Google hits, one finds that there are 22,220 for "Venetian language" compared to 1,850 for "Venetan language", 48,700 for "Venetian cuisine" compared to none for "Venetan cuisine", 22,000 for "Venetian people" compared to 148 for "Venetan people", 4,160 for "Venetian nationalism" compared to none for "Venetan nationalism", etc. The general picture is that there are 64,200,000 for "Venetian" compared to 218,000 for "Venetan" (of course, "Venice" is more popular than "Veneto" on the web, but the proportion is quite different: 179,000,000 for "Venice" compared to 98,200,000 for "Veneto"!). --Checco (talk) 07:14, 26 September 2018 (UTC) Ps: This is a general discussion on the usage of "Venetian" or "Venetan" referring to Veneto. The isssue should be thus dealt at Talk:Veneto.
 * Mislabeling of Venetan as Venetian can and should be dealt with anywhere it is relevant. It is centrally relevant here. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 15:26, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, this is more than a bit of an ongoing mess. It's irresponsible to leave readers to try to figure out when 'Venetian' in the text means actual Venetian, and when it means Venetan. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 14:54, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Simply, "Venetan" is almost never used and is at best inaccurate. "Venetian" is the English translation of both veneto and veneziano. No doubt about it. --Checco (talk) 11:28, 5 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Quite true that the few anglophones with minimal linguistic knowledge who find occasion to speak of the autochthonous language(s) of Veneto, most of whom with foggy notions at best of what dialetto actually means in the first place, don't distinguish between Venetian and Venetan -- akin to urbanites who see a bull and call it a cow in terms of lexical accuracy. Quite true also, as shown by the numerous citations above from the publications of linguists, both Italian and not, that those who actually know what they're doing are more accurate in their terminology: "Venetan is a Romance language spoken in north-eastern Italy. It includes the dialects spoken in Venice (Venetian), Verona (Veronese), Treviso (Trevisan) and Padua (Paduan)..." With the exception that for a non-linguist anglophone readership varieties should be substituted for dialects, can't get much clearer than that. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 12:29, 5 November 2022 (UTC)


 * I am sorry to tell you that "Venetan" is an invented word. There is indeed Venetian language, whose varieties include Venetian proper from Venice. I am Venetian and I speak Venetian of the central variety, this said I support the usage of "Venetian" for the whole language. --Checco (talk) 07:09, 6 November 2022 (UTC)


 * You're perfectly free to label your native language any way you choose. Such a choice may or may not be relevant to an encyclopedia article. In this case, although someone's likely to object that reporting that in the article is anecdotal "original research" (unfortunate label; genuine research is normally original), it would be informative for readers to know that some speakers often use Venetian or veneziano as a cover term for any variety of Venetan if there's no particular reason to be specific for the nonce. That obviously contrasts with accurate usage, such as in the excerpt below from a book review by Paola Benincà, in which if Venetian labels all Venetan speech types, her comparison of Venetian and Paduan would be at best incoherent -- banal truism: there can be no distinguishing of Paduan from Venetian if Paduan is Venetian.
 * "[...] these linguistic data tell us that the phenomena which still distinguish Venetian from Paduan, in particular, were already well rooted and established in the fourteenth century. Today, for example, the infinitive ending -àr characterizes Venetian as opposed to Paduan -àre (Ven. cantàr ‘to sing’~ Pad. cantare), and nouns from Latin -ARIUM, -ARIA are in -èr (masc.), -èra (fem.) in Venetian but -àro, -àra in Paduan (Ven. caleghèr, caleghèra ~ Pad. calegaro, calegara ‘cobbler’)."
 * See this by Patrizia Cordin for some basics:
 * = Italo-Romance: Venetan =
 * Patrizia Cordin
 * https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.724
 * Published online: 31  August   2021
 * Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 13:18, 6 November 2022 (UTC)


 * You are perfectly free to dream that "Venetan" becomes a widespread word and to lobby for it. However, as of now, there is no widespread usage of "Venetan". According to most sources and dictionaries, both veneto and veneziano are translated into "Venetian". Just an example, WordReference: veneto and veneziano. That is why all articles referring to someting veneto are named "Venetian XXXX" in Wikipedia.--Checco (talk) 15:24, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh good grief. This is an encyclopedia, not una fermata dell'autobus. My cousin has a son, 11 years old, I think, who still swears that dolphins are fish, no matter the evidence. Moi, I'll trust those who know what they're talking about, such as Cordin and many others cited above. Divertiti. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:53, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The fact that you are know speaking in Italian makes me think that your knowledge of English language is not better than mine. By the way, be sure that there is no such word as "Venetan" in English. Of course, this is an encyclopedia and it is not up to us to invent words. --Checco (talk) 20:44, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Writing=speaking, and someone who manages to write something as banal as una fermata dell'autobus couldn't possibly possess advanced native mastery of English. Wow. As for there is no such word as "Venetan" in English, please explain that to Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Encyclopedia Britannica, etc. etc. etc. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:00, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Sources, links, etc., please! And I have no clue of what una fermata dell'autobus means here. --Checco (talk) 17:24, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "Sources, links, etc., please!" You've been supplied both. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 21:46, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Italo-Dalmatian or Gallo-Romance?
The creator of the completely unsourced Italo-Dalmatian languages stub is dead set on placing Venetian on his page, having reverted two attempts to bring it in line with what you guys had here. If he's right, peachy, and his page could use some sources. If he's wrong (which I assume he is from Venetian's geographic location, its similarities with French, this page's Italian version, his page's Italian version, cursory googling, etc...), it'd be nice to have some help dealing with him and whatever source he's misremembering. (Or is there something in between where Venetian really should be categorized as a separate Romance branch the way Sardinian is?)

In any case, once we have this sorted, kindly keep this page, his page, Gallo-Romance, and Italian dialects on the same page, ideally with some WP:RS cites. Ciao! — Llywelyn II   23:23, 22 August 2013 (UTC)


 * According to the referenced claims in this article, Venetian is not Gallo-Italian, pace Ethnologue, but closest to Istriot and Tuscan. That would place it squarely within Italo-Dalmatian.  If it belongs elsewhere, this article will need to be corrected as well.  — kwami (talk) 23:30, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Past particle -esto
In this article there used to be a section claiming that the venetian past particle ending in -esto (piovesto, volesto etc) derived from the venetic language. I returned here now to find the source of that statement, but the whole section is gone. Does anybody has a source about this? All the sources I've found claim that the particle derives from latin, but I'm interested in the Venetic theory. Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.236.122.143 (talk) 16:18, 27 October 2013 (UTC)


 * It's still mentioned under "Grammar", at the very end of the section. However, I am extremely sceptical, not least because the -sto-forms of Ancient Venetic (such as donasto, corresponding to Latin donavit, or vhagsto, corresponding to Latin fecit) are not past participles, but finite verb forms descended from the Proto-Indo-European s-aorist. I'm not sure where the Venetian past participles in -sto come from, but I suspect there is an internal explanation involving only Latin/Romance forms. (Maybe the -s- was carried over analogically from the Venetian cognate of the Italian -isc-suffix in e. g. capisce, a cognate of which is found in other Romance languages too, for example in French finis, finissent.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:09, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Venetian classification: Can anyone help?
Can you help??!!

I've been trying to find information on Venetian root classification. I am puzzled that this language/dialect is surrounded by Friulian, Romansch and Ladin and those three are commonly derived while Venetian is reported to share similarities to dialects spoken farther away. How can this be the case within a dialect continuum? That practically transgresses the laws of science! The only thing I can think of is that with the Republic of Venice having been in existence for centuries that an independent standard formed while all around it developed independently, like Sardinian after breaking away linguistically. But then there are two problems here: first the Veneto is not insular, and second, the long-standing republic ruled areas east of Venice so this would have meant Friuli where the spoken language is a form of Rhaeto-Romansch. Can anyone throw light?

And for the record? What exactly is Venetian closest related to? The article at one point suggests Istriot and Tuscan Italian, the latter being to basis for standard Italian, while elsewhere it is suggested that Venetian is closer to Spanish and French standards than to Italian. All vague for those of us less informed. Please let me know. -- OJ ( TALK ) 11:25, 23 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not an expert on Romance linguistics, but see my comment here for a possible way to approach a solution of the mystery. Venetian is certainly not particularly close to Spanish or French apart from superficial similarities, but neither should its differences from Standard Italian be understated; the traditional language Venetian – unlike the regional variety of Standard Italian spoken in the Veneto – certainly should not be described as an "Italian dialect". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:57, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
 * A perpetual problem/ambiguity engendered by the widespread insistence on labeling non-national indigenous Romance languages of Italy "dialects". To specialists accustomed to dealing with the Italian linguistic landscape, Italian dialect is normally construed as meaning 'small/minor/local (indigenous Romance) language of Italy'. But it's certainly open to ambiguity, so that non-specialists seem to interpret it naturally as 'variety of Italian'. (And then there's Corsica, whose pre-French languages are definitely of Italian typology, yet spoken in what is now politically France.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:40, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Mutual intelligibility with Italian
Some information on the extent of mutual intelligibility between Venetian and standard Italian would be useful in this article. 109.145.27.215 (talk) 09:52, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Why? I'm not trying to be snide; I'm genuinely curious. 47.32.20.133 (talk) 01:23, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps he is also genuinely curious... I can't provide numerical data, but spoken Venetian tends to be much easier to understand than most other dialects because it does not seem to feature as many sounds that are absent in standard Italian, like the ü ö and the nasal sounds of Lombardy ("lü" for "lupo") or the retroflex -dd- ones of Sicily. Rather, the difficulty lies in the presence of terms that are easy to pronounce but whose meaning may be unknown to other Italians - like "marangòn". We all know somoneone named Marangon, for it is a very common surname, but only a few know that it is Venetian for "falegname" (carpenter). I found this text available on Wikisource. I think it very much depends on WHO the reader is (i.e. higher education, exposure to other languages, etc.) However, I am no scholar (besides, I am more interested in science than in literature) and I can understand every word of it. Hope it helps.79.36.195.188 (talk) 22:07, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not a particularly useful test (and I'm not sure how mere superficial phonetic similarity should inherently aid intelligibility). A more telling test would be to play a sound-only recording of a fast-paced everyday conversation on an unknown topic (preferrably one that isn't full of telltale loanwords) between native speakers of Venetian (of an ideally conservative, "broad" variant not strongly influenced by Standard Italian) in the presence of a native (ideally monolingual, illiterate, linguistically uneducated) speaker of Standard Italian and ask this speaker to translate the conversation. That's a lot trickier – and an actual test because you can't simply claim to understand; you have to actually prove it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:20, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, definitely speech, not reading. Shouldn't be difficult to do by using the recordings accompanying Alberto Zamboni's Veneto. Profilo dei dialetti italiani, 5. Pisa: Pacini. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 13:55, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

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eser drìo (literally, "to be behind") not specifically Venetian
"Another peculiarity of the language is the use of the phrase eser drìo (literally, "to be behind") to indicate continuing action: Me pare, el xe drìo parlàr My father is speaking" This isn't only Venetian: in Western Lombardy dialects we use the same form, "El me pà a l'è dré a parlà" (depending on the area, sometimes people actually say "ul me pà", "ol me pà", etc.

Still, this French-style form (mon père est en train de parler) is very much used in Lombard dialects. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.36.195.188 (talk) 21:34, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

ł or ƚ or both? confusing/typos?
In several places there seems to be confusion between ł and ƚ, not sure in which way to fix:
 * " in some orthographic norms is indicated with the letter ⟨ł⟩", with a footnote pointing to the other one, "U+023D Ƚ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH BAR and U+019A ƚ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH BAR"
 * "Another recent convention is to use ⟨ł⟩ (in place of older ⟨ł⟩ )", with the first ł actually linking to the page on ƚ.

These could be simply typos, but both seem used so maybe more explanation would be needed. The Venetian wikipedia for instance uses ł https://vec.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81%C3%A9ngua_v%C3%A8neta while Omniglot uses ƚ https://omniglot.com/writing/venetian.htm

GrandTurion (talk) 05:49, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Help with the phonetic transcription of the elle evanescente = allophone of /l/
Since the user Fdom5997 keeps reverting my changes, I'll open the topic in a more sources-oriented way here, so that we can clear it once for all I hope.

At my latest revision that the use of [ɰ] for an I.P.A. transcription of the "elle evanescente" has no sources ([ɰ] being closer to [ɡ] and [ɣ] than to an /e/ semivocalic sound it's unconceivable why this transcription is still being used) a grammar of a "Prof. Silvano Belloni" has been added as a reference for the existence of [ɰ] as an allophone of /l/ in Venetian.

I can't find any section in the grammar of Belloni that uses I.P.A. transcription for this sound (or I.P.A. trascription at all for all that matters). Please correct me if I'm wrong - the book is readily available in PDF-version on the web, though of dubious academic quality/background.

Moreover, I can add a list of academic literature of Venetian linguists that clearly transcript the sound as (AND ONLY AS) [e̯]:

1. Zamboni, Alberto (1980): Veneto. Pisa: Pacini. (The author has phonetic transcriptions of vinyl-recordings for every Venetian variety in his monography!).

2. Ferguson, Ronnie (2007): A Linguistic History of Venice. Firenze: Olschki.

3. Tomasin's article "elle evanescente" is already in the bibliography of the Wikipedia page - Tomasin, Lorenzo (2010), La cosiddetta "elle evanescente" del veneziano: fra dialettologia e storia linguistica (PDF), Palermo: Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani.

For these names (and obviously Cortelazzo) there is a continuous cross-referencing in academic literature about Venetian, Belloni I never heard of and I've never seen cited his name anywhere in academic papers that I readily use for my academic work.

If needed I can reference the exact pages in these works and add more sources from (Giulio) Lepschy and (Luciano) Canepari, both are well known Italian linguistics, the latter a Venetian phonetician.

Also, there is no difference between "word initially and elsewhere" - this is incorrect. It should be "word-initially and intervocalically" /l/ > /e̯/. That only in the case that we don't have a /e, i/ sound around, there it gets deleted altogether i.e. telefono [teˈɛfono] "telephone". Hence i.e. luna [ˈe̯una] "moon", la cola [e̯a ˈkɔe̯a] "the glue", but vardarla [vaɾˈdaɾla] "looking-her". Or lezar [ˈɛzaɾ] "to read" but par lezar [paɾ‿ˈlɛzaɾ] "for reading". So obviously the transcription of one of the most famous Venetian words gondola should be [ˈɡoŋdoe̯a], [ˈɡoŋdoa] or [ˈɡoŋdola], but surely not [ˈɡoŋdoɰa].

I'd like to have some help to clear this topic, especially because it's not only about this page: I suppose the flawed informations that are written in both the Italian page of Wikipedia about Venetian as well as in the English page about the Voiced velar approximant /ɰ/ can be traced back to to the incorrect information that is to be found on this page.

(PS. I'm a native speaker of this language and linguistics grad)

Gianluca Beraldo (talk) 19:43, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Astiàr
It is strange that "astiàr", meaning "to bore", is listed as coming from Gothic "𐌷𐌰𐌹𐍆𐍃𐍄𐍃" (haifsts) meaning "contest", when there is a Spanish word which is "hastiar" that also means "to bore", which is said to come from Latin "fastidiare" and has the same pronunciation as Venetian "astiàr".

hastiar from Wiktionary. †_JuanPa_† (talk) 23:48, 16 August 2022 (UTC)