# the foundation of standard Italian



## Dymn

Moderator's Note: The following discussion is moved from this thread from All Languages.


TheCrociato91 said:


> But you probably shouldn't take my advice; Northern Italian is definitely inferior to Central and Southern Italian


Does Italian as spoken in Northern Italy hold a higher prestige than the other regional varieties?


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## Olaszinhok

I would rather not reply to this question, what I can say is that Northern Italians don't pronounce vowels according to Standard Italian, the ones you can find in dictionaries. Italian comes from Tuscan after all, not from Milanese.


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## TheCrociato91

Dymn said:


> Does Italian as spoken in Northern Italy hold a higher prestige than the other regional varieties?



Not at all, at least as far as I see it. _Standard Italian_ is still based off of the Tuscan dialect (especially, the Florentine vernacular).

That said, I am of the opinion that a "standard language", while useful for learning and teaching purposes, as well as for creating a shared foundation of the language, is an extremely conventional and theoretical concept. Not on many occasions will you hear 100% _Standard Italian_ being spoken (newscasts, some movies, etc.); most people are influenced by their dialect and such.



> Northern Italians don't pronounce vowels according to Standard Italian, the ones you can find in dictionaries



That's a bit of a generalization; as though _all Italians_ would pronounce words just like dictionaries indicate.

Some do, some don't, depending on the degree they are influenced by their dialect and on their intention to try and speak _Standard Italian_.


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## Dymn

Olaszinhok said:


> Italian comes from Tuscan after all, not from Milanese.





TheCrociato91 said:


> _Standard Italian_ is still based off of the Tuscan dialect (especially, the Florentine vernacular).



Yes, but dialects and regional varieties of Italian are different things. _Gorgia toscana _is certainly not proper Standard Italian.


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## Olaszinhok

Dymn said:


> Yes, but dialects and regional varieties of Italian are different things. _Gorgia toscana _is certainly not proper Standard Italian


Sure, I was referring to open and closed vowels: é è o, ò.


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## Dymn

I mean, is there any region whose way of speaking Italian is closest to the standard?

For example although Standard German is based off of High German dialects, the city where it is spoken more "purely" (although this is kind of a myth I guess) is Hannover, traditionally Low German-speaking. Is there any equivalent in Italy?


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## TheCrociato91

Dymn said:


> Yes, but dialects and regional varieties of Italian are different things. _Gorgia toscana _is certainly not proper Standard Italian.



You are correct, that's why I said "based off of" (I probably should've said "based upon", since we're discoursing on _standard _languages  ).



> È questo il caso dell’italiano: il toscano fiorentino, base dello standard, era uno dei tanti volgari parlati in Italia dopo il Mille; con il suo qualificarsi come standard, gli altri volgari italiani (tranne per qualche secolo il veneziano, che ha conosciuto una certa codificazione ed è stato impiegato per gli usi scritti politici e amministrativi come lingua della Repubblica Serenissima) sono diventati dialetti.





> Più numerosi sono i tratti fonetici in cui lo standard si differenzia dal fiorentino (➔ toscani, dialetti). L’italiano standard in particolare non conosce gli indebolimenti di consonanti in posizione intervocalica (➔ indebolimento): né la cosiddetta ➔ gorgia toscana, né la realizzazione come fricative delle affricate palatali sorda e sonora in posizione intervocalica ([ˈpaʧe] pace, e non [ˈpaʃe]; [vaˈliʤa] valigia, e non [vaˈliʒa]), né l’indebolimento o caduta della fricativa labiodentale sonora ([aˈvuto], avuto, e non [aˈwuto], [aˈuto]).



italiano standard in "Enciclopedia dell'Italiano" emphasis added.


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## Olaszinhok

I may be a bit biased, but as far as vowels are concerned, I woud say Tuscany and Central Italy.


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## Penyafort

Dymn said:


> I mean, is there any region whose way of speaking Italian is closest to the standard?
> 
> For example although Standard German is based off of High German dialects, the city where it is spoken more "purely" (although this is kind of a myth I guess) is Hannover, traditionally Low German-speaking. Is there any equivalent in Italy?



I'd say this is due to the vitality of the Saxon language in northern Germany being low in comparison to that of the Cisalpine languages in northern Italy. If so, learning the language that is official in the media will probably contain fewer influences from the traditional local speech.


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## Olaszinhok

Dymn said:


> I mean, is there any region whose way of speaking Italian is closest to the standard?



Tuscany, of course. Except for some features, such as Tuscan _gorgia_ and other minor aspects. However,  as for vowel inventory, syntactic gemination (raddoppiamento fonosintattico) and the correct use of verb tenses, the Italian spoken in Tuscany is undoubtedly the most similar to the traditional standard.


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## Paulfromitaly

Olaszinhok said:


> *I may be a bit biased*, but as far as vowels are concerned, I woud say Tuscany and Central Italy.


Maybe just a little bit..



> Olaszinhok
> Senior Member
> *Central Italy*



It's hard to accurately define or identify _standard Italian._
Most speakers from Tuscany do have a strong accent, a marked cadence and use words and expressions that no one else in any other region of Italy would ever use.
Would foreigners who try to speak as people from Tuscany do, sound natural and speak standard Italian?
No, in my opinion they would only sound ridiculous.


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## Olaszinhok

Paulfromitaly said:


> It's hard to accurately define or identify _standard Italian._
> Most speakers from Tuscany do have a strong accent, a



You probably didn't read what I wrote, I was speaking about _*traditional *_standard Italian ( the one you can find in dictionaries even these days). If you speak neo-standard Italian it is another story. As for me, I'm proud of my Italian, indeed!  At least, I can distinguish between pèsca (peach) and pésca (fishing), accètta (he/she accepts) and accétta (hatchet) , bòtte(blows) and botte (barrel) and so forth, not to mention the usage of syntactic gemination.
I'm not from Tuscany, but I do like the way they speak.
By the way, people from Brescia or Bergamo don't have an accent. Do they?


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## TheCrociato91

Olaszinhok said:


> pèsca (peach) and pésca (fishing), accètta (he/she accepts) and accétta (hatchet) , bòtte(blows) and botte (barrel)



I only make the last distinction.

Don't get me wrong, these distinctions are _definitely _useful (especially for Italian learners), but only to an extent. You can very easily tell from the context which word the speaker means to say.

As to syntactic gemination, it's simply a naturally-occurring feature (connected to pronunciation and syntaxis) of _some _varieties of Italian; it serves no other specific purpose, as far as I know at least. Whether you say: [anˈdjaːmo a‿kˈkaːza] or [anˈdjaːmo a ˈkaːza], I'll understand that you mean: "Let's go home / We are going home".

As a matter of fact, the _distinctive _feature of gemination is basically only limited to some regional accents:


> All'interno di parlate specifiche ristrette ad isolati contesti geografici, il raddoppiamento fonosintattico può avere valore fonetico distintivo, ovvero la sua presenza o assenza determina una differenza di significato in quanto viene pronunciato. Si veda per esempio in romanesco a Roma /aː ˈroːma/, "la Roma", intesa come squadra di calcio, e a Roma /a rˈroːma/ "in, verso (la città di) Roma".


Raddoppiamento fonosintattico - Wikipedia (emphasis added)


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## Olaszinhok

TheCrociato91 said:


> As to syntactic gemination


Hello Crociato.
This is what Treccani says about the Raddoppiamento fonosintattico:
raddoppiamento sintattico in "Enciclopedia dell'Italiano"
Basically, syntactic gemination is a feature of standard Italian based off of Tuscan.
It is used, with few differences amongst the various regions, below the isogloss La Spexia - Rimini.


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## TheCrociato91

Olaszinhok said:


> Hello Crociato.
> This is what Treccani says about the Raddoppiamento fonosintattico:
> raddoppiamento sintattico in "Enciclopedia dell'Italiano"



Hi there. Thanks for the most useful link. 

My point was that, while the _raddoppiamento fonosintattico_ may be indeed considered a fully-fledged feature of Standard Italian, it serves no practical purpose other than to mirror the chain speech (I _think _that's how you say "catena parlata").



Olaszinhok said:


> At least, I can distinguish between pèsca (peach) and pésca (fishing), accètta (he/she accepts) and accétta (hatchet) , bòtte(blows) and botte (barrel) and so forth, not to mention the usage of syntactic gemination.



I took this post to mean that you were proud to be able to distinguish minimal pairs (which is indeed a good feature, like I mentioned in #13) *as well as* to use syntactic gemination, which however is merely a "passive" phenomenon which have no little or no distinctive function. I didn't mean to diminish its relevance or anything; I was simply commenting on how, in my view, its use doesn't really produce any major _concrete _effect in the language.


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## Olaszinhok

TheCrociato91 said:


> its use doesn't really produce any major _concrete _effect in the language.



I don't actually know whether those features (open and closed vowels, syntactic gemination, pronunciation of/t͡s, d͡z,ʎ/ /ɲɲ/, /ʃʃ as geminated between two vowels) may produce a concrete effect on the Language. Personally, I reckon that they change the prosody of the language quite a lot. We can find various varieties of the same language in many countries, after all.


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## TheCrociato91

By "*its *use" I was only referring to _raddoppiamento fonosintattico_ (which, incidentally, does occur outside of Standard Italian too, although not as much).

Open and closed vowels (more precisely [ɔ] vs [o]; [ɛ] vs [e]), on the other hand, do produce concrete effects on the language since they are phonemic, i.e. they distinguish between different meanings. That said, not all Italian varieties use this distinction the same way.

As for the "pronunciation of /t͡s, d͡z, /ʎ/ /ɲɲ/, /ʃʃ/ as geminated between two vowels", I think that occurs naturally not only in Standard Italian and does influence the prosody no doubt.


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## merquiades

@TheCrociato91 in Brescia are you pronouncing È like É or the other way around? For example in pèsca or pésca and accètta or accétta?This is why I have always thought Italian should instate mandatory accent marks to show open and closed vowels whenever there could be doubt. It'd be beneficial for natives and non natives.


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## TheCrociato91

merquiades said:


> For example in pèsca or pésca and accètta or accétta?



I pronounce both "pèsca" and "pésca" as /'pɛska/, and both "accètta" or "accétta" as /atˈtʃɛtta/. The context can easily disambiguate the meanings.

I do however make the distinction between "e" ("and") /e/ and "è" ("he/she/it _is_") /ɛ/.



merquiades said:


> This is why I have always thought Italian should instate mandatory accent marks to show open and closed vowels whenever there could be doubt.



Well, dictionaries do have "mandatory" (if you will) pronunciations, which mirror Standard Italian. The thing is: I don't think that introducing mandatory *graphic *accent marks will turn out that useful, since there are very few minimal pairs that are distinguished by an open or a closed vowel. For this very reason, not all Italian linguists agree on the _phonemic _values of the vowels [ɔ] / [o], [ɛ] / [e], maintaining that they are simple allophones of /o/ and /e/.

That said, I do agree that treating /ɔ/, /o/, /ɛ/, /e/ as phonemes rather than simple allophones is beneficial for non natives and also, albeit to a much lesser extent, for natives.


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## merquiades

Well I guess it is similar to French.  La pêche is both peach and fishing. Il accepte is also open.


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## Olaszinhok

TheCrociato91 said:


> Open and closed vowels (more precisely [ɔ] vs [o]; [ɛ] vs [e]), on the other hand, do produce concrete effects on the language since they are phonemic, i.e. they distinguish between different meanings. That said, not all Italian varieties use this distinction the same way.



Yes, true.



TheCrociato91 said:


> I do however make the distinction between "e" ("and") /e/ and "è" ("he/she/it _is_") /ɛ/.



What about ho /ɔ/ and o /o/, do you make a distinction between them? These are the basics… Just kidding.


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## TheCrociato91

Olaszinhok said:


> What about ho /ɔ/ and o /o/, do you distinguish between them? These are the basics… Just kidding.



I do.

As a side note, people from my area say words like "foto", "moto", "topo" with a closed /o/ sound. Before realizing that /ɔ/ was the _correct _pronunciation (it was a long time ago), I used to make fun of everyone saying /ˈfɔto/ because it sounded wrong to my ears. You never stop learning.

Vocaroo | Voice message

There you go ("Io ho una foto o una moto"). Sorry for the poor audio quality (make sure to turn the volume down  ).


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## Olaszinhok

TheCrociato91 said:


> There you go ("Io ho una foto o una moto"). Sorry for the poor audio quality (make sure to turn the volume down



Ho and o are perfect!  However, you pronounce moto and particularly foto with an
open-mid o, more or less like in Spanish.  At least to my ears...


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## TheCrociato91

Olaszinhok said:


> However, you pronounce moto and particularly foto with a mid-open o, more or less like in Spanish.  At least to my ears...



Interesting  Turns out I can't even speak _decent _Italian. Or maybe I've been speaking too much Spanish recently. 

Just out of curiosity; by "mid-open o" do you mean an open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔ] or a mid back rounded vowel [o̞] / [ɔ̝] ?

In the latter case, Mid back rounded vowel - Wikipedia includes example of its use even in Standard and Northern Italian:

- Standard Italian   forense    [fo̞ˈrɛnse]    'forensic'    Common realization of the unstressed /o/.
- Northern accents  Local realization of /ɔ/.


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## Olaszinhok

Just out of curiosity; by "mid-open o" do you mean an open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔ] or a mid back rounded vowel [o̞] / [ɔ̝] ?

I'm so sorry, I meant open-mid, but probably your o is a mid back rounded vowel. In my humble opinion, the open o in _foto_ and _moto_ is a bit unnatural for you because you used to pronounce them as closed, so you don't open them properly. I may be wrong, though.


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## Paulfromitaly

TheCrociato91 said:


> Interesting  Turns out I can't even speak _decent _Italian



Of course you can't, you're not from central Italy or Tuscany!
And I bet you didn't even know that you can't go fishing on trees and you cannot fish for peaches until a genius pointed it out to you..


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## Sardokan1.0

TheCrociato91 said:


> I pronounce both "pèsca" and "pésca" as /'pɛska/, and both "accètta" or "accétta" as /atˈtʃɛtta/. The context can easily disambiguate the meanings.



The same happens here in Sardinia, we are unable to distinguish "pèsca" and "pésca" and "accètta" or "accétta", this is because the vocalic system of Sardinian language works in a different way from Italian, and we tend to apply it also to Italian.

See the table below :

Cattura — Postimage.org


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## TheCrociato91

Sardokan1.0 said:


> The same happens here in Sardinia, we are unable to distinguish "pèsca" and "pésca" and "accètta" or "accétta", this is because the vocalic system of Sardinian language works in a different way from Italian, and we tend to apply it also to Italian.
> 
> See the table below :
> 
> Cattura — Postimage.org



That's most interesting, thanks for sharing it. That actually explains why Sardinians speak funny Italian to our Northerners' ears  (no offense meant, of course).

It doesn't work quite like that where I live (and the neighboring areas too, I assume). We do recognize the existance of both open and closed vowels ( [ɔ] vs [o]; [ɛ] vs [e] ), but we don't always use them the way dictionaries prescribe. Some of the more distinctive features of Northern Italian are summarized in this English article, in case anyone's interested.


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## Paulfromitaly

TheCrociato91 said:


> We do recognize the existance of both open and closed vowels ( [ɔ] vs [o]; [ɛ] vs [e] ), but we don't always use them the way dictionaries prescribe


Exactly. 
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to be able to hear the difference between "pèsca" and "pésca" or to be able to pronounce those two words differently.
In some areas of Italy people are simply not used to doing it, especially when they are talking to other people from the same area.


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## Sardokan1.0

TheCrociato91 said:


> That's most interesting, thanks for sharing it. That actually explains why Sardinians speak funny Italian to our Northerners' ears  (no offense meant, of course).



You probably mean the stereotypical Sardinian accent  (see Valeria Marini), that it's actually the accent of southern Sardinia, while in the central-northern areas of the island the accent is different, as well as the Sardinian language is different from north to south. Different more or less like Spanish and Portuguese. The Sardinian spoken in the south (Campidanese) has a complex vocalic system, similar to Portuguese, with many vowels and even nasal pronunciations, while these things are totally absent in the central-northern Sardinian (Logudorese/Nuorese), which has a 5 vowel system, and no nasal pronunciations.


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## TheCrociato91

Wow.  I never thought things were *this *different within the same variety / language.


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## Sardokan1.0

TheCrociato91 said:


> Wow.  I never thought things were *this *different within the same variety / language.



Take a look here :

https://apps.atilf.fr/homepages/buc...s/7/2015/09/DERom-Ecole-dete-Pisano-Sarde.pdf


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## symposium

Hello! To the people above asking what kind of Italian pronunciation is standard Italian pronunciation, wouldn't it be simpler to say: the one that hasn't any recognizable regional ring to it? The one that doesn't give away the speaker's provenance? After all, the same is true for so many other languages.


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## danielstan

Sardokan1.0 said:


> The Sardinian spoken in the south (Campidanese) has a complex vocalic system, similar to Portuguese, with many vowels and even nasal pronunciations, while these things are totally absent in the central-northern Sardinian (Logudorese/Nuorese), which has a 5 vowel system, and no nasal pronunciations.


Which of all these varieties of Sardinian is the closest to Classical Latin?

I often find in etymological dictionaries or other linguistic books samples of words from Logudorese, but rarely examples from Campidanese.
Is Logudorese the most prestigious dialect or is there another reason?


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## Sardokan1.0

Logudorese and Nuorese are closer to Latin, under many aspects Nuorese is even more archaic than Logudorese. During centuries Logudorese has always been considered the most prestigious dialect. Even if Campidanese has the biggest number of speakers because it's spoken in the most populated area of the island. For example, all medieval documents are written in a language similar to Logudorese, in this case the northern dialects like Logudorese and Nuorese have changed little since the middle ages, while the southern dialect (Campidanese) diverged a lot from the medieval language. Actually there are two blocks in which the Sardinian language is divided, in the central-northern areas : Logudorese-Nuorese (same language with some different pronunciation); in the south : Campidanese, which sounds almost like a different romance language, with different phonetics, half different vocabulary, different plural article, differences in plurals and in the ways the verbs are conjugated.

Example, look at these simple phrases in these three variants of Sardinian language :



Spoiler



*Where do we go to eat? We go to my uncle's house.
Our uncle invited us to remain also for dinner.
Our cousins and the other relatives must depart tomorrow in the morning.
*

*Nuorese :*
_A in uve/ube andamos a mandicare/manicare? Andamos a domo de tiu meu._
_Tiu nostru nos hat cumbitatos puru a chenare_
_Fratìles nostros e sos àteros parentes dèpen partire cras manzanu._

*Logudorese :*
_A in ue andamus a mandigare/manigare? Andamus a domo de tiu meu._
_Tiu nostru nos hat cumbidados puru a chenare.
Fradìles nostros e sos àteros parentes dèven partire cras manzanu._

*Campidanese :*
_A undi andãus a pappãi? Andãus a dommu de tziu mmiu._
_Tziu nnostu si hat cumbiddãus puru a cenãi.
Fradìlis nostus e is ãttrus parentis dèppint partìri cras mengiãnu.
_
*P.S.*
_In the Campidanese phrases I also highlighted the nasal vowels, that are totally absent in the other Sardinian languages.

Take a look at these examples of extreme nasalizations in Campidanese. Let's take the word "melon"

*Logudorese/Nuorese :* su melone -> plural "sos melones"

*Campidanese (standard)* : su mellõni -> plural "is mellõnis"
_
*Other Campidanese dialects :*
_
su mellõi -> is mellõis
su mãllõi -> is mãllõis
su mãbõi -> is mãbõis
_


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## berndf

*Moderator note:

Please keep in mind that this thread is not about Sarinian and it's dialects.

Thank you very much.*


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