Bolognese dialect
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Bolognese (in Bolognese: bulgnaiṡ [buʎˈɲai̯z]) is a dialect of Emilian-Romagnol spoken in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and along the border of Tuscany to the south.
| Bolognese | |
|---|---|
| bulgnaiṡ | |
| Pronunciation | [buʎˈɲai̯z] |
| Native to | Italy |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | bolo1260[1] |
TerminologyEdit
Although the term dialect is commonly used in reference to all minority languages native to Italy, most of them are not mutually intelligible with Standard Italian[citation needed] and have developed independently from Vulgar Latin.[citation needed] Bolognese is no exception and so is a dialect of Emilian-Romagnol, not Italian.[citation needed]
ClassificationEdit
Bolognese is a dialect of Emilian-Romagnol, one of the Gallo-Italic languages of the Romance family. It shares many common features with other Gallo-Italic languages such as Piedmontese, Lombard, Venetian, and Ligurian, and it is closer to them than to Italian.[citation needed]
HistoryEdit
- "… I say, then, that perhaps those are not wrong who claim that the Bolognese speak a more beautiful language than most, especially since they take many features of their own speech from that of the people who live around them, in Imola, Ferrara and Modena I believe that everybody does this with respect to his own neighbours.... So the above-mentioned citizens of Bologna take a soft, yielding quality from those of Imola, and from the people of Ferrara and Modena, on the other hand, a certain abruptness which is more typical of the Lombards.... If, then, the Bolognese take from all sides, as I have said, it seems reasonable to suggest that their language, tempered by the combination of opposites mentioned above, should achieve a praiseworthy degree of elegance; and this, in my opinion, is beyond doubt true."
(Dante Alighieri, De Vulgari Eloquentia - Liber I, xv, 2-5)
Middle AgesEdit
Bolognese evolved a group of Gallo-Romance languages sharing features with neighbouring northern Italian languages. It developed more distinctly into the Middle Ages as a dialect of the Emiliano-Romagnolo language. During the High Middle Ages, a number of troubadours composing lyrical poetry were active in Bologna, especially during the 13th century. That served to raise cultural awareness to the possibility of composing songs, poems and other works in vernacular languages. One of the first references to Bolognese as a distinct language was made by Dante Alighieri, in his De Vulgari Eloquentia, written in the beginning of the 14th century.
ModernEdit
During the boom of interest in linguistic diversity during the 19th century, a number of efforts were made to create vocabularies, grammars, and collections of axioms, folk tales, and literature. The first dictionary was compiled in 1901 by Gaspare Ungarelli, who also attempted to create a writing system using the Italian alphabet. A period of stigmatisation followed in the 20th century, where children were punished for speaking the dialect in school,[citation needed] as it was considered to be a sign of poor education and etiquette.[citation needed]
In 1964, Alberto Menarini proposed an alphabet with many of the same letters still used. In recent times, Bolognese has enjoyed a period of rebirth with some words, such as umarell, becoming popular beyond Bologna itself.[2]
PhonologyEdit
Here are some prominent features of Bolognese phonology:[3]
- centralized vowels [ɐ], [e̠], [ɛ̠], [i̠], [o̟], [ɔ̟], [ʌ̟] and [u̟] rather than /a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, /ʌ/ or /u/
- phonemic distinction between short vowels and corresponding long vowels/diphthongs
- nucleus vowel and coda consonant length having an inverse relationship
- realisation of labio-alveolar consonants
- syncopation resulting in complex consonant clusters
- frequent slacking of word-final voiceless obstruents
- more exaggerated intonation than in Italian[citation needed]
The phonemes of Bolognese are realized phonetically very differently depending on the area in or around Bologna. Much free variation occurs in words from complex phonological processes.
ConsonantsEdit
Bolognese has 22 consonant phonemes:
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Labio- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Palato-alveolar | Labio- velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k ɡ | ||||||
| Affricate | ts dz | ||||||||
| Fricative | f v | θ ð | s z | ʂ | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||||
| Trill | r |
ReferencesEdit
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Bologna Emiliano". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ "Gli umarells da Bologna si sono spostati a Firenze - DIRE.it". DIRE.it (in Italian). 2016-06-04. Retrieved 2017-07-26.
- ^ "I són dal bulgnaiṡ" [The sounds of Bolognese]. bulgnais.com (in Emilian and Italian).