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Emilian dialect spoken in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bolognese (native name: bulgnaiṡ, Emilian: [bul̪ˈɲai̯z̺]) is a dialect of Emilian spoken in the most part in the city of Bologna and its hinterland (except east of the Sillaro stream), but also in the district of Castelfranco Emilia in the province of Modena, and in the towns of Sambuca Pistoiese (Tuscany), Cento, Sant'Agostino, and Poggio Renatico (province of Ferrara).
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Bolognese | |
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bulgnaiṡ | |
Pronunciation | [bul̪ˈɲai̯z̺] |
Native to | Italy |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | bolo1260 |
IETF | egl-u-sd-itbo |
Although the term dialect is commonly used in reference to all minority languages native to Italy, most of them are not mutually intelligible with Italian.[1] Bolognese is no exception and so is an Emilian dialect, not an Italian one.
Bolognese is a dialect of Emilian, 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, Romagnol and Ligurian, and it is closer to them than to Italian.
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 Emilian 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.
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, derived from Bolognese umarèl, becoming popular beyond Bologna itself.[2]
Here are some prominent features of Bolognese phonology:[3]
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.
Bolognese has 25 consonant phonemes:
Bolognese distinguishes two genders, masculine and feminine, and two numbers, single and plural. In most nouns, the suffix -a is added to the masculine word to indicate femininity: defizänt, defizänta; påndg, påndga.
The formation of Bolognese plurals is complicated. Unlike Italian, inflection usually happens not by adding suffixes but rather by apophony:
However, when words that end with -èl or -ôl are pluralised, the -èl or -ôl is changed to -î and -û respectively: martèl, "hammer", martî, "hammers"; fiôl, "son", fiû "sons". There are some exceptions to that rule, such as nurmèl, "normal", which is unchanged when made plural, and some others, such as sàntel, "godfather", which are unchanged when made plural because words are not truncated, that is, with a stress that does not fall on è or ô.
Masculine words that end in a consonant are unchanged when made plural and so the number can be identified only by the preceding article: al râm, "the branch", i râm, "the branches". In addition, pluralised feminine words that are not constructed from a masculine word do not have an -a: la rôda, "the wheel", äl rôd, "the wheels". The plurals of feminine words constructed from masculine words are formed by using an -i instead of an -a: biånnda, "blonde", biånndi, "blondes"; ziéṅna "aunt", ziéṅni, "aunts".
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