Piedmontese Language - Characteristics

Characteristics

Some of the most relevant characteristics of the Piedmontese language are:

1. The presence of clitic subject pronouns verbal pronouns, which give a Piedmontese phrase the following form: (subject) + verbal pronoun + verb, as in (mi) i von . Verbal pronouns are absent only in the imperative form and in the “Piedmontese interrogative form”.
2. The agglutinating form of verbal pronouns, which can be connected to dative and locative particles (a-i é, i-j diso ).
3. The interrogative form, which adds an enclitic interrogative particle at the end of the verbal form (Veus-to? )
4. The absence of ordinal numerals, starting from the seventh place on (so that seventh will be Col che a fà set ).
5. The co-presence of three affirmative interjections (that is, three ways to say yes): Si, sè (from the Latin form sic est, as in Italian); É (from the Latin form est, as in Portuguese); Òj (from the Latin form hoc est as in Occitan, or maybe hoc illud, as in Franco-Provençal, French and Old Catalan and Occitan).
6. The absence of the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in sheep), for which an alveolar S sound (as in sun) is usually substituted.
7. The presence of a S-C combination (pronounced as in this-church).
8. The presence of a velar nasal N-sound (pronounced as the gerundive termination in going), which usually precedes a vowel, as in lun-a .
9. The presence of the third piedmontese vowel Ë, which is read as a very short sound (somehow close to the half-mute sound in sir).
10. The absence of the phonological contrast that exists in Italian between short (single) and long (double) consonants, for example, it. /fata/ 'fairy' and 'done'.
11. The existence of a prosthetic Ë sound, that is interposed when consonantal clusters arise that are not permitted by the phonological system. So stèile 'stars' in 'seven stars' is pronounced set ëstèile.

Piedmontese has a number of varieties that may vary from its basic koiné to quite a large extent. Variations include not only departures from the literary grammar, but also a wide variety in dictionary entries, as different regions maintain words of Frankish or Lombard origin, as well as differences in native Romance terminology. Words imported from various languages, including North African languages, are also present, while more recent imports tend to come from France and from Italian.

A variety of Piedmontese was Judeo-Piedmontese, a dialect spoken by the Piedmontese Jews until the Second World War.