Venetian Language
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia Giulia, Istria, and some towns of Dalmatia, totalling 6–7 million speakers. The language is called vèneto or vènet in Venetian, veneto in Italian; the variant spoken in Venice is called venexiàn/venesiàn or veneziano, respectively. Although referred to as an Italian dialect (Ven diałeto, It dialetto) even by its speakers, it is in fact a separate language, not a variety or derivative of Italian. Instead, Venetian differs both in grammar, phonetics, and vocabulary. It is usually classified as a Western Romance language, a branch of Romance to which Italian does not belong. Some authors include it among the Gallo-Italic languages, but by most authors, it is treated as separate. Typologically, Venetian has little in common with the Gallo-Italic languages of northwestern Italy, but shows some affinity to nearby Istriot.
Venetian is not related to Venetic, an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken in the Veneto region around the 6th century BC.
Read more about Venetian Language: History, Geographic Distribution, Classification, Regional Variants, Grammar, Sound System, Sample Etymological Lexicon, English Words of Venetian Origin
Famous quotes containing the words venetian and/or language:
“I was happy there,
part Venetian vase,
part Swiss watch, part Indian head.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“We might hypothetically possess ourselves of every technological resource on the North American continent, but as long as our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be “revolutionary” but not transformative.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)