18 The Languages and Dialects of Italy

Gaetano Berruto
18 The languages and dialects of Italy
Abstract: This chapter provides a critical overview of the sociolinguistic situation in

Italy focusing on the relationships between the standard language and the many
Italo-Romance varieties that contribute to the linguistic landscape. Following discus-
sion of terminology, recent developments concerning the status, spread and vitality of
the dialects are examined using a variety of quantitative and qualitative data. This
method highlights how in many regions the use of traditional Italo-Romance dialects
has strongly decreased at the same time as dialects have remarkably improved their
position as far as attitudes and representations are concerned. Dialect has a particular
use in the new domains of digital communication. Using Auer’s Cone model and
referencing different diglottic relationships, types of linguistic repertoires existing in
present day Italy are also illustrated. Certain contact phenomena between Italian and
dialects are also explored. Finally, a tentative evaluation of the endangerment/vitality
degree of some dialects is sketched out.
Keywords: contact, dialect use, Italo-Romance, repertoires, vitality

1 Introduction: how many languages and dialects are

spoken in Italy?
The linguistic landscape of Italy is extremely rich and varied, with an amount of
variation difficult to find in other European countries: “Italy holds especial treasures
for linguists. There is probably no other area of Europe in which such a profusion of
linguistic variation is concentrated into so small a geographical area” (Maiden/Parry
1997, 1). Besides the national language, standard Italian, which is a continuation of
the Florentine of the fourteenth century and is based upon the literary language used
by great authors (the so-called tre corone fiorentine: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio),
there are at least fifteen regional or sub-regional Italo-Romance dialect varieties,
“sisters” of Florentine, each with numerous local sub-varieties. All of these dialects
grew out of Latin and continued to be spoken in the different Italian regions, all being
“roofed” (Kloss 1978; Ammon 1989) by standard Italian. In addition to these linguistic
systems, there are about a dozen non-Italo-Romance language varieties spoken by
(often small) communities settled in various areas of the country, i.e. the traditional,
historical-territorial minority languages.
Since the 1980s, Italy has become a popular destination for immigrants, with
sizable populations from Eastern Europe and many non-European countries. There is
no nationwide count of the migrant languages spoken in Italy, but a survey by Chini
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110365955-019
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The languages and dialects of Italy 495
(2004) on immigration in the provinces of Turin and Pavia (North-West Italy) counted
no fewer than fifty different immigrant languages (including the dialects of each of
the languages), while in the Tuscan province of Siena, Bagna/Barni/Siebetcheu
(2004) found immigrants from 128 countries, with dozens of different languages (cf.
also ↗26 Code-switching and immigrant communities).
In short, it is practically impossible to establish an exact number or an exhaustive
list of the languages present in Italy today. Italy is thus – perhaps a little surprisingly
when considering the standard monolingual ideology dominant in the country during
the twentieth century – a conspicuously multilingual country. In today’s Italy, stan-
dard Italian, its primary and secondary (Italo-Romance) dialects (cf. below, section 2.1),
and many minority languages coexist, along with different kinds of societal bilingual-
ism.
Since the unification of Italy in 1861 and the formation of the Italian National
State, the political establishment has long ignored the multilingual situation. The
ideology of the standard, founded on the post-Romantic affirmation of the national
identities in Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century, together with
the need for a common language for the whole country, led to a total disregard for the
linguistic plurality of the new unitary state (for an up-to date overview, cf. Guerini
2011; for a wider discussion, cf. Tosi 2001; 2008). Dialects were strongly stigmatized
and minority languages were simply not acknowledged. It was only in 1999 that the
National Parliament passed a law concerning minority languages (Law 482/99,
“Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche”). With the excep-
tion of Sardinian and Friulian (cf. section 2.1 below), the law takes into account the

non-Italo-Romance languages only, disregarding the Italo-Romance dialects alto-

gether.
This chapter examines the sociolinguistic situation of endogenous multilingual-
ism in Italy, focusing on the relationship between Italian and Italo-Romance dialects
with regards to their historical roots and geographical distribution. First of all, I will
briefly discuss definitional issues and terminological distinctions that are important
for a better understanding of the Italian situation. The subsequent sections will focus
on the status, spread and vitality of the Italian dialects with insights about their future
survival. The following themes and research questions will be addressed: How has the
compresence of standard Italian and dialects changed in the last century? How do
people actually use the dialects in their everyday speech? What social variables
influence the variation in the use of the dialects? Do peoples’ attitudes about language
reflect the dramatic regression in dialect use? What types of repertoire are found in
present-day Italy? What are the structural consequences of the co-presence of stan-
dard language and dialects? How can the vitality of dialects and the present trend
towards their abandonment be evaluated?
Non-Italo-Romance minority varieties will only be discussed in passing while the
“new” multilingualism related to recent immigration will not be considered at all.
496 Gaetano Berruto
2 The sociolinguistic situation of Italian and

Italo-Romance dialects
2.1 Definitional issues
All Italo-Romance dialects are Italian “primary dialects”, as per Coșeriu’s (1980) use
of the term (for a more recent discussion of this issue, cf. Krefeld 2011), i.e. linguistic
systems originating in the early Middle Ages from the evolution of Latin in different
areas. One of these, the Florentine dialect, increasingly gained prestige in the four-
teenth century and was codified in the sixteenth century in its written, literary form as
the (standard) Italian language. Abruzzese, Calabrian, Campanian, Emilian, Ligurian,
Lombard, Lucanian, Piedmontese, Sicilian, Tuscan, Venetan, and so on, are sister
languages of standard Italian, to which they are genetically closely related. The
structural distance between the Italo-Romance dialects (chiefly in phonetics and
lexicon, but also in morphosyntax and pragmatics), as well as from standard Italian,
is widely comparable to the distances between the “full” or “great” Romance lan-
guages. Pellegrini (1970), taking up an essay by Muljačić (1967), compared fifteen
Romance varieties (among them, the major Romance languages like Italian, French,
Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish and some dialects like Lucanian and Cadorino
[Veneto]), on the basis of 40 phonetic and morphosyntactic features. He found out, for
example, that the distance between both Lucanian and Italian, on the one hand, and
Lucanian and Cadorino on the other, is greater than the distance between Italian and
Spanish or Portuguese.
A particular case is Florentine (and other Tuscan dialect varieties) and Romanes-
co, two dialects whose structural distance from Italian is, for various reasons,1 smaller
than that of the other Italo-Romance dialects. Both are also perceived by their speak-
ers as closer to standard Italian. Another peculiar situation is that of Sardinian and
Friulian, which are often considered to be autonomous Romance languages, separate
from Italian,2 although their linguistic characteristics, their history and their socio-
linguistic position in relation to standard Italian are fully comparable to the (other)
Italo-Romance dialects. A similar problem can be stated for Ladin, which Pellegrini
(1977) considers to be a non-Italo-Romance dialect, as it is (genetically) more closely
related to Rhaeto-Romance. Regarding the 40 features examined in Pellegrini (1970),
the distances between Italian and both Sardinian and Friulian are smaller than that
between Lucanian and Italian. Both Sardinian and Friulian are treated as Italo-
Romance dialects by Pellegrini (1977). Members of Sardinian and Friulian speech
1 The affinity between Tuscan and Italian is tautological. Romanesco underwent a process of Tuscani-
zation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Trifone 2008).
2 Sardinian and Friulian are, in fact, included in the list of the minority languages protected by Law
482 mentioned above.
communities are said to perceive a sense of “cultural otherness,” which warrants a

unique identity different from the common national culture (Toso 2008, 89–91). Such
a distinct self-perception is also felt by the Ladin community; however, some other
Italo-Romance speech communities, for example Piedmontese or Sicilian, are alleged
to feel similarly. This perception of cultural uniqueness can also be related to an
actual historical or perceived affinity with a foreign language or culture (German for
Ladin, French for Piedmontese).
The average situation of the Italo-Romance repertoire lingua cum dialectis can
thus be defined through the formula “endogenous community bilingualism with
relatively low structural distance and dilalia” (Berruto 1993, 5). The concept of dilalia
was introduced by Berruto (1987b; 1989a) in order to capture the cases in which a
clear functional differentiation exists (with a High variety and a Low variety), as in
(classic) diglossia, but unlike diglossia, there is a functional overlap in spoken
domains, with both L and H varieties used in ordinary conversation and primary
socialization.
It is worth stating that, from a social viewpoint, Italo-Romance dialects and the
non-Italo-Romance language varieties existing in Italy could easily be dealt with
together (cf. Toso 2008, 89–90), as “regional or minority languages”, both, in fact,
fulfilling the two criteria proposed by the European Charter for Regional or Minority
Languages (Council of Europe 1992), i.e. being (i) “traditionally used within a given
territory of a State by nationals of that State who form a group numerically smaller
than the rest of the State’s population” and (ii) “different from the official language(s)
of that State”.3 This would be quite reasonable, although the same Charter explicitly
does not include “dialects of the official language(s)” among regional or minority
languages, hence overlooking the important distinction between primary versus
secondary/tertiary dialects. A consolidated research tradition, however, tends to deal
with Italo-Romance dialects and minority languages separately, and in this chapter
we conform to it.
Furthermore, regional Italo-Romance dialects can reasonably be considered to be
linguae minores (German kleinere [romanische] Sprachen, a term used with reference
to the Italo-Romance branch). Even more appropriately, another term could be
applied, i.e. langues collatérales, a term introduced for designating the character of
some regional varieties (in particular, Picard) in France. Italo-Romance dialects show
both of the features that define a collateral language, that is to say, being structurally
close to the roofing language dominant in the territory and sharing its historical
development (Eloy 2004b, 6–9).
3 The Charter does not distinguish between “regional” and “minority” languages: it would however
be helpful to make such a distinction (cf. Dell’Aquila/Iannàccaro 2004, 105–107).
498 Gaetano Berruto
2.2 Use of Italian and dialects
2.2.1 Developments in the twentieth century
De Mauro (2014, 111) effectively synthetizes the basic sociolinguistic change occurring
in Italy in the last decades as follows: “La diffusione dell’uso della lingua comune è il
cambiamento più vistoso della realtà linguistica italiana nell’età della Repubblica”.
The most evident development in the sociolinguistic history of Italy since Unification
(1861) is the shift from a situation in which the dialects were largely the most common
(if not the only) vehicle of everyday spoken communication while Italian was used
almost only in written domains, to a situation in which the dialects are normally used
only in informal and in-group situations, mostly by lower socio-economic classes and
by older people (indeed, with considerable differences between the regions). To the
detriment of dialects, Italian has increasingly gained domains as well as “true” native
speakers.
Quantitative and statistical data about “who speaks what language with whom”
in the Italo-Romance area are available only from the 1980s. However, on the basis of
general sociocultural considerations and the data concerning school education and
the diffusion of literacy, De Mauro (1963) calculated that in the years of the Unification
only 2.5 % of the entire population of the new State (about 25,000,000 people) had
mastered Italian. According to Castellani (1982), having somewhat adapted De
Mauro’s criteria, the number of speakers with at least a passive knowledge of Italian
reached a percentage four times as high (8.7 % or, extending the criteria yet further,
about 10 %).
At that time, however, the number of Italian-speaking people represented a small
minority, concentrated within the socio-educational elite, while an Italo-Romance
dialect was the normal means of communication for the vast majority of the popula-
tion in nearly all circumstances. This does not mean that a large proportion of the
population with newly-acquired Italian citizenship did not have any knowledge of
Italian at all. On the contrary, in most regions it is conceivable that many people were
able to use at least a markedly substandard form of Italian in the circumstances
requiring it (and in writing: the numerous texts in so-called popular Italian from the
past centuries furnish evidence of this).4
It is by no means surprising that 150 years later, the situation is completely

different. Since 1987–1988, ISTAT (Italian National Institute for Statistics) has carried
out surveys on language use with representative samples of the entire population,
4 The presence of Italian in the past among low-class speakers has been stressed by some historians of
the Italian language. Cf. for instance Testa (2014), who appropriately speaks of a “hidden Italian”
(italiano nascosto), and several works by Sandro Bianconi concerning the particular situation of
Italian-speaking Switzerland (cf. Bianconi 2003; 2013).
based on the self-evaluations of the respondents. The results of the ISTAT (2012)
survey are shown in Table. 1.5
Table 1: Use of Italian and dialect in two different spoken contexts; % data

within the family addressing strangers
only or mainly Italian 53.1 84.8
only or mainly dialect 9.0 1.8
both Italian and dialect 32.2 10.7
The vast majority of the Italian population (85.3 % to 95.5 %) normally speaks Italian
today, although in a third of cases it is alternated with a dialect in intra-familial
uses.
If we consider the domain where the dialect is fostered most, i.e. its use within the
family, we can outline the development in Table 2, presenting the data of the five

ISTAT reports available so far.6
Table 2: Use of Italian and dialect within the family, % data7

1987–1988 1995 2000 2006 2012
only or mainly Italian 41.5 43.2 43.3 44.8 53.1
only or mainly dialect 32.0 23.7 18.8 15.0 9.0
both Italian and dialect 24.9 29.5 34.0 34.0 32.2
More than half of the Italian population is firmly Italian-speaking today, and the
decline of dialect within only a quarter of a century is dramatic. The rise of Italian,
accelerated in the last period, corresponds with a real collapse of the dialect, which
has lost nearly three quarters of its residual speakers within a single generation. It is
interesting, however, that a third of the respondents state that they use both Italian
5 Data taken from ISTAT (2012), L’uso della lingua italiana, dei dialetti e di altre lingue in Italia.
6 The first statistical data in this field date back to the 1970s: in 1974, a survey of the Doxa Institute
with a national, but very small sample reported the following values for “only Italian”, “only dialect”
and “both Italian and dialect” respectively (within the family): 25 %, 51.3 % and 23.7 % (Berruto 1994,
27). Within forty years dialect and Italian have reversed their positions in community self-reported
uses.
7 The percentage numbers vary slightly in different ISTAT Reports. For instance, in the 2006 Report,
one reads 44.4, 44.1 and 45.5 for “only or mainly Italian” for 1995, 2000 and 2006 respectively. In the
present chapter we follow the data for 2006 that are available as part of the ISTAT (2012) Report.
500 Gaetano Berruto
and dialect (alternatively or together?),8 a proportion remaining constant in the new

millennium.
This trend is the final segment of a hyperbola-like curve (Table 3) reconstructed

by De Mauro (2014, 113), based on his own evaluations for 1861 and 1955 and, for the
following decades, based on his reworking of the Doxa (1974 and 1982) and ISTAT
(2006) data:
Table 3: General use of Italian and dialect, % data

1861 1955 1974 1982 2006
always Italian 1.6 18 25 29.4 45.5
always dialect 97.5 64 51.3 36.1 5.4
both Italian and dialect 0.9 18 23.7 34.6 44.1
The great social expansion of Italian is self-evident. The crucial point in that shift from
a mainly dialect-speaking to a mainly Italian-speaking community falls in the period
between 1950 and 1970. It is in this interval that Italian people began to abandon their
use of dialects. The demographic relationship between dialect and Italian has been
inverted, Italian becoming the most spoken and most widespread vehicle of commu-
nication among extensive strata of the Italian population and the preferred language
of primary socialization. Among the generations born during this period, Italian has
thus begun to represent the actual mother tongue: for the first time in history, the
majority of the Italian people are true native speakers of Italian.
2.2.2 Use of dialects today: regional differences
The present situation can thus be roughly sketched out as follows: 40 %–45 % of
Italian people are monolingual in Italian; about 25 % are Italian/dialect bilingual with
Italian dominance; about 25 % are dialect/Italian bilingual with dialect dominance; a
very small number (1–5 %?) are still monolingual in dialect. These proportions are,
however, distributed very differently in different areas. A striking fact of the Italian
situation from this viewpoint is indeed the great diversity among the regions: Table 4
8 Of course (and unfortunately, from the viewpoint of linguists), “both Italian and dialect” can mean
different things: random code-choice, or code-choice depending on addressee or discourse topic (that
is, code-switching), or code-mixing, or frequent lexical borrowing from a system into the other, or the
use of an intermediate variety. Even the very notion of “dialect” can be misleading for “the man in the
street”, possibly meaning, for instance, a variety of Italian with (heavy) dialect interferences. Answers
thus strongly depend on what people mean by dialect.
shows the overall differences between regions where dialect is still substantially vital
and regions where dialect is spoken very little.
Table 4: Use of Italian and dialect within the family, % data, ISTAT 20129

North-Western North-Eastern Central Southern
only or mainly Italian 58.8 36.3 63.7 27.9
only or mainly dialect 8.1 22.6 6.1 21.2
both Italian and dialect 26.3 29 25.3 47.5
The ISTAT data from 2006 (available ISTAT 2012) are more informative because they are
separated by administrative region. Some significant data are presented in Table 5.
Table 5: Use of Italian and dialect within the family in seven regions, % data, ISTAT 2006

Piedmont Liguria Veneto Latium Campania Abruzzo Sicily
only or mainly Italian 59.3 68.5 23.6 60.7 25.5 37.1 26.2
only or mainly dialect 9.8 8.3 38.9 6.6 24.1 20.7 25.5
both Italian and dialect 25.4 17.6 31 28.4 48.1 38.3 46.2
Differences between regions are mirrored in facts like, for instance, the learning and
use of local dialect by immigrants, which occur significantly in, for example, Veneto,
Sicily and Sardinia.
The spread of Italian as a common ordinary language and the corresponding
decline of dialect use are by far most noticeable in the Gallo-Italian areas, while, on
the other hand, the region where the dialect best maintains its vitality is Veneto.
Southern regions are characterized by a frequent alternation and mixing of Italian and
dialect. The case of Latium (and a fortiori of Tuscany) is special, due to the reasons
mentioned above. In North-West Italy, therefore, the numbers regarding Italian and
dialect use estimated above can be expected to increase substantially, with 50–60 %
9 In the ISTAT (2012) Survey, North-Western Italy includes the following administrative regions:
Piedmont, Aosta Valley, Lombardy, Liguria (the case of Aosta Valley is however particular, because the
vernacular dialect is Francoprovençal, i.e. a Gallo-Romance dialect, and is still widely spoken; cf.
below). North-Eastern Italy: Friuli, Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto, Emilia Romagna (whereas Alto Adige/
South Tyrol is a bilingual Italian/German province; and Emilia Romagna, where a Gallo-Italian dialect
is spoken, as in Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria, presents sociolinguistic conditions very similar to
the ones of North-Western Italy: including it in the North-Eastern section is therefore mistaken). Central
Italy: Latium, Tuscany, Marche, Umbria. Southern Italy; Campania, Abruzzo, Calabria, Basilicata,
Molise, Puglia, Sicily, Sardinia.
502 Gaetano Berruto
for only-Italian speakers, 25–30 % for bilinguals with Italian dominance, and 15–20 %
for bilinguals with dialect dominance. From the viewpoint of the relationship between
Italian and dialects, the changes that occurred in the last century represent a shift
from diglossia to dilalia.
2.2.3 How many Italians speak a dialect?
An interesting issue is how many effective, active speakers of Italo-Romance dialects

there are today. Using the ISTAT data, and considering as “active speakers” the sum
of those who have answered “only or mainly dialect” or “both Italian and dialect”, we
can tentatively state that today the number of dialect speakers should be about
23,700,000.10 Using the same criteria, one can even tentatively outline a profile for
any single regional or subregional dialect, as in Table 6.
Table 6: Active dialect speakers11

Dialect Active speakers’ number Percentage of active speakers

12
Piedmontese ~1,200,000 35.2
13
Lombard ~3,700,000 35.7
Ligurian ~430,000 25.9
10 41.2 % (9 % + 32.2 %) out of 57,500,000: the population of Italy at the end of 2013 according to
ISTAT, i.e. 60,782,668 minus a presumptive rounded number of recent immigrants and minority (non-
Italo-Romance) language speakers.
11 The absolute number of active dialect speakers in Italy resulting from adding up the numbers for
all regional dialects is about 28,900,000, i.e. notably higher than the aforementioned number of about
23,700,000. Such a discrepancy is substantially due to the dramatic decrease of self-claiming active
speakers within the ISTAT Surveys of 2006 and 2012 (once again, we are referring to 2006 data
presented in ISTAT 2012): 49 % at the national level in 2006 (from which the data disaggregated by
regions are taken; 48.5 % according to the 2006 Report, cf. footnote 7) and 41.2 % in 2012. Such a

decrease, however, is also in part due to the fact that the sample of the 2012 Survey excludes the age
group <18, whereas the former Surveys considered also the age group 6–18.
12 Miola’s (2013b, 116) estimate of the number of Piedmontese-speaking people is 1,450,000. Regis
(2012b), conversely, estimates only about 700,000 active speakers for this dialect, his argument
fundamentally relying on the great number of immigrants from other regions, mostly Southern Italian,
resident in Piedmont. For these respondents the answer “dialect” presumably means the dialect of the
region of origin, and not Piedmontese. The same argument might be applied to other cases, particularly
for the North-Western Gallo-Italian dialects. In this case, also the estimated number for Lombard
should be significantly reduced. Correspondingly, the number of active speakers of the dialects of
regions such Campania, Puglia, Calabria, Sicily, Veneto should perhaps be considerably augmented.
Without specific data, it is however very difficult to establish detailed numbers.
13 Including North-Eastern Piedmont, where Lombard varieties are spoken.
Table 6: (continued)
Dialect Active speakers’ number Percentage of active speakers

14
Emilian-Romagnol ~1,850,000 38.8
15
Venetan ~4,200,000 69.9 Veneto, 64.1 Trentino
Umbro-Marchigiano ~1,050,000 42.6 Umbria, 56.1 Marche
Laziale and Romanesco ~2,000,000 35
Abruzzese ~770,000 59
Molisano ~220,000 66.5
Campanian ~4,200,000 72.2
Pugliese ~2,100,000 65.2

16
Salentino ~500,000 65.2
Calabrian ~1,450,000 74.2
Lucanian ~400,000 71
Sicilian ~3,500,000 71.7
Friulian ~500,000 62.5
Sardinian ~750,000 45.9
The scenario, comparatively drawn from the statistical data concerning the use of
Italian and Italo-Romance dialects in the new millennium, roughly corresponds to the
fourth among four scenarios forecasted in Berruto (1994). This prognosis, namely a
scenario of increasing regional differentiation, is based on the situation in the early
1990s and the available statistical data from 1974–1988. The other three possible
scenarios are: dialect maintenance, “transfiguration” of the dialects (doomed to be
absorbed into the regional varieties of Italian, its tertiary dialects), and dialect death
(i.e. their complete extinction). The scenario of regional differentiation is not in
opposition to the other three. On the contrary, it is compatible with, and in fact
partially includes, the scenario of dialect maintenance and that of transfiguration or
even death; it merely foresees a different distribution of these in the various regions.17
14 Including North-Western Tuscany (Lunigiana) and Northern Marche, where Emilian-Romagnol

varieties are spoken.
15 Including Western Friuli and the Province of Trieste, where Venetan varieties are spoken.
16 Salentino dialect is spoken in the Province of Lecce.
17 For the scenario of dialect death, in Berruto (1994), applying different criteria, I extrapolated two
curves varying as to the speed of dying: according to a more pessimistic curve, Italo-Romance dialects
would be dead around the year 2060, according to a more optimistic one, around the year 2350.
504 Gaetano Berruto
2.2.4 Dialect use today: social differences
The use of dialect or Italian obviously does not only vary in correlation with different
geographical areas. It depends also on the main social factors conditioning language
behaviour, and varies according to them. Very important social variables correlating
with dialect use are socioeconomic class and age, as shown in Tables 7 and 8. In
Table 7, we consider the level of education, which seems to be the main indicator in

the correlation between social stratification and language behaviour in present-day

Italy, rather than occupational position or income.18
Table 7: Use of Italian and dialect within the family according to level of education, % data, ISTAT 2012

university secondary school middle school primary school

degree certificate certificate certificate
both Italian and dialect 17.4 29.9 39 38.6
Table 8: Use of Italian and dialect within the family according to age, % data, ISTAT 2012

18–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–59 60–64 65–74
only or mainly Italian 60.7 55.8 58.1 54.9 49.7 44.1 41.6
only or mainly dialect 5 5.4 5.3 7.9 12.6 15.6 17.6
both Italian and dialect 26.7 30.1 28.5 32.4 34.9 38.4 38.9
Dialect is still used frequently amongst people with a low level of education. As for
age, elderly people are much more inclined to speak dialect than younger people (cf.
on this topic Alfonzetti 2005). Another significant factor is locality, or urban setting
size: Table 9 shows the difference between people living in a metropolitan area and

people living in small towns and villages, with the latter setting clearly fostering the
maintenance and use of dialect (Bianchi/Corbisiero/Maturi 2005 and Marcato/De
Blasi 2005 provide data for the Neapolitan area).
18 As for occupation, the ISTAT data make use of a very rough categorization, with few distinctions.
The values for speaking Italian within the family, however, range from 72.5 % among managers and
professionals to 36.3 % among unqualified workers.
Table 9: Use of Italian and dialect within the family according to urban setting size, % data, ISTAT

2012
city centre peripheral area town over 10,000 small town or

of city inhabitants village (< 10,000
inhabitants)
both Italian and 18.1 28.1 32.5 40.7

dialect
Gender, instead, seems to correlate very weakly with the use of Italian or dialect,
women generally appearing to be only slightly more inclined to speak Italian than
men (see Table 10).
Table 10: Use of Italian and dialect within the family according to gender, % data, ISTAT 2012

men women
only or mainly Italian 51 55.2
only or mainly dialect 10.3 7.8
both Italian and dialect 33.3 31.1
In conclusion, gender is the least important among the major social variables in
conditioning dialect use. As the data suggest, the typical dialect speaker in present-
day Italy, i.e. the person most likely to speak dialect, is an older male farmer or
manual worker, with no school certificate who lives in a village in Veneto or Southern
Italy. On the other hand, it is highly probable that a young female student living in a
North-Western city will speak only Italian. Such a pattern is (apart from, obviously, its
geographical aspects) a very familiar one in European sociolinguistics. It is attested in
many other contexts in which there is a co-presence of a standard variety and local
dialects, patois or vernacular minority languages. Examples include the Provençal,
Francoprovençal and Breton domains in France (cf. Bert/Costa 2009; several contribu-
tions in Eloy 2004a), as well as several non-Romance-speaking countries such as
Germany, the Netherlands and Norway (cf. Stoeckle/Svenstrup 2011; Auer 2011; some
contributions in Auer/Hinskens/Kerswill 2005 and in Torgersen et al. 2015).
This pattern of dialect use is corroborated by Dal Negro/Vietti (2011) and Vietti/
Dal Negro (2012) through a multivariate analysis exploring the different ways in which
variables related to language use interact with socio-demographic variables in the
diverse samples of the ISTAT Survey 2006 (50,569 respondents). The sociolinguistic
maps drawn through such an approach point out very clearly that the most frequent
506 Gaetano Berruto
pattern in the verbal behaviour of Italian people is the following: a “tipico pattern
dilalico: ‘italiano-dialetto’ in famiglia e con amici e ‘italiano’ parlato invece con
persone al di fuori della cerchia dei conoscenti” (Vietti/Dal Negro 2012, 176). The use
of Italian for addressing strangers is the most unmarked choice in the Italo-Romance
repertoire. The Idealtypus of the average speaker emerging from this analysis, to be
found in all geographical areas of Italy, is one who works in industry or the building
trade, with a middle school certificate and who speaks both Italian and dialect within
the family and with friends (Vietti/Dal Negro 2012, 178). As for the variable of age,
people born after the 1950s are more oriented toward using exclusively Italian (Vietti/
Dal Negro 2012, 179).
D’Agostino (2007, 178–179), working on data from the ISTAT Surveys and project-
ing apparent time onto real time, compares the changing behaviour of a given age
group in successive surveys. She finds that monolingual (Italian only) young speakers
show a tendency – increasing with age – to learn and use dialect as well as Italian:
for the age group born in 1985–1989, there is a shift from 67 % use of “only or mainly
Italian within the family” in the 1995 ISTAT Survey to 52 % in the 2006 Survey. This
presumably means that dialect is learned not only via normal intergenerational
transmission during primary socialization, but also as a result of the persisting
presence of dialect in the surrounding social context: in a certain number of cases,
dialect is learned or recovered as a second “auxiliary language” (Berruto 2012a, 101).
2.3 Language attitudes
The pattern sketched out above reflects the evolving shared attitudes toward dialect
use in Italy over the last decades. While the dialects are increasingly losing speakers
and domains of use, the shared attitudes and representations of the community
members towards these dialects has changed in an almost inverse ratio. Dialect today
is no longer generally perceived as the language of the lower socio-educational
classes, nor is it perceived to denote ignorance or constitute a disadvantaging gap. It
seems that dialect has lost the negative connotations and social stigmatization it bore
fifty or so years ago and has assumed the character of an expressive enrichment in the
individual repertoire. It is perceived as an additional device for creating meaning and
is considered beneficial in appropriate situations. To know and to speak a dialect has
also gained a positive value (Berruto 2006a, 121–122); it is no longer a symbol of (rural)
lower status only. Put differently, dialect has lost its significance as a necessary means
of communication in everyday speech, but is nevertheless still a functional compo-
nent of the Italian repertoire.
There are, however, differing opinions on an actual revalorization of dialects.
Examining a vast collection of judgments of primary school pupils in the whole
country, Ruffino (2006) finds that the “anti-dialect” bias is far from gone. It is likely
that in this case, such contrasting evidence also reflects different (macro-)regional
situations. It is in fact almost paradoxical to observe an inverse relationship between

the reevaluation of dialect and its diffusion in use: dialect may still be stigmatized in
regions where it is used relatively more frequently (the South), while speakers’
opinions toward it have become more positive in the regions where it is less used (the
North-West).
2.4 Italian dialect/standard repertoires
2.4.1 Overall repertoires
In Italy today, we thus find, apart from the evident differences among regions, a
twofold speech community whose members are divided approximately equally in
size: one monolingual, the other bilingual. On this basis, the common Italo-Romance
repertoire is one with two language varieties: one (Italian) fulfilling the written,
formal and out-group functions, also used in daily conversation; the other (the
dialect) used mostly in daily conversation but never used in written, formal or official
functions. This situation can be depicted through two superposed lines,19 one occu-
pied by the High language, Italian, the other by the Low language, an Italo-Romance
dialect:
H Italian
L Dialect
Following the typology of dialect/standard repertoires in Europe proposed by Auer

(2005; 2011), in Italy, one can identify two different types of constellations. The first
type coincides with Auer’s “diaglossia”, roughly corresponding to bidialectalism in
Berruto’s typology (1989a). It represents a situation in which there is a small structural
distance between dialect, the low variety, and standard, the high variety. The most
marked local dialect and (standard) Italian form the opposite poles of a single
continuum, consisting of a range of intermediate varieties progressively closer to one
of the poles and very difficult to separate from each other.20 This situation can be
found both in Tuscany, and in Rome and its surroundings, due to the particular
history of the dialects there, Romanesco having been heavily influenced by literary
19 According to the models proposed by Fasold (1984, 42–54) and Mioni (1989).
20 It is often difficult to decide whether a production in such intermediate varieties pertains to dialect
or to Italian. A meaningful example: the title of D’Achille/Stefinlongo/Boccafurni (2012) is Lasciatece
parlà (‘let us speak’), that may well be described as partially Italianized dialect (the form in base
Romanesco being lassatece parlà) or as marked, dialectized regional Italian (the form in standard
Italian being lasciateci parlare).
508 Gaetano Berruto
Italian ever since the sixteenth century and Tuscan (Florentine) being the cradle from
which standard Italian saw the light. The shape of such a constellation is depicted by
Auer as a cone, as in Figure 1.21
Figure 1: The standard/base dialects continuum

The most widespread type of Italo-Romance dialect/standard constellation is never-

theless the one where the distance between dialect and Italian is greater; the two
systems are clear-cut and they cannot be described as subsystems of a unique
diasystem. This situation roughly corresponds to the functional repertoire type termed
“dilalia” (cf. section 2.1 above). Cerruti/Regis (2014), referring to the situation in

Piedmont, represent this type of dialect/standard constellation with a double cone,

one for Italian and the other for dialect, as in Figure 2.
21 The cone accounts for the geographical (on the horizontal axis) as well as the social variation (on
the vertical axis). The acrolect at the top of the cone is the standard, the basilects at the base of the cone
are the vernacular local dialects.
Figure 2: The Italian/Piedmontese continuum

Such a picture merits some comments:

(a) the upper cone (the one representing Italian) should instead be truncated, since
proper standard Italian does not coincide with any variety actually spoken in a
given region or by a given social class or group (cf. Galli de’ Paratesi 1984, 68, 76).
510 Gaetano Berruto
Nobody in Italy can be considered to be a true native speaker of standard Italian.

There are, instead, several regional standardized varieties of Italian, which are
“standard by usage” (Ammon 2003, 2);
(b) in the case in which the high variety of dialect does not coincide with the dialect
of the regional capital, but is a levelled koiné, or in the case that no regional koiné
exists (as in Emilia-Romagna, Abruzzo, Calabria: cf. Pellegrini 1989), the lower
cone (the one representing dialect) would, likewise, be truncated;
(c) the top of the lower cone must be adjacent to the base of the upper cone, but it
must not coincide with a point of this base: if it were so, in fact, we would be
implying that a basilect of Italian coincides with the acrolect of the dialect, which
is not true. There is nonetheless a boundary between the two systems.
Furthermore, Figures 1 and 2 reveal two facts: firstly, both systems (Italian and
dialect) are articulated in a range of varieties; secondly, various centripetal and
centrifugal dynamics (symbolized by the arrows) are at work inside both cones. A
significant part of these dynamics is due to the contact between the two systems, an
issue we will deal with in section 3.
2.4.2 Complex repertoires
In all minority communities in Italy, Italian and often also the dialect of the surround-
ing or bordering area are spoken, and it is, of course, by no means exceptional to find
complex, multilayered repertoires. Some examples of them, with reference to North-
West Italy, can easily be represented in the schemes below.
A first repertoire type is one of diglossia – or better still, dilalia. Diagrams 1 and 2
below include two lines, H and L, one or both of which can be occupied by more than
one language. In the case of the Occitan-speaking community of Piedmont, Italian is
in the H line and Alpine Provençal and Piedmontese are both in the L line (Piedmon-
tese is spoken in some marginal contexts).22
Diagram 1: Occitan-speaking community of Piedmont
H I TA
T ALIA
LIA N
L P ROVENÇ AL
| Piedmontese
22 Uppercase letters indicate high importance for the corresponding language while lowercase letters
indicate decreasing importance, up to the point “not used much /marginal”.
In the Aosta Valley, the repertoire comprises four languages – two each in the H and L
lines – with French used only for a number of administrative and political purposes
and Piedmontese as a marginal lingua franca in commerce (Berruto 2003):
Diagram 2: Aosta Valley
H | French
I TA
T ALIA
LIA N
L F RANCOP ROV
ROVEENÇAL
NÇAL | Piedmontese
A triglottic situation, represented by three superposed lines, can be found in German

(Walser) enclaves around the Monte Rosa Massif. In Rimella (a Piedmont mountain
village), the repertoire is depicted in Diagram 3. The Valsesian variety of Piedmontese
is used in out-group verbal interactions and as an internal colloquial lingua franca
and, therefore, occupies an intermediate line (M, Middle) between Italian and the
local Walser dialect (the latter is used by a portion of the community in in-group
interactions):
Diagram 3: Rimella
H I TA
T ALIA
LIA N
M Piedmontese
L Walser
The Walser villages in the Aosta Valley reveal a more complicated, typically “over-
loaded”, repertoire type, as shown by Diagram 4, which includes more than two
varieties in both the H and L lines. In Gressoney, French (due to the fact that the
enclave belongs to a Italian-French bilingual autonomous region) and German (to
some degree perceived as the heritage language of the local community) each have a
marginal presence in the written, formal domains dominated by Italian while, often
due to mixed marriages, Piedmontese and Francoprovençal marginally occupy the L
line alongside the local dialect:23
23 A much more detailed representation of complex repertoires was adopted by Dal Negro/Iannàccaro
(2003) in a multifactor model, aimed also at an ethnolinguistic characterization. The authors take into
consideration the trends regarding language maintenance as well as the subjective representations by
the members of the community.
512 Gaetano Berruto
Diagram 4: Walser villages
H I TA
T ALIA
LIA N
| French | German
L Walser | Piedmontese | Francoprovençal
3 Between Italian and dialects: variation and contact

phenomena
An average Italo-Romance linguistic repertoire contains several varieties ranging from
the national literary standard to a local vernacular. Since the 1960s, several authors
have proposed differently shaped models to depict the range of varieties in Italian/
dialect repertoires (Berruto 1993, 18–27). In Berruto (1987a), I outlined a model of the
architecture of contemporary Italian along the dimensions of diastratia, diaphasia
and diamesia (diatopia always operating in the background; cf. also Berruto 2009). By
focusing on social and geographical variation, one can distinguish the following main
varieties (from the top to the bottom of the architectural space of Italian, i.e. in the
upper cone in Figure 2): literary standard Italian, neo-standard Italian,24 regional

Italian, popular (regional) Italian (heavily dialectized); and in the lower dialect cone:
regional dialect (often a koiné, Regis 2011), urban dialect, local rural dialect (regional
koiné and urban dialect are Italianized at least to a certain extent).25 It is interesting
that the varieties in the middle zone of the Italian cone, and especially those in the
area of adjacency between the two cones, are the outcome of the intensive and
longtime contact between Italian and dialect in the native speech communities.
As for the contact relationship between Italian and dialects, the set of co-occur-
ring phenomena has frequently been subsumed under the term convergence, a well-
known term that refers to all contact-induced language changes that reduce the
differences between two languages and increase their structural resemblance. This
term, however, is all-encompassing and is therefore in need of finer distinctions. First
of all, it is worth distinguishing between the bilateral character inherent in the notion
of convergence itself (which implies that two systems “converge”, i.e. come closer to
24 The term italiano neo-standard was used by Berruto (2012b, 27) for indicating an accepted set of
features that, in comparison to the traditional literary standard, represent a lowering and a consolida-
tion of a partially new norm, regionally slightly varied, closer to the spoken varieties and to the non-
learned and non-bureaucratic styles.
25 A dialect variety heavily influenced by Italian is often referred to with the term “Italianized dialect”.
For the regions where a notable dialectal literature exists, a variety known as “literary dialect” can be
added. Detailed analyses of the intradialectal variation can be found in many works on the Neapolitan
area (cf. Sornicola 2006; Como 2007).
each other) and the unilateral process occurring when one system changes, becoming
more similar to the other, while the other remains the same, maintaining its character-
istic structures. The second case has been called “advergence” (Advergenz) by Matthe-
ier (1996). This type of distinction has already been applied to the Italian situation by
Berruto (1989b; cf. also Berruto 2005), where I schematized four major, partially
overlapping classes of structural phenomena giving rise to new varieties in the contact
area between the systems of Italian and dialect: (1) dialectization of Italian; (2)
Italianization of dialect; (3) koineization; (4) hybridization.
The first phenomenon occurs when mostly dialect-speaking people transfer overt
or covert dialect material to Italian (form, meanings, structures, rules; i.e. borrowings
and calques, or “matter replication” and “pattern replication” respectively, according
to Matras/Sakel 2007), at any level of the system. An outcome of this process is the
formation of varieties of Italian influenced by dialect. The most marked of such
varieties has been referred to with the term italiano popolare (‘popular Italian’),
defined as a variety with heavy dialect interference, showing many substandard
elements which deviate from standard Italian. This variety is both spoken and written
by uneducated dialect speakers, with marked features of popular Italian being espe-
cially visible in written texts. Popular Italian was widespread in the past, above all, in
the hundred years after the unification of Italy. Its presence has, however, become
less evident in the last decades, due to the change in the overall sociolinguistic
conditions illustrated above (cf. Berruto 2012b, 127–162; Berruto 2014). Two examples
of dialectal morphosyntactic features that characterize popular Italian in Northern
Italy are: a double complementizer like quando che, lit. ‘when that’, Standard Italian
(henceforth St. It.) quando, Piedmontese kwan ke; deletion of the preverbal negative

particle, as in so che ho pensato niente lit. ‘(I) know that (I) have thought nothing’,
St. It. so che non ho pensato niente (Cerruti 2009, 167). Dialectal features of popular

Italian are, however, most evident in phonetics and lexicon.

The influence of dialect is, of course, also manifest in the class of varieties that are
currently most widespread in the Italian scenario, i.e. regional Italian. Regional
varieties, with (mostly lexical) features imported from dialect and spoken by educated
speakers, have undergone a process of standardization such that, in Italy today, there
are several regional standards of the national language, each of which is accepted as
a norm in the respective region. These varieties fall within the general frame of the
restandardization of neo-standard Italian (Berruto forthcoming). An example of a
typical regional Piedmontese feature unrelated to social stratification is the verbal
periphrasis fare che plus infinitive, lit. ‘to do that’, with an aspectual value of
immediacy and/or a textual value connoting the action as better than other possible
alternatives (Ricca 2002; Cerruti 2009, 149–153): fai che scrivere anche a lui, approxi-
mately ‘you had best also write to him’ (lit. ‘do that write also to him’).
Italianization of the dialects is the opposite phenomenon, i.e. the transfer of Italian
materials or patterns into the dialect, giving rise to the formation of dialect varieties
heavily influenced by Italian (cf. above). Lexicon is the area most affected by Italianiza-
514 Gaetano Berruto
tion. A list of dialect lexicon borrowed from Italian into various dialects is provided by
Grassi (1993) and Sobrero (1997); examples include: Piedm. akwa ‘water’ (It. acqua,
Piedm. eva), Lomb. pisèj ‘peas’ (It. piselli, Lomb. erbjùn), Em. skambjè ‘(to) exchange’ (It.
scambiare, Em. baratè), Cal. sposara ‘to marry’ (It. sposarsi, Cal. nzurara), Sard. nonna
‘grandmother, granny’ (It. nonna, Sard. jaja), and so on. The influence of Italian is also
manifest in phonetics (Sobrero 1997, 416–417), where, for example, dialect phonemes or
phones that do not exist in Italian are replaced by Italian phonemes or phones sharing a
part of the articulatory features of the former (this is, for example, the case of the rural
Venetan /θ/ replaced by /ts/, as in ['tsiŋkwe] ‘five’, It. cinque ['tʃiŋkwe], rural Ven.
['θiŋkwe]). In other cases, when a dialect phoneme or phone within a word differs from
the Italian counterpart, it is simply replaced by a phoneme or phone of the latter (this is
the case of the Piedmontese [tʃer'ke], It. cercare [tʃer'kare] ‘to look for’, Piedm. [ser'ke]).
More subtle is the influence of Italian on the morphology and syntax of the
dialects. Ricca (2006) has observed that the borrowing of structural paradigms, when
it occurs, can lead to new surface differences from the donor language. This is the
case for Italian adjectives ending in -ale which, once borrowed by Piedmontese, can
be adapted either to a new syncretizing inflectional class which deletes the final
vowel, thus without distinction between M ASC and F EM (as in Italian) or to the
indigenous Piedmontese inflectional class with the ending -a for S G F EM . It. culturale
‘cultural’, for instance, is borrowed in Piedm. as coltural [kulty'ral], which can be
treated as invariable for gender (so: coltural S G M ASC /F EM , colturaj P L M ASC /F EM ) or as
variable (so: coltural S G M ASC , colturala S G F EM , colturaj P L M ASC , colturale P L F EM ).
T he first treatment introduces into Piedmontese a structural pattern of Italian, while
the second inserts the loanwords into already existing dialect patterns, but in both
cases no dialect form coincides with the corresponding Italian form, so that surface
differences are preserved (Ricca 2006, 141–143).
All in all, dialect morphology, and especially syntax, is rather resistant to the effects
of contact. Fundamental morphological oppositions are maintained and basic dialect
syntactic patterns seem to remain untouched by the influence of Italian. Renewal and
enrichment of the lexicon, on the contrary, take place almost exclusively through
borrowings and (to a much lesser extent) calques from Italian. Suffice it to give some
examples of neologisms used on the internet: Piedm. colegament, Lomb. collegament,
Genoese connescioin ‘link’; Piedm. telefonin ‘mobile phone’; Lomb. immigrazion, ‘immi-
gration’; Gen. globalizzassion ‘globalization’ (Patrucco 2003; Miola 2013a); Lomb. cu-
nett ‘(to) connect’, prugramadur ‘programmer’, virus informatech ‘computer virus’,
palmar ‘palmtop’ (It. palmare; Miola 2013a, 98–99). In sum, dialects appear to be
increasingly heteronomous with regard to Italian, their roofing language.26
26 Recent proposals made by dialect activists aiming at lexically innovating Piedmontese with refer-
ence to a French roof (cf. Tosco 2012) obtain a clearly very different result from the dialect normally in
use.
Another notable phenomenon in the area of contact between Italian and dialect is
the formation of regional or subregional dialect varieties that usually take the form of
a koiné. Such a koiné can be based on the dialect of the region’s or subregion’s main
city or it is the result of dialect levelling, with the elimination of some of the most
marked local features. The removal of marked local features can coincide with the
adoption of Italianized forms: a dialect regional koiné is often also an Italianized
variety of dialect. The two phenomena must, however, be kept separate as koineizing
dialect levelling follows internal dynamics (cf. Moretti 1999, 19–20, 39–40). For
instance, Petrini (1988, 175–176) observed in the formation of a Ticinese levelled koinè
(Ticinese is the Gallo-Italian dialect spoken in Italian-speaking Switzerland) the
abandonment of both the metaphony distinguishing S G and P LUR , a markedly rural
feature unknown in Italian, as in magnèn ‘tinkers’ → magnán, and the change to -án
and -ón of the plural forms ending in -ái and -ói (as in calzói ‘trousers, pants’ →
calzón). Both changes neutralize the opposition with the now homophonous singular,
but neither of them results in a distinction similar to the alternating one typical for
Italian.27
Finally, attention must be paid to hybridization, which mostly takes the form of
hybrid lexical forms made up of surface materials and morphological rules of two
separate systems. For instance, a verb such as rangiare ‘to adjust’ (It. aggiustare,
Piedm. [raŋ'dʒe]) is jointly constructed with the lexical morpheme of Piedmontese
[raŋdʒ-] and the Italian infinitive ending -are (Berruto 2005, 87). Formation of hybrid-
isms is particularly frequent in popular Italian.
The sum of these facts undoubtedly leads to an advergence of the Italo-Romance
dialects to Italian; and consequently to a convergence among the dialects themselves
which become, at least in the lexicon, more similar to each other.
So far, we have mentioned contact phenomena at the level of the language
system. As for the level of discourse, code-switching in conversation between Italian
and all Italo-Romance dialects is very frequent. This phenomenon has increasingly
been noticed since the 1980s.28 We find many different types of code-switching, as
exemplified in the following utterances, produced by young people in Catania (Sicily;
from Alfonzetti 2012; Italian, Sicilian):
(1) code alternation:
(addressing a friend) mih, ma picchi iu? [‘the dickens, why just me?’]
(addressing the catechist) te lo posso ripetere la prossima volta? [‘can I repeat it to
you next time?’]
(2) extrasentential code-switching (tag-switching):
vadda, voglio vedere cosa dice [‘look, I want to see what he says’]
27 A detailed and sharp discussion of phenomena concerning dialect koinái in Italy can be found in
Regis (2011; 2012a).
28 See also ↗26 Code-switching and immigrant communities.
516 Gaetano Berruto
(3) intersentential code-switching: sto scherzando però è vero. Iddu e accussi [‘I’m
joking but it’s true. He is like that.’]
(4) intrasentential code-switching (code-mixing): io l’annu scossu ccu P quannu fa-
ceumu architettura tecnica [‘me last year with P when we attended technical
architecture’]
(5) word internal code-switching (i.e. hybridism): professoressa, sto accupando! [‘tea-
cher, I’m choking’!]
Both code-switching, i.e. the switch from one language to the other with a clear
pragmatic meaning and occurring mostly beyond the sentence boundary, and code-
mixing, i.e. a switch apparently devoid of any pragmatic meaning and occurring
mostly inside a sentence, are very frequent in all regions (Alfonzetti 1992; 2012;
Berruto 1997; 2001). The frequency of code-mixing is facilitated by similarity in
lexicon: Italian and Italo-Romance dialects share a number of homophonous terms
(in particular, functional words) that can act as a triggering factor for switching.
Furthermore, Italian and dialect grammars appear to be easily compatible.
Bilingual discourse frequently acts as an interactional and conversational stra-
tegy. All of the functions that have been enumerated with regards to the functional
analysis of code-switching worldwide can also be found in Italian-dialect code-
switching (cf. Alfonzetti 1992 and 1997 for a catalogue with exemplification). Very
common functions are those related to the addressee’s choice and to accommodation
(Cerruti/Regis 2005). The directionality of switching, in the various senses of this term,
appears to be largely interchangeable.
4 Vitality of Italo-Romance dialects

We have seen that Italo-Romance dialects have lost speakers, and their position in the
repertoire has considerably changed in the last decades, with an impressive decline in
use contrasting with an improvement of their position in the speakers’ attitudes and
representations. But can the dialects truly be considered endangered languages?
In Berruto (2006a), I estimated the relative degree of vitality of some Italo-
Romance dialects in comparison with some minority languages in Italy and in Europe
by applying the criteria and parameters proposed by a group of researchers affiliated
with UNESCO (Brenzinger et al. 2003). The UNESCO proposal acknowledges nine
major factors for evaluating language vitality, each of them (except one) being
expressible by applying a numerical value from 0 to 5, in order to obtain a Vitality or
Endangerment Index.29
29 Cf. recent discussions of this issue by Huiying Lee/Van Way (2016) and Grenoble (2016).
On the basis of both the available information and my personal acquaintance

with some cases, I calculated this index for two Italo-Romance dialects (Piedmontese
and Campanian) and compared it with two minority languages in Northern Italy
(Alpine Provençal, a Gallo-Romance dialect, spoken in the South-Western alpine
valleys, Piedmont; and Ladin, spoken in Dolomites around the Sella massif); and, as a
tertium comparationis, with two other minority languages, one in France (Gascon, an
Occitan dialect) and the other in Great Britain (Cornish, Kernowek, a South-Western
Brittonic Celtic dialect). Table 11 records the values for each of these six varieties.

Table 11: Vitality Index for six varieties

Piedmontese Campanian Alpine Ladin Gascon Cornish

Provençal
1. Intergenerational 2–3 3–4 2 4 3 2

Language Transmission
2. Absolute Number of 1.2 mil. >4 mil. 20,000 30,000 250,000 ?

Speakers
3. Proportion of Speakers 2–3 4 2–3 4 3 1

within the Total
Population
4. Trends in Existing 2 3 3 4 2 1
Language Domains
5. Response to New 2 2 (?) 1 3 0 1

Domains and Media
6. Materials for Language 2 2 2–3 4–5 2 2

Education and Literacy
7. Governmental and 2–3 2–3 3–4 5 3 3

Institutional Language
Attitudes and Policies
Including Official Status
and Use
8. Community Members’ 3 3 2 4 3 2
Attitudes toward their
Own Language
9. Amount and Quality of 4 4 3 4 4 3

Documentation
Average Index30 ~2.4–2.8 ~2.9–3 ~2.3–2.7 ~4–4.1 2.5 ~1.9
30 Indexes for Piedmontese and Campanian are from Berruto (2007a), for Alpine Provençal from Regis
(2012b), for Ladin from Berruto (2007b), for Gascon and Cornish from Lewis (2005). The decimal
average indexes are rounded up to one decimal place.
518 Gaetano Berruto
The average Index for Piedmontese and Campanian being between 2.4 and 3, both
dialects can undoubtedly be considered endangered languages. The values 3 and 2
correspond, roughly speaking, to a characterization of a language as respectively
“definitely endangered” and “severely endangered” on the vitality scale of Brenzinger
et al. (2003). Campanian is, however, more vital than Piedmontese; both seem to be
more vital than the two non-Italian minority varieties considered here, a little more
vital than Gascon and clearly more than Cornish, but distinctly less vital than Ladin (a
value close to 4 for the latter, meaning “unsafe” but not “endangered”). The vitality of
Piedmontese is comparable to that of Alpine Provençal.
As for intergenerational transmission, it is worth noting that new habits of lan-
guage acquisition for non-standard languages have developed in the last decades. It is
not unusual that children and adolescents do not learn dialect directly from their
parents or within the immediate family, but instead from their grandparents or even
from the surrounding milieu. They may also learn dialect via the internet. In general,
such a process leads to an imperfect, fragmentary mastery of the dialect as an L2, often
resulting in semi-competent speakers who use dialect (mainly in an Italianized form) as
a subsidiary code intermingled with Italian, for playful purposes and/or when speaking
with native dialect speakers. More generally, Moretti (1999, 9) has introduced the
notion of parlanti evanescenti for designating “le persone che (di solito) non parlano
dialetto”. For these fading speakers, who have little more than a passive dialect
competence, interactions with active speakers can reinforce the presence of dialect.
Another very important point here is criterion 5: “Response to New Domains and
Media”. Around the end of the twentieth century, the widespread use of the internet
and computer-mediated communication, together with a massive increase in the
general relevance of the mass media in communication in today’s society, has meant
a profound change in the communicative role of the dialects. The typical domain for
dialect used to be the informal, private conversation while written use of dialect was
usually confined to literary production. Now, the important technological innovations
of the digital wave, and especially the spread of Web 2.0 social networks and mobile
phones, have brought about a completely new modality of communication, variously
called “written speech”, “electronic discourse/language”, “internet language”, “con-
versational writing”, “Netspeak”, parlato digitato (‘punched-in speech’) and so on.
This has opened new spaces for dialect. On the one hand, some (especially young)
people have begun to communicate electronically using dialect; on the other hand,
elitist activists have increasingly taken to producing websites in dialect. The web has
“allowed several oral language varieties to become online written varieties, thus re-
flourishing as written languages after centuries of non- or very low-level literacy”
(Miola 2013a, 91). This phenomenon has also touched Italo-Romance dialects, signifi-
cantly combined with an overall change in the attitudes towards dialect and the
widespread tendency towards glocalization, as well as the growth of political ideolo-
gies promoting local, particularized identities and values in contraposition to na-
tional, generalized ones.
As a consequence of this new image of dialect, since the 1990s, the emergence of
dialect use can be observed, albeit often mixed with Italian or limited to small
insertions or textual fragments, not only in chats, newsgroups, blogs, social networks,
dedicated websites, Wikipedia, and generally in free public linguistic space (Patrucco
2003; Grimaldi 2004; Fiorentino 2006; Casoni 2011; Dal Negro/Vietti 2011; Miola
2013a, 2013b), but also in written domains such as songs (Sottile 2013), signboards
and other items belonging to the Linguistic Landscape (Coluzzi 2009; Guerini 2012), in
advertising and commerce (Pandolfi 2005; Goria 2012), in written announcements,
banners, inscriptions and graffiti (Depau 2005; Guerini 2011) and even, though only
sporadically, in comics (Berruto 2006b).
These written usages of dialects raise the interesting problem of orthographic
conventions. Italian people are usually not literate in dialect. Although many dialects
can boast a certain degree of standardization (Regis 2013) and a certain amount of
literary production, in some cases even abundant, including prose texts and plays
(e.g. Piedmontese, Lombard, Venetan, Ligurian, Romanesco, Neapolitan, Sicilian),
the majority of dialects have no traditional shared, codified, unitary written norm.
When a traditional normalized writing system exists (as, for example, for Piedmon-
tese, Ligurian, Venetan, cf. Sanga 1980; Miola 2013b) or graphic forms are proposed,
they are not mastered by typical speakers, who are by no means accustomed to
reading or writing dialect texts. Therefore, when writing dialect, web-users adopt
several different, often merely personal solutions (Miola 2013a; 2013b; on the whole
issue, cf. Dal Negro/Guerini/Iannàccaro 2015).
All things considered, one must proceed with caution in emphasizing the rele-
vance of these multifarious forms of dialect emergence or resurgence (Berruto 2006a),
as evidence of a currently ongoing process of reversing language shift or even as
evidence of dialect revitalization. We have to keep in mind, that the more conspicuous
of these emergences (e.g. websites) are the work of elites or small groups of highly
motivated activists or dialect promoters and have little to do with the communicative
needs of society as a whole. These usages promote the use of dialect in domains
outside the field in which dialect use might actually be “vital” and functional (and
perhaps irreplaceable; i.e. the ordinary informal, non-technical in-group conversation
about local topics) in the daily life of small communities; in such domains dialect has
uneven competitors: Italian (and English). Dialect use might have no other value than
a merely symbolic one. It is often a matter of an “artificial” and often intentionally
ideological use (“a ‘controlled’ use of dialects […] apt to contextualize speech without
requiring a full linguistic competence”, Dal Negro/Vietti 2011, 74) rather than a
“natural” social development aimed at restoring the dialect as an indispensable tool
in communicative practices.
520 Gaetano Berruto
5 Concluding remarks
In the previous sections, we have examined the main aspects of the present socio-
linguistic situation of the dialects in Italy: dialect use by the speakers in different
contexts, dialect position within the repertoire, and the relationship of dialects with
the standard language. Since the mid-twentieth century, the vitality of the dialects has
substantially and continuously decreased and weakened. The recent signs of resur-
gence in the field of new media ensures neither intergenerational transmission nor the
maintenance of the spoken domains in which the dialect played a very important role
in the past. Attention must also be paid to the real function of the “new” emergences
of dialect in many domains, which may simply represent a niche phenomenon. In
Berruto (2006a), I sketched out four different values ascribable to the dialect in order
to assess its maintenance and, perhaps, revitalization (cf. Dal Negro/Vietti 2011).
Ranging from the most significant value to the least important one for the purpose of
revitalization, the use of dialect can be: (i) actual/effective (when it is instrumental to
basic daily interaction for all needs); (ii) expressive/playful (when it conveys particu-
lar effects of expressivity, such as jokes, humorous creativity, and so on); (iii) sym-
bolic/ideological (when it is fundamentally a means of representing or emphasizing a
particular identity or evoking a given cultural world); (iv) folkloric/museum-like
(when the dialect appears as an object exhibited for documenting and witnessing a
cultural heritage). In the new resurgence of dialect, values (ii–iv) seem to be particu-
larly applicable, but there is very little evidence of a dialect revival as a means of
communication in ordinary conversation. In Moretti’s perspective (cf. above), values
(ii-iv) of dialect usage seem to be typical of fading speakers; on this basis Moretti
(2006) argues that, in the present situation, there are two different prototypes of
dialect, one (“dialect 1”) consisting in the dialect as L1 spontaneously used in family
interactions by older peasants, the other (“dialect 2”) consisting in the dialect as L2
intentionally used in digital communication by high-school youth. Dialect 1 (the old
dialect) seems to be dying out, while dialect 2 (the modern dialect) seems to be
growing. The dynamic between dialect 1 and dialect 2 is not easy to understand fully.
Finally, manifest and possibly long-term consequences of the present (re-)diffusion of
dialect in common usage, due to the success of political movements aimed at the
populist exaltation of all that is “local”,31 have likewise not yet been demonstrated.
The sum of all these considerations, however, makes it very difficult to give a clear
opinion about the future of dialects. It is therefore reasonable to be cautious on this
topic. Currently, dialect turns out to be used much less than it was in the past.
Although it is more visible in the public domain, its value within the linguistic market
has not substantially increased.
31 Political movements and parties like the Lega Nord naturally support and promote (the use of)
dialect with a purpose of contraposition and protest against the unity of the national State.
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Gaetano Berruto

18 The languages and dialects of Italy

Abstract: This chapter provides a critical overview of the sociolinguistic situation in

Keywords: contact, dialect use, Italo-Romance, repertoires, vitality

1 Introduction: how many languages and dialects are

non-Italo-Romance languages only, disregarding the Italo-Romance dialects alto-

2 The sociolinguistic situation of Italian and

2.1 Definitional issues

communities are said to perceive a sense of “cultural otherness,” which warrants a

2.2 Use of Italian and dialects

2.2.1 Developments in the twentieth century

within the family addressing strangers

only or mainly Italian 53.1 84.8

only or mainly dialect 9.0 1.8

both Italian and dialect 32.2 10.7

ISTAT reports available so far.6

Table 2: Use of Italian and dialect within the family, % data7

1987–1988 1995 2000 2006 2012

only or mainly Italian 41.5 43.2 43.3 44.8 53.1

only or mainly dialect 32.0 23.7 18.8 15.0 9.0

both Italian and dialect 24.9 29.5 34.0 34.0 32.2

and dialect (alternatively or together?),8 a proportion remaining constant in the new

Table 3: General use of Italian and dialect, % data

1861 1955 1974 1982 2006

always Italian 1.6 18 25 29.4 45.5

always dialect 97.5 64 51.3 36.1 5.4

both Italian and dialect 0.9 18 23.7 34.6 44.1

2.2.2 Use of dialects today: regional differences

North-Western North-Eastern Central Southern

only or mainly Italian 58.8 36.3 63.7 27.9

only or mainly dialect 8.1 22.6 6.1 21.2

both Italian and dialect 26.3 29 25.3 47.5

Piedmont Liguria Veneto Latium Campania Abruzzo Sicily

2.2.3 How many Italians speak a dialect?

An interesting issue is how many effective, active speakers of Italo-Romance dialects

Table 6: Active dialect speakers11

Dialect Active speakers’ number Percentage of active speakers

Ligurian ~430,000 25.9

Dialect Active speakers’ number Percentage of active speakers

Umbro-Marchigiano ~1,050,000 42.6 Umbria, 56.1 Marche

Laziale and Romanesco ~2,000,000 35

Molisano ~220,000 66.5

Campanian ~4,200,000 72.2

Pugliese ~2,100,000 65.2

Calabrian ~1,450,000 74.2

Sicilian ~3,500,000 71.7

Friulian ~500,000 62.5

Sardinian ~750,000 45.9

14 Including North-Western Tuscany (Lunigiana) and Northern Marche, where Emilian-Romagnol

2.2.4 Dialect use today: social differences

the correlation between social stratification and language behaviour in present-day

university secondary school middle school primary school

only or mainly Italian 73.4 59.3 38.7 20.9

only or mainly dialect 2.9 5.7 15.5 33.8

both Italian and dialect 17.4 29.9 39 38.6

18–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–59 60–64 65–74

only or mainly dialect 5 5.4 5.3 7.9 12.6 15.6 17.6

city centre peripheral area town over 10,000 small town or

only or mainly Italian 69.9 62.8 51.6 42.7

only or mainly dialect 4.3 5.3 10.3 11.1

both Italian and 18.1 28.1 32.5 40.7

only or mainly Italian 51 55.2

only or mainly dialect 10.3 7.8