Ligurian language (Romance)

Ligurian is also the name of an extinct language of Italy.

Ligurian Líguru, Ligure
Spoken in:	Italy  France  Monaco
Region:	Liguria
Total speakers:	n.a.% out of 1,920,848
Language family:	Indo-European  Romance   Italo-Western    Western     Gallo-Iberian      Gallo-Romance       Gallo-Italic        Ligurian
Official status
Official language in:	Officially recognized in Italy (Law 482/1999)
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	roa
ISO 639-3:	lij
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Ligurian is a Gallo-Romance language, currently spoken in Liguria, northern Italy, and parts of the Mediterranean coastal zone of France, and Monaco. Genoese (Zeneize or Zeneise) is one of the most well-known dialects, spoken in Genoa, the capital of Liguria.

It belongs to the Northern Italian group within the Romance languages.

The language may be dying out, but is still widely spoken by many, especially the elderly, out of a population of 1,920,848.

[edit] Geographic extent

Besides Liguria, the language is also spoken in Northern Tuscany, Piedmont (part of the province of Alessandria), Emilia-Romagna (some areas in the province of Piacenza), the Alpes-Maritimes of France (in some villages near Nice), and in parts of Sardinia (Italy), Corsica (France), and the country of Monaco. It has been adopted formally in Monaco as the Monegasque language; or locally, Munegascu. The Nizzardo Italians spoke a language very similar to the Ligurian, before the annexation of the County of Nice to France in 1860.

[edit] Linguistic structure

Ligurian exhibits distinct Italian features, while also having features of other Romance languages. No link between Romance Ligurian and the Ligurian language of the ancient Ligurian populations, in the form of a substrate or otherwise, can be demonstrated by linguistic evidence. There does exist, however, toponomastic derivations from ancient Ligurian.

[edit] Alphabet

The ligurian alphabet has:

• 6 vowels: a, e, i, o, u, y
• 18 consonants: b, c, ç, d, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, x, z.

[edit] Vocabulary

• a péia: pear (It. and Sp. pera, Pt. pêra)
• u méi: apple (It. mela)
• u setrun: orange (cf. Fr. citron; replacing Gen. limon--cf. It. limone)
• u fîgu: fig (It. fico Fr. figue)
• u pèrsegu: peach (Fr. pêche, Cat. préssec)
• u rîbes: currant
• u franbuâse: raspberry (Fr. framboise)
• a sêsgia: cherry (it. ciliegia, Fr. cerise)
• u mêlu: strawberry
• a nûsge: hazelnut (Fr. noisette)
• l'arbicòca: apricot (Cat. albercoc)
• l'üüga: grape (Sp. uva)
• u pinjöö: pine nut (It. pinolo)
• arvî: to open (It. aprire, Fr. ouvrir, Sp. abrir)
• serâ: to close (Sp. cerrar)
• u cèeu: light
• a cà: home, house (casa; Cat. and Ven: ca)
• l'öövu: egg (It. uovo)
• l'ögiu: eye (It. occhio, Fr. l'œil, Cat. ull)
• a buca: mouth (bocca)
• a tésta: head (It. testa)
• a schèn-a: back (Cat. esquena)
• u cüü: derriere, buttock (Fr. and Cat. cul)
• u brasu: arm (Fr. bras)
• a gamba: leg (It. gamba, Fr. jambe, Cat. cama)
• u cöö: heart (Fr. cœur)

[edit] External links

Ligurian language (Romance) edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Ethnologue report

[edit] See also

• Nizzardo Italians
• Monegasque
• Mentonasque