Languages of Italy - (NOT just dialects!) 

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As an Italian, I am impressed because this video is very well researched and accurate. This is a sign of the reliability of this channel, therefore I must subscribe.

yeah we dont say just mamma mia...

As a Friulian I want to thank you, because usually even Italians don't know our existence

As an Italian living abroad, I had to explain many times this languages "thing" we have. Next time someone will ask, I'll answer with "wait I have a video to show you". Good work!

For three years in high school, I followed an italian class without really listening because I hatedmy teacher. But I still badly wanted to learn italian, so I went one month in Turino in a host family. Turned out that the "family" was just an 94 years old woman who didn't know italian and only spoke Piemontese. Since I'm not that social, apart for small chat, I only spoke with this woman and quite a lot actually. When I came back from Italy in France, I went to chat with my italian teacher, but she couldn't understand anything. Turned out that my italian didn't improve at all, but now I know some piemontese vocabulary I'll never use

Sono messicano e ho imparato l'italiano perchè il bel paese mi piace tantissimo e spero che qualche giorno possa visitarlo!

I remember I once visited my friend in Napoli (Naples). We were out drinking and eating all night (although the next day was supposed to be a working day) with 10 other locals. At some point I said, "Wow, Italian sounds lovely." Then all 11 of them got offended and started waving their hands in disbelief and yelling, "We are speaking Napoletano!! How can you not tell?" I guess I must have committed some crime there...

I'm venetan and once I heard a Brazilian speaking Tałian: it was like hearing a neighbor!! amazing emotion. And they protect the language more than we do, it's absolutely a shame. Tanti basi to our Brazilian brothers 🇧🇷🇮🇹💪

Sono un professore di Italiano e ti dico: MOLTO BRAVO!!!

Damn. I didn't realize how different Italic languages can be. Wow. They're almost unintelligible from North to South. Portuguese and Brazilians can still understand each other well and they're a whole Continent away.

I'm Neapolitan and I would say that Italian is the language I've used at school and I use to comunicate with other Italian but Neapolitan is the language of my heart, it comes out when emotions are strong. Neapolitans are very proud of our language and I think that will never die but rather transform like any other language in the world because is a living language and, as I said our preferred language among standard Italian

"[...] and (Italy) shares borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and San Marino." Vatican City: *sad pope noises*

So THAT is why all the hand gestures were invented...

As a friulian speaker: i live in Trieste, and in the group of friends there are friulian, venetian, apulian and napolitan speakers. We refuse to use standard italian to communicate, so everyone taks to each other in is own language. Then of course nobody is able to understand anything. In these situations we use to suspend the talk and go to drink togheter. After drinking, we still speak our own language but the dialects unexplainably have now become perfectly mutually intellegible to each other. That's the way we defend our identity in North-East!

I'm italian (from abruzzo!) and you're the first person that has been able to track and explain clarely to other people italian dialects origins. You gained a subscriber❤️🇮🇹

I believe I should mention that there is also a dialect of Greek spoken in South Italy since the ancient times.

I am from China and I am enthusiastic about Italian culture especially its languages. Similar to Romance languages in Italy, Chinese has more than ten distinctive Sinitic branches, most of which have historically considered dialects. I find it truly exciting to learn a sister language of one you are fluent in, and I hope Italian people can preserve your mother togues better 👍

I'm Italian and was born and grew up in the Venetian countryside of the 70s. Back then, nearly everyone spoke dialect within their families and also with strangers, with very few exceptions. We learned standard Italian at school and from TV. Now the situation is quite different, very few children can speak dialect: they still understand it, but no longer use it as an active language.

Italy is so much diverse that even dialects have dialects! 😆

I am an American who learned Standard Italian both in college and by living in Florence for a year when I was in college. I also learned the Florentine version of Tuscan. During a trip to Italy in 2003, long after graduation, I booked a hotel near the train station in Florence. When I exited the station, I became a little disoriented and I approached an elderly man to ask for directions to the nearby hotel. I asked in Italian, and he gave me a blank stare. I then asked him in the Florentine dialect of Tuscan, despite the fact that the two versions of my question were very similar, his eyes lite up and he promptly gave me directions in Florentine Tuscan. This illustrates your point about the local language being mainly used with friends and family and Standard Italian among the educated. That was nearly 20 years ago, and I would say that at least in Tuscany native Tuscan speakers are probably few and far between. By the way, I remember that the vowel sounds in Tuscan were slightly different from those in Standard Italian. When I was a student in Florence in 1962, yes, I am that old, we used to describe Standard Italian as "La lingua toscana in bocca romana," meaning, of course, the Tuscan language spoken by a Roman. Would you agree?

"The policy was to italianize people in every region of the country" sounds an awful lot like what France did at around the same time... And that's how my regional language is now almost extinct...

I was born in New York, but I lived in Italy for about 15 years. I learned to speak Italian with a Roman accent (dialect) that could be heavy at times. When I was in Milan, the Milanese heard Rome so strong that it masked my foreign accent. In Rome, they'd speak with me for 10 minutes then say, "Where did you say you were from?".

When I first began to learn Italian, as a grandson of four immigrant grandparents, I was so happy to begin to understand my ancestors’ culture and language. I remember visiting my grandmother from Calabria (her village is Cerenzia (Crotone province) and when I spoke to her, she lit up! She started speaking to me in her calabrese dialect, and it sounded like nothing I could comprehend. I was shocked that she could understand me perfectly and I could understand only 5% of what she said. I did find that my father’s dialect (from Sant’Arsenio, in the province of Salerno), was a lot easier to understand. It’s very close to napoletano, with a few minor differences. But I learned that the dialect changes from village to village, even 5 kms away they might use different words to describe the same thing. Thank you, Paul. Another amazing, and incredibly well researched video.

I am very proudly a "veneta" and I always say my native language is Veneto. It's a big identity cultural part. I use the Venetian Language quite frequently with people that can understand it, even at work. That's a very accurate video! Bravo! (even if your italian accent isn't perfect, but you speak so many languages!!!).

I'm from Veneto and it's common here to speak dialect instead of italian, especially in rural areas. My family almost never speaks italian, except with me and my younger cousins. I mostly use dialect with my family and friends when I make jokes or exclamations ;) It emphasizes the meaning of what I want to say.

omg a video about italy that's not "why i love italy" "how italians speak" "pizza is good" love u man.

In the south of Brazil, there's the Talian, a dialect based on veneto with around 500.000 speakers. Its co-official language in some cities.

Just stumbled over your video, very well done! I was born and raised in Italy but have been living in the USA for more than twenty years. I was born in Veneto, and when I was a kid (in the sixties) everybody spoke just Venetian, in the family or outside. Almost only “foresti” (“strangers”), or people of really high social level spoke standard Italian, and I actually learnt it at school. Growing up it was a struggle to actually speak a good standard Italian, as Venetian was perceived as “blu collar” language, it wasn’t enough to just know it I really tried (and I think succeed) to make it sound “natural” . As you said, during the years the situation has changed significantly, and I grew my children speaking only Italian in the family, they learned Venetian from the street. (Funny detail: my son ended up using both, he has no problems with Venetian, while my daughter stick with Italian only, she never speaks Venetian even if she perfectly understand it). My grandkids in Italy are been raised speaking Italian, with a big exposure to Venetian from the other grandparents, as well as German and English. Another grandkid here in the USA will be raised speaking Italian in the family, and since me and my wife use sometimes a mix of Venetian I’m sure he’ll get that as well.

Non so se sia più strano il fatto che tarantino mi stia spiegando la storia dei nostri dialetti o che sappia parlare l'italiano meglio di 1/4 degli italiani

I am Italian and I can’t help but be amazed by the details and accuracy of this video. I was born and raised in Veneto and I can assure that virtually all of us, assuming they are actually Venetian and not some kind of immigrants, are able to understand our dialect and use it to communicate to some extents. The problem is that someone who speaks dialect is considered ignorant, since Italian is the official language. This mindset comes from our recent history: not many years ago ( prolly 50?) only highly educated people spoke Italian ( like lawyers doctors etc) and poorly educated people spoke dialect instead. Nowdays elderly are bilingual but they tend to speak dialect only(my grandmother can’t speak proper Italian but she is able to read and understand it perfectly), most people under 60 tend to speak dialect with their parents and with their siblings and friends. The same situation can be found for younger generations but less and less people are really fluent outside small town in the countryside. Most people in big cities are prone to use only a handful of words of dialect fearing to be classified as poorly educated. For example when taking some kind of job interview or oral exam at schooI you would speak 100% Italian in order to make a good impression. That being said it’s interesting to notice how people who can barely speak their dialect will still have a super strong accent that can be easily recognised. The sad true that our dialects are dying: I am in my twenty’s and when my generation will be gone, our language will soon follow us. This is the very same situation for most northern dialects, they should be taught in school like they do in Ireland with Gaeilge. We should be proud of our origins dammit! Ps Wrote in a rush sorry for the spelling mistakes

someone probably already mentioned it here somewhere but the friulian "alc" at 11:11 which Paul did not know the origin of, meaning "something," sure sounds a lot like the spanish word for something, "algo"

As an italian (and neapolitan) native speaker, I have to say this video is really accurate!! And don't worry, neapolitan language will never die, for us it's like catalan in Catalunya, where spanish is still the official language, but local people usually prefer to talk "their" language, and it's the same in Regione Campania... Anyway with foreigners, with italians from other regions and within most formal situations, we speak italian of course, not dialect.

i have to say that is the best video in english about italian languages for foreign people.... it's very accurate... good job man

It amazes me how I (native italian) have to watch a video made by a foreign guy to learn something about my own language.

Can we appreciate how at 4:37 he pronounces "Puglia" better than any other previously mentioned 60 millions speakers of Standard Italian?

I'm Calabrian, I always use my dialect with my relatives, especially with my grandfather or grandfather 'cause they don't know Italian very well. But with my friends I also speak very frequently the Calabrian language. I can say I speak: 70% dialect and 30% Italian. (You amazed me for the accuracy of this video. I didn't know all this things)

I'M ITALIAN AND THIS IS THE BEST VIDEO I'VE EVER SEEN, CONGRATULATIONS, I SUBSCRIBED

I would really love to see you break down the Sicilian language in a separate video :)

I’m very fortunate in that I grew up in the US speaking Neapolitan and a Foggiano subdialect as my parents were from those 2 different areas of southern Italy. When Italians from outside my parents regions came to visit they would speak standard Italian. All those tongues helped me learn Spanish and I am moving towards conversational fluency in French.

*regional languages are spoken amongst the elderly* Me: *laughs in Veneto*

4:38 sentite come ha detto bene Basilicata sembra quello del meteo loool

I grew up as a girl in Napoli, and then we moved to the US. My Italian grandmother lived with us. I was in London a few years ago, and stayed at the AirbnB of a gentleman from Naples. When we spoke to one another, and I heard the language of my childhood and grandmother, I burst into tears. Thank you for this great and informative video.

Fun fact: the most similar language to standard italian/tuscan I have ever heard is the Corsican language. Actually closer to italian than any other language/dialect(except for tuscan dialects) in the italian state. It's a very beautiful and unfortunately endangered language, absent from the video because Corsica is politically not part of Italy.

As a Sardinian (and incidentally Italian) I'm seriously impressed by your accuracy and professionalism in taking on such a topic! First of all, I can confirm I use Italian in every working situation and in my family (my mother side is from Naples, so there would be no chance of understanding each other without the "standard" Italian). However I am also fluent in Sardinian, which I use with friends or in case I don't want to be understood by other "Continentals" Secondly I wanted to praise your guess, absolutely correct, in the second Sardinian phrase: indeed "nau" (literally "told") used here, is the past participle of the verb "narai", which comes from the Latin "narrare", "to narrate, to tell a story". This is even clearer in some present forms of the same verb: tu naras (you tell, you say); issu/a narat (he/she tells) , nosatrus naramus (we tell) etc. Sardinian, due to its isolation (yeah, we are literally and island) maintained more than any other Romance language a distinctively Latin vocabulary and syntax, but at the same time, since we were for more than five centuries under the Crown of Aragon, the language has been strongly influenced also by Spanish (or more correctly, by medieval Aragonese and Catalan). To such a point that nowadays Sardinian will probably sound to a stranger like a bizarre dialect of Catalan with Romanian/Portuguese sounds rather than Italian.

Hi, I'm Italian and I'm new to this channel. It's an unexpected well done analysis on our languages! I'm from Piedmont (north-west of Italy at the border with France) and we usually don't speak our dialect. I live in the countryside and only old people try to talk using dialect.

"Qualcosa" reminds me of the Portuguese "Qualquer coisa", while "alc" reminds me of "algo". Both mean "something" in portuguese.

The video is tremendously accurate in every detail. Nothing is left unsaid. Italian (Neapolitan speaker) here.

Oh yes! I was looking forward to watching this video. I'm a native Italian speaker of the Trentino-Alto Adige region, but I live in Milan and I'm married to a neapolitan woman. So, first of all let me say that, despite what you say in this video, "dialects" are still widely used in many regions of the north east. In Veneto and Trentino most of the population still speak Lingua Veneta and Dialetto Trentino as a first language. In Alto Adige the first language is the Sudtyrolean German dialect for most of the population. My mother works at the DMV and she speaks mostly dialect with her colleagues and even customers! But, as every Italian, she's able to switch to standard Italian anytime. So, usually conversations with strangers start with standard italian and can very quickly switch to dialect. At the same time, dialect is almost prohibited at school, during classes. My dialect is a mixture of Lingua Veneta and Lombardo, with some casual German words. When Mussolini was a journalist, he lived in my town, Trento, describing Trentino's language as an Italian dialect with many German words that were gradually losing importance. Now we can say that most German words have faded, even though we have some words like "Gimpel" (meaning "bullfinch") or "Sgnapa" (deriving from Schnaps, a liquor). In the 1910s the washing machine was called "Wassermachine", now it's called "Lavatrice", just like in standard Italian. When I lived in Trento, my parents were speaking (and still speak) dialect to each other, at home, in the car, everywhere. They deliberately decided to speak only Italian to me, so I grew up speaking Italian at home, but with a complete comprehension of the dialect. I used it with friends living in the valleys and with my grandma, and I still use some words like "mona" (meaning "dumb"), which unveils my origins and it's widely understood by most of the Italian population, since it's probably the most famous word in Lingua Veneta. Now I live in Milan, where dialect is extremely rare. There are some words like "pirla" (again, meaning "dumb") that everyone uses and understands, but generally speaking no one uses it anymore. It's a bit sad, I have to admit. Some 10-15km from the town, in the Brianza area (north of the town of Monza) you can still hear people speaking dialect in informal situations, but they're mostly elderly. Now the fun part: as I said, my wife is Neapolitan. She doesn't speak Neapolitan at home, but when she get mad she erupts like mount Vesuvio and start screaming in her language. Neapolitan, especially the one spoken in Naples, is widely intelligible. So I (sadly) understand everything she says when she's angry. And my poor cat gets called "a fess e mammt" too many times. I won't translate this, but mammt is "your mother", so I let you guess what a "fess" could be. :D

Most of the Italian I know is from watching Gomorrah la serie. When I'd try and practise the words I learnt from the show with some of my Italians friends they didn't have a clue what I was saying. Then I realised the actors are speaking Neopolitan

Im from Chipilo Puebla, here we speak Veneto but with a Spanish and Native American influence we call chipileño, more than 5000 ppl

I'm native of Bergamo (Lombardy) and I speak the dialect known as bergamasco/bresciano. As you said, we usually use it with elderly relatives and close friends, but we don't use it a lot because in our culture someone who uses too much this dialect is like someone with a low culture. So we usually use it with close friends but not with every friend because it can sound a bit "out of context". Some example sentences: EN - You're handsome. IT - Sei bello. BG/BS - Ta het (You're) bel (handsome). EN - I'm going home. IT - Sto andando a casa. BG/BS - 'ndo (I'm going) a cà/baita (home). EN - What do you do tomorrow? IT - Cosa fai domani? BG/BS - Ta fet (you do) chè (what) dumà (tomorrow)? EN - That girl is so hot. IT - Quella ragazza è così sexy. BG/BS - Chela (that) sćeta (girl) l'è (is) na fritola (a sexy one)

There's a venetian accent in Brazil called Talian. It's a arcaic venetian with portuguese influence. Actually 500.000 people speak Talian

Very nice! A quick note: the Friulian word _alc_ ("something") is almost certainly not related to Italian _qualcosa_ (although the presence of those three letters in the middle of that Italian word, as you note, makes for a handy mnemonic). Instead, it is no doubt cognate with the Spanish (and Portuguese) word _algo_ ("something") -- all of these reflecting classical Latin _aliquod_ ("something"). What we see here is the retention of an archaism at the eastern and western fringes of the dialect continuum, which has been supplanted by neologisms like It. _qualcosa_ / Fr. _quelque chose_ [< Vulgar Latin *QUALIS-QUIS CAUSA "some kind of thing"] in the more central dialects. (Just a fun observation -- I hope not too pedantic!) : )

When traveling in Rome with my wife, we asked a local for directions. While she spoke her own language and we spoke in English, we were able to understand where she was telling us to go. Partly because location names are obviously mutual. And with the hand gestures Italians are known for, it was easy to figure out how many blocks down and over we needed to go.

i am an italian student from america, but I have lived briefly in northern italy and had southern italian roommates while in america. I was near milan when I lived there for a month, and I rarely encountered a dialect, and when I did it was just slang words/colloquial terms. However, my roommate from Calabria used a dialect to speak with her friends and family all the time, and I couldn’t understand most of it unless they switched to standard italian. In class, we don’t learn any dialects but we do occasionally do exercises involving them, like learning a nursery rhyme in standard italian that originally was in Sicilian and then looking at the dialect version for comparison. I think that the dialects of italy are a great way to illustrate how old and complex the history of italy is, and that it’s important for every italian learner to at least know a little bit about them.

I love italia with Italian people and everything about italy, my favorite country in the world🇮🇹, from Curdo🌹

I'm from Emilia Romagna, and I use dialect only for fun or when i talk to elderly people. This video was spot on, very very accurate. Bravo!

‘Dialects’ are also widely spoken in the destination countries of the Italian diaspora and were at times the lingua franca in areas with large populations of Italian origin. They have also heavily influenced local languages such as Spanish in Argentina. For example, my grandparents speak/spoke Piedmontese and no standard Italian, even though they were not born in Italy.

As a recent learner of the italian language (three years ago) having spent a semester abroad. The use of local dialects is definitely hard to differentiate with italian. having no exposure to the language what so ever, hearing a dialect and italian for the first time was the biggest obstacle.

I am a native Italian speaker, I live in Brescia (Lombardy). I can perfectly understand dialect because my parents and grandparents are fluent dialect speakers, but I am not that good at uttering sentences because I have always replied in Standard Italian. I use dialect only in informal situations and just for brief sentences, most of the times for fixed expressions and exclamations. We perceive dialect as being more effective than Standard Italian, especially when it comes to complaining or insulting.

I'm Italian, I'm from Sicily. I appreciate very much this video, it's very interesting, accurate and it's evident there's a study behind! Thanks so much cause it made me discover something about other dialects that I totally don't understand (since they have different roots from mine, Sicilian, as Friulan or Sardinian). Actually Italian is the official language of Italy, it's well explained in the video, but almost everyone speaks it mixed with his own dialect. Obviously in serious circumstances (work, school, university, with people you don't know) you speak Italian, but in more informal situations, with friends, family, with elders (who usually feel more comfortable speaking dialects than Italian) you speak your dialect. Generally dialects from south have the same roots, so if someone from Naples talk to me in neapolitan I could get 60/70% of what he says; but if someone from the north talk to me in his own dialect, I don't get anything. Thanks!! 😊

Sono Messicano 🇲🇽 la mia lingua madre è lo Spagnolo Messicano. Nel mio paese, in Messico, c'è un caso singolare, dovuto alla colonizzazione italiana di alcune regioni messicane in passato, una variante della lingua Veneta, chiamata Chipileño, è parlata nella comunità Chipilo nello stato di Puebla, e anche da alcune persone dallo stato di Veracruz. Alcuni linguisti dicono che è un dialetto dell'italiano. Ci sono dati stimati che mettono il numero di parlanti veneti a circa 6000 nella comunità di Puebla di Chipilo, la maggior parte dei quali è bilingue con lo spagnolo, il Chipileño è compreso e parzialmente parlato da circa diecimila abitanti della zona di Chipilo. CHIPILEÑO: taliani ESPAÑOL: italianos ITALIANO: italiani VENETO: tałiani TALIAN: talian ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-r8mV9vQDJ4w.html

This video was very impressive, informative and educational. I’ve always been interested in the Romance languages and have researched their origins and evolution on my own time. I am a second generation Italian-Canadian. I grew up speaking English in my household; however, when visiting my paternal and maternal grandparents’ houses, I was exposed to Marchegiano and Calabrese and learned to converse in these regional languages. In university, I took a standard Italian course and continued to learn Italian on my own in my adult years. I was also exposed to Abruzze from my first wife’s family. Since then, I married a first generation Sicilian-Canadian, so I’m exposed to my wife’s regional language on a frequent basis. Thank you for creating and sharing such an amazing video!

In Naples everybody speaks neapolitan everywhere, except at school and few other places. I personally mix them when I talk, and I use italian mostly at school and with unkown people.

moved to Campania recently from abroad and it seems like im going to have to perfect my neapolitan sooner than italian

As a Roman, I speak Roman dialect also called "dialetto Romano", even if Roman is more just a slang than a real dialect, I have to admit that I'm not able to speak the royal Italian, even if I try I can't

That's why as a northern Italian I need subtitles when I am watching Gomorra. Very good video

I once met two American guys. When I told them I was Italian, one of them told me: "So in Italy you speak French, right?" and the other one told me: "Wait...so French and Italian are two different languages?"

ma il 90% di visual sono italiani XD

I'm Italian and I come from Sicily. I often use the "dialect" to talk to my friends and my family. I use it because it's more direct and sometimes more aggressive or even funnier. It depends on the situation.

As an Italian from the north, on the border with Switzerland, I can affirm that although I live in areas considered rural, I’ve never heard the dialect spoken by 90% of the people I know. maybe even more. I think it’s quickly disappearing while new generations grow up.

I'd say that in Veneto most of the adults (about 80%) speak venetian at home and with their friends, but communicate in italian at work and with strangers. Probably this percentage would drop to about 40% in big cities such as Venice, Padua, Verona, ecc.. Not so many kids and teens speak venetian, but they obviously understand it. I'm 20 yo and I speak venetian only with my grandparents and old people; my parents talk to me in venetian but I always answer in italian, but for example some of my friends daily speak in venetian with their parents/siblings/friends, so it depends on the family.. Sometimes it can be quite tricky for older people with lower education to talk in italian (for example when they are speaking to authorities), because they're used to communicate in venetian all the time.

Omfg, the most accurate video about languages of Italy

I really like the way you explain languages, their differences and similarities, your English diction and knowledge of grammar, history, etc. I am a speaker of a few languages and a lover of a well-spoken one, so I appreciate your videos.

This is an amazing video! So accurate. I am a great fan of Italian dialectology, so I really appreciated it. Grazie mille 😊

Here in south Brazil there are communities that still speek some of these dialects. They are descendants of italians that have immigrated to Brazil before the spread of standard italian. My grandparents used to speek Veneto fluently.

This was fantastic! So clear and comprehensible. Thank you for making this information available to us.

0:00: The Languages of Italy 0:47: Tuscan Dialect (Fiorentino) 1:00: Modern Tuscan Dialects (Toscano) 1:12: Standard Italian (Italiano) 1:28: Dialect Usage 1:47: Italianization 2:48: Dialects... Not Really 3:47: Historic Language Minorities 4:25: Neapolitan (Napulitano) 5:02: Sicilian (Sicilianu) 5:35: Venetian (Vèneto) 6:04: Lombard (Lombarda) 6:18: Piedmontese (Piemontèis) 6:26: Ligurian (Ligure) 6:33: Emilian-Romagnol (Emilia Romagna) 6:51: Sardinian (Su Sardu) 7:12: Friulian (Friulan) 7:37: Central Dialects (Dialetti Mediani) 8:19: Languages in Neighbouring countries 8:57: Differences between Languages

Hi Paul, Sicilian is my first language, Messinese dialect specifically. I use it at home and with my friends. In Sicily we use it even in formal situations, for example speaking with professionists like doctors. It's considered almost universally more practical than Standard Italian. Sicilian Italian is very influenced by Sicilian Language (a pidgin in practice), for example using intransitive verbs in a transitive way, or using sicilian words that are lacking in Italian, so sometimes someone could forget that some words are not italian. Finally, I am in a team of students who are developing a Standard Orthography for Sicilian Language.

I'm from Italy... I use Italian mainly at school. But I use my Venetian "dialect " speaking with friends, family and in many cases when I'm in a bar.

Hello Paul. I enjoy your videos. Might you have forgotten the Calabrian dialect of Greek, or Grecanico used by the ethnic Griko people in Calabria, and the Italiot Greek dialect spoken in the Grecìa Salentina? Both are remnants of the Ancient and Byzantine Greek colonization of the region.

This video was very interesting. I'm Italian, so I can answer your question. I live in southern Calabria and I'm 15, I speak dialect every day, with my family and my friends, but I mostly speak italian, because it's considered more "formal". Here in Italy we tend to mix dialect and Italian a little bit, let me explain: I'm at the supermarket, and I'm speaking Italian with the cashier, suddently a friend of mine arrives and I say hi to him with a dialect greeting, then we start speaking in Italian, but the cashier tells us to go away in dialect and we answer her in dialect. When we are out we start speaking about something in dialect and then in italian again using some dialect expressions. I feel bad for who comes to Italy to learn italian and ends up with mixed random knowlege of the local language and the official one 😂

in Tuscany we can't speak Standard Italian, only our dialect, because we can't pronounce well some consonants like p, t, c every time they are preceded by a vowel->we use instead ph, th, h. There is a famous phrase in standard Italian many tourists ask us to say, because we always fail to pronounce it correctly and we end up making funny sounds pretty similar to wheezing: [IT] la Coca Cola con la cannuccia corta corta (a Coke with a short short drinking straw)-> [TUSCAN] la Hoha Hola hon la hannuccia horta horta

Man I once looked up on internet to see what could I find about Italy different languages ,it was so hard to find something! Now I know how hard your work is.. Amazing video body! And thank you for bringing us just a little taste of the cultural variety in Italy! (I'm Brazilian, and my parents are Venetians and they loved the video.) Amazing job!

Thank you for making this, it's an extremely interesting subject!! Can't wait to learn more

What an absolutely fascinating video. Thanks!

Io anche se parlo italiano non sono mai andato in Italia sebbene stia molto vicino alla Grecia in cui abito!!! :( Amo molto l'Italia sono molto orgoglioso di avere tali vicini come gli italiani e davvero spero di andarci un giorno!!! E come voi dite siamo ''Una faccia, una razza''!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Vi amo molto!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) :) :) :)

I'm from Corsica and we have a regional language here, Corsican, which is very similar to Italian languages (especially the ones from Genoa, Toscana and north part of Sardinia) ; it's quite easy to understand them generally speaking. Are you expecting to do the same video for France ?

The best video which explain in clear way the language situation of my country, Bravo!

This channel blows my mind every time

Hi, I'm italian. I was born and live in Venice. I speak venetian whenever I can, passing to standard italian if the interlocutors do not understand, or I presume they don't. (I mean: If I have to speak with a neapolitan, I use standard italian from the beginning). Among the dialects of north-east Italy, the "venetos" resist in use more than any other northern italian dialect even in formal and not just familial contexts. (example - when I have bought my house, the notary has read the act in venetian, although it was written in italian). I hope my English is sufficiently understandable, excuse me if not. Last but not least: Your videos are excellent. Thank you.

I'm translating those sentences into Ticinese (the Lumbard variety spoken in Switzerland), just in case somebody wants to check them out. 9:10 : A vöraresi queicoss da legg 11:44 : I m'ha di che rivarem ai vündas 14:05 : A g'ho dü fradei e tre surell (as opposed to Italian, "two" and "three" have to be conjugated for masculine and feminine nouns) I hardly ever speak this language... Sometimes with my dad, or with a friend of mine, but I usually speak standard Italian, which I speak better.

My father was born in chieti abruzzo and my Nonna Mom & Nonno aka my grandmother and grandfather spoke with an Abruzzi dialect/accent and I’ve spoken to other Italians like Sicilians & Napoli and it’s a lot harder for me to understand the men especially I mean I do understand it but there’s certain things I don’t understand and I think that’s because of how I was raised by my Nonna Mom and I think now that Italian is standardize I think they’re losing that little by little but I’m also from Philly so I got my Philly accent mixed in as well so some of that Jawn comes out lol

Congratulations for the accuracy of your presentation: davvero bravo!

A notification from Langfocus never fails to brighten my day, because I know I'll learn something new.

My parents immigrated to Canada from Friuli in 1957. I am a first generation Canadian and was born in Toronto. They wanted me and my brother to learn Italian and the rule at our house when we were growing up was to speak standard Italian with our parents and English to everyone else. When my parents spoke to each other they spoke in Fiurlian. When they spoke to their Fiurlani friends they spoke in Fiurlian but when they spoke to their Italian friends that were not Fiurlian they spoke in standard Italian. My parents did learn English and of course would speak English to their English speaking friends and to anybody that was not Italian. Most of the Italian immigrants in Toronto were from the southern parts of Italy and just about all my Italian friends when I was growing up in the 60’s and 70’s where from the southern parts of Italy. As a young boy, I remember being at my Italian friend’s homes and when their parents spoke Italian to me in their southern dialects, I would have trouble understanding them. Because my parents always spoke Fiurlian to each other, I could understand most of it but could not speak it. I could only speak standard Italian. Whenever I get the opportunity to meet up with some of the old Italian immigrants that are still around here in Canada, I speak standard Italian to them and they are always impressed that I can speak such good Italian for being born in Canada.

Perfect. I've always wanted the dialects and Italian comparisons presented cosí.

these are the clearest 17 minutes about languages of Italy I've ever listened to. Kudos! A few, very minor points: 1) Neapolitan also includes words of Greek origin, such as the verb "pazzià" [to play] from "paîzo" or the noun "purtuallo" [orange] from "portokalós". 2) While you correctly say that Neapolitan is not standardised, there are more and less common spellings, and the one in the video is more similar to the spoken than the original written form (most Neapolitan diachronic linguists who would consider it incorrect). In 'classical' Neapolitan some words are written as in Italian, such as "leggere", but pronounced differently. Trivia: an interesting sentence to compare, especially with Neapolitan, would be one containing possessive adjectives. For example: "Mio padre" [my father] is "pat'm" or "patemo" in Neapolitan: because of Greek influence, the possessive goes after the noun instead of before, as it does in Italian. Finally, as you mention, most of the largest regional languages are not considered as endangered: to me, this is a shame, and honestly I have never understood why Italian authorities would rather protect Catalan or Friulian but not Neapolitan or Venetian.

Hi, I am from Greece and I try to learn Italian. We have so many common words! Also, the sound of the Italian language is most clear for me and I think for the majority of Greek people.