I finally ended reviewing my Android App about Venetian Language and its history: Etymological Venetian Dictionary, you can find it in the Play Store: xxx.
I publish here the final version of the language history, obtained elaborating the old version that I already published in this post and this post.
In this section, we will briefly explore the history of Veneto to show how it has become embedded in the Venetian language, which, like many Italian dialects, has managed to preserve words from languages that became extinct centuries ago and keep them in use to this day.
In this account, we will favour curiosity and readability. Some etymologies are certain, others probable or still debated: to avoid weighing down the text, we refer readers to the individual dictionary entries for further details, sources, and alternative hypotheses.
Legends about the ancient Veneti
This story, as recounted in [1], begins with Spartan warships led by Cleonymus (yes, the same Spartans of Leonidas who, in 300, held back tens of thousands of Xerxes’ men for days). In 302 BC, they were sailing up the Adriatic coast to raid coastal villages.
At one point, they entered an opening between two low-lying shores. As they proceeded, they found carefully cultivated fields and a few huts; the soldiers had to continue in small boats because the waters were too shallow for warships. When they reached a village, they attacked, but instead of fleeing in fear, its inhabitants fought back with such force that the Spartans were driven away. Those inhabitants were the ancient Veneti.
This story, perhaps legend and perhaps true, was told by Livy, the Roman historian at the court of Augustus, who came from Padua and was immensely proud of his Venetian origins.
The ancient Veneti and Romanisation
Beyond this legendary account, the Veneti were an Indo-European people. From what we know of their language and customs, it is still unclear whether they were Italic or Celtic, since they displayed features of both [2], whereas it now seems fairly certain that they were not an Illyrian population. Their history began long before 300 BC, probably as early as the middle of the second millennium BC. One of the most widely accepted hypotheses is that the Veneti shared their protohistory with the Latins [3], emerging as an Indo-European people around the third millennium BC in Central Europe. When this population moved into Italy around the fifteenth century BC, the Venetian branch settled in what is now Veneto, while the rest of the Italic peoples (including the Latins) continued southwards.
The Veneti integrated with and gradually replaced native populations such as the Euganei. They were known to the Greeks and Etruscans, with whom they traded (they also learnt writing from the Etruscans, and inscriptions in ancient Venetic therefore use an Etruscan alphabet). Veneti had a reputation as skilled warriors, traders, and breeders, and were particularly famous for their horses. They developed a culture of their own, perhaps the one that left the greatest quantity of material evidence among those of northern Italy, reaching its height between the eighth and third centuries BC.
Its characteristic features included the Venetian casoni, rectangular houses with thatched roofs, the last examples of which remained inhabited until the early twentieth century. Towards the beginning of their decline, they came under the influence of the Gauls to the west and the Illyrians to the east.
During this period, the Veneti maintained good relations with the Gallic people of the Cenomani, who joined them in their alliance with the Romans during the wars against the Gauls in 225 BC. From the second century BC onwards, the Veneti were gradually integrated into the Roman world. At the end of the first century BC, as part of Augustus’s reorganisation of Italy, traditionally dated to around 7 BC, their territory was included in Regio X, later known as Venetia et Histria [4]. Over the course of four centuries, they gradually abandoned their language in favour of Latin, while also influencing it to some extent (for example, basi, kisses, derives from Venetic basum rather than Latin osculum, and reached Rome through the poetry of Catullus, who came from Verona).
The traces left by Celtic have not completely disappeared and can still be found in baro, meaning bush or obstacle in modern Venetian and branch in Celtic, which also passed into Italian through the words barra and sbarra; braghe, since trousers were typical Celtic clothing, unlike the tunics worn by the Romans; the aforementioned baso; impizar, to light, also found in Spanish empezar, to begin, from Celtic pettia, piece, through the Latin in+pettia+are, referring to chopping wood into pieces to light or start a fire; mona, fool, from Celtic mones, monkey (even today, mona means monkey in Spanish); and the use of pomo rather than mela for apple (in Latin, pomum meant fruit in general, but among non-Latin peoples such as the Veneti and Celts it was evidently used for the fruit par excellence, the apple).
Apart from the few words that managed to survive, Latin replaced Venetic, and modern Venetian is consequently a Romance language. Among the Latin words that disappeared from Italian but survive in Venetian today, albeit adapted to Venetian phonetics, are: amia, from Latin amita; armelino, from armeninus, a fruit “from Armenia”, whereas Italian albicocca derives from Arabic (although the Arabs in turn borrowed the term from Latin, through Greek, from praecocum, early-ripening); cocumaro, from the ancient Latin cucumis, -eris, which in Italian came to indicate what Venetians call anguria, a term which, as we shall see later, meant cucumber in Greek; stra, used to form the superlative of adjectives (from the Latin adverb extra); unquò (ancò, inquò, and similar forms, from Latin hunc hodie, this day); sorare, to cool, from ex aurare, to spread into the air (also present in old Italian as sciorare); carega; saresa (from ceresa); luganega, from lucanica, because this method of preserving meat was typical of the Lucanians; persego, from persica prunus, because it was imported from Persia (Italian pesca is also a contraction of the obsolete form persica); and muricia or muriciola, from mus, muris. Some terms even preserve their exact Latin form: butiro, caligo, sporta…
Words of Germanic origin
During the Roman Empire, Latin spread across half of Europe, and we can assume that it was fairly uniform, with some differences in pronunciation and vocabulary arising because it was spoken by peoples who had previously spoken their own languages. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin began to fragment, evolving differently in each region according to its particular historical events. Italy was ruled in succession by several Germanic peoples: the Ostrogoths, an East Germanic people, governed the peninsula from 493 to 553; shortly afterwards, in 568, the Lombards arrived. They were a West Germanic people whose kingdom in central and northern Italy lasted until the Frankish conquest of 774. During the period of the Ostrogothic invasion, the Franks established themselves in northern Gaul, while the Visigoths settled in Spain. Over time, the Franks expanded across France and eventually conquered the Lombard kingdom in Italy, becoming one of Europe’s most influential peoples. In Italy, these conquering peoples were absorbed by the more numerous populations they ruled, and their languages and cultures disappeared, but not before heavily influencing the pre-existing populations. One need only consider all the terms connected with warfare: for war, Italian uses Frankish werra, not Latin bellum, along with words such as elmo, guardia, and bando; or terms from everyday life, including guardare, fresco, ricco, fiasco, bucato, and nastro. In this regard, it is very interesting to examine the Germanic words found in Italian and in some dialects [5].
In Venetian in particular, we find: strucare (found in modern Germanic languages in German trucken, to press); sbregare (compare English break and German brechen, to break); sparagnar (also found as German sparen); vardare (compare German warten, to wait; this shows how a word can develop different meanings in two languages over time—in this case, the difference between vardar and warten is the same as that between Italian attendere and Venetian tendare); springare (German springen, to spray, and English spring, a source); sbaruffare (German raufen, to brawl); butare (in the sense of sprouting, from Gothic bautan, to throw or sprout); brosa (from Gothic frosa, also recognisable in German and English frozen, frost, and similar words); and stracco (from Gothic strak).
An interesting aspect of words derived from Ostrogothic is that they are among the last living fragments of the East Germanic languages, which became extinct without leaving descendants, unlike the West and North Germanic languages, which evolved into the modern Germanic languages.
Venice between Byzantium and the Mediterranean
Alongside this phase of Germanic enrichment in inland Veneto, due first to the Gothic and then to the Lombard presence, as shown by the various Lombard settlements called Farre, Venetian was heavily influenced by Greek, since the territory where Venice would later arise lay within the Byzantine sphere of influence. Greek influence remained alive in later centuries because of Venice’s trade with the eastern Mediterranean. Greek-derived words include piron (the table fork was not commonly used by the Romans, and the Venetians probably learnt to use it through contact with Byzantium); anguria (although in Greek it means cucumber; similarly, Italian cocomero derives from a Latin word meaning cucumber, whereas Venetian cocumaro preserves the term’s original meaning); mona, referring to the female sexual organ; mostaci; sproto, from protomaistor, Greek for foreman, whose behaviour the word evokes; and musigna, from elemosina, as well as many other terms that first passed through a Latin adaptation.
A good example is màsena, millstone, through Latin machina, from Greek mechanè, a tool for doing something. This word, which originally referred to machinery of various kinds, came to indicate one particular device, the millstone, and its original form is now almost unrecognisable because it was altered by Venetian pronunciation. Centuries later, the same word was reintroduced through the Italian loanword machina to refer to a new kind of machine, the motor car. The same word therefore survives in two forms, ancient and modern Venetian, with very different meanings, though conceptually quite similar. It should be noted that traditional Venetian phonetics—the characteristic sounds of its words—now survives only in “old” Venetian words used in everyday life, and has changed over recent centuries, drawing closer to Italian phonetics. Thus, on the one hand, there are masena, domeneghe, and partidori, while, on the other, more recent words include machine, plastica, and tratori (although there is also plastegon…), with no clear differentiation from Italian pronunciation, which is gaining ground in both vocabulary and pronunciation (bicière is gradually replacing gòto and is not even altered into something like bisèr, as it probably would have been centuries ago).
Phonetics
Before continuing with the history, let us look more closely at phonetics. For this purpose, it is useful to introduce the International Phonetic Alphabet [9] (IPA), a special alphabet similar to the Latin alphabet but extended so that each symbol corresponds to a sound. The Latin alphabet was created to meet the phonetic needs of Latin speakers, but over time the number of sounds it was expected to represent increased, as it is now used for the languages of many peoples. It achieved this only through conventions that are generally not unambiguous. In the IPA, for example, ciao is written /’tʃao/, schiocco /’skiɔkko/, and sciocco /’ʃɔkko/. These further examples show some differences from the Latin alphabet: /’ɲɔkko/ (gnocco), /ʎi/ (gli), /’dʒa/ (già), /’dʒɛnte/ (gente), /’gjattʃo/ (ghiaccio), /’sale/ (sale), /ko’zi/ (così), /’dzendzero/ (zenzero), and /’tsukkero/ (zucchero).
The sounds /ʎ/ and /ʃ/ do not exist in Venetian. Older people therefore often have some difficulty pronouncing them if they did not become accustomed to using them in Italian from childhood, and render them as /l/ and /s/ (e.g. famiglia–familia, scienza–siensa). In general, Latin phonetics developed along slightly different paths in Venetian and Italian, although they remain intelligible. Venetian lies within the linguistic continuum that runs from Castilian and Catalan, through Occitan and the Gallo-Italic dialects of northern Italy, to the other Italian dialects. The /dʒ/ sound is treated differently depending on the Venetian variety and may be realised as /d/, /z/, or /dz/. For example, gente may be pronounced /’dzente/, /’zente/, or /’dent/. Instances of /ki/ke/gi/ generally appear as /tʃi/tʃe/dʒi, as in chiesa–cèsa, chiave–ciàve, and ghiaccio–giàsso (or simply iàsso). Venetian also has at least two phonemes unknown to Italian: /s’tʃ/, which Italian renders only as /ʃ/ (a Venetian speaker would probably tend to mispronounce the Italian scervellarsi, although Italian does have the similar phoneme /zdʒ/, as in sgelare), and /ð/, the same sound as in the English article the. This latter sound, however, tends to be replaced by z or other sounds because it is associated with ignorance. Words containing these sounds include s-ciosso and sucato, the latter pronounced not only /’tsukato/ and /’sukato/, but also /’ðsukat/. Finally, some typical features are the rendering of k as g and t as d (domenega, nevegada); the use of -aro or -èr where Italian uses -aio; and the past participle ending -esto for second-conjugation verbs and -isto for some third-conjugation verbs (this regularising suffix spread around the thirteenth century and began to fall out of use in the larger cities from the seventeenth century onwards, but is still found in the countryside).
From Latin to the Venetian vernacular
After this phonetic digression, let us return to where we left off in the historical account. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin in Veneto was developing into a vernacular rich in Germanic and Greek elements. New words were also being formed from existing Latin ones, such as bovolo, the small white snail, from bovus, a horned animal: a bovolo is therefore a small animal with horns, and the word later came to indicate spirals as well; scarsela, originally a small purse for low-value coins, which later came to mean pockets; radego, from the Latin form erratico, originally an adjective that, like Italian errare, described something wandering or straying from the right path, and which later came to indicate defects, whereas in Italian it produced errors; ciacolare; petegolo (from peto, emphasising the term’s negative sense); and imbrojare, from brolo, garden in Celtic, since tradition says that behind the Doge’s Palace there was a garden where Venetian senators met to reach agreements before votes—where, in other words, they inbrojavano. Many of these words later passed into Italian, which derives not only from Tuscan but also borrowed from all the Italian vernaculars, with Venetian in the forefront because it was the language of one of the most influential states in Italy for much of the last millennium. Consider much of the maritime vocabulary, political terms, and words such as cantiere, arsenale, and giocattolo, which is neither Tuscan balocco nor Latin ludus. The clearest example is ciao, which evolved from the greeting s-ciao tuo, conceptually similar to “at your service” or Austrian Servus, itself of Latin origin, and is now one of the best-known Italian words.
The birth of Venice
The lagoon settlements, which had already existed in Roman times, grew with the arrival of people from the mainland seeking refuge from invasions. In their early development, they lay within the Byzantine sphere of influence, the Venetia Maritima, which was made a duchy in an attempt to contain Lombard expansion [6]. Before long, the doge began to be elected by the people, but the Emperor continued to support Venice because of the Lombard threat. With the establishment of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire in AD 800, divisions arose in Venice between pro-Byzantine and pro-Frankish factions. The former ultimately prevailed, while the Byzantine Emperor’s influence remained only marginal [6]. From around the year 1000, this de facto independence was officially recognised by the Byzantine Empire, which granted the Doge the title Dux Dalmatiae (doge is the Venetian form of dux, rendered as duca in Italian). By this period, Venice had already expanded into Istria and Dalmatia, which it conquered to put an end to attacks by Slavic pirates.
The expansion of the Republic
After 1300, Venice began its greatest phase of territorial expansion. It expanded throughout inland Veneto and Friuli, and by around 1500 it also controlled the Aegean islands, Crete, and Cyprus. For a time, it occupied much of Greece and part of Crimea, as its trade routes extended as far as the Black Sea. The presence of numerous dominions and trading colonies throughout the Mediterranean even led to Venetian being adopted as one of the trade lingua francas of the period. Venice divided its dominions into three categories: the Dogado, the Venetian equivalent of a duchy, corresponding to the coastal strip where the first nucleus of Venice arose; the Stato da tera, the mainland, roughly corresponding to present-day Veneto and Friuli; and the Stato da Mar, the various Mediterranean islands and coasts [7].
In addition to wars of expansion, there were numerous wars with rival Italian maritime republics, particularly Genoa, as well as with the papacy and European powers, together with partial involvement in the Crusades. The war against the League of Cambrai in 1508–1510 is famous: Venice resisted an assault by a European coalition that included the Papacy, France, the Habsburgs, Spain, and the Duke of Savoy. Equally famous, and infamous, is the Fourth Crusade, led by Venice and transformed from a crusade against the Saracens into a war to plunder Constantinople, which was Orthodox at the time.
It was precisely from the Crusades and, more generally, from contact with Arabs and Persians that another rich part of the Venetian vocabulary—and, more broadly, Italian and European vocabulary—developed. Arabic gave us many words beginning with its article al-: alcool (although in Venetian it is simply spirito), alchimia (and therefore the more modern form chimica), alambicco, elisir, albicocca (through Old Spanish), carciofo (through Old Spanish alcarchofa, which became carciofo in Italian and articiocco in Venetian, the form in which it was exported to the rest of Europe—compare English artichoke), and many others.
From Persian, which is itself an Indo-European language, came naransa (from narang, a fruit favoured by elephants; in Italian, the initial n was absorbed into the article, and the resulting form was influenced by aurum, gold), pigiama, papussa…
Notice how, in both languages, these loanwords concern trade: clothing, fruit, and technologies.
In addition to trade, Venice’s vocabulary was also enriched through its dominions. We therefore find terms such as britola and paltegan, from old Slavic words (modern Slovenian still has britva, and Croatian britze, for knife, while Slovenian has podgana for rat, although the word may simply derive from Latin ponticanus (mus), “Pontic mouse”, as in Italian).
In some words, Venetians can even see the laws of the Serenissima crystallised. Consider casoin, called pizzicagnolo in Italian, and becaro or bechèr, the butcher. In the Middle Ages, each shop was required to sell only one type of product, whether cheese or meat. The casoin was the cheese seller, from Latin caseum, while the becaro sold the meat of the becco, the male goat; old Italian also had the term beccaio. Since goat meat was the most widespread red meat, in popular speech becaro came to indicate the place par excellence where meat was bought and was not supplanted, as it was in Italian, by the more general macellaio. Likewise, the casoin evolved into a small shop carrying somewhat more than cheese alone, although the term is now at risk of disappearing because of large-scale retail.
From the height of splendour to the first difficulties
In the previous section, we spoke of Venice at the height of its splendour, but all these wars of defence and expansion were a double-edged sword. They brought Venice to its greatest extent, yet, as they became ever longer and more costly, they also drained its coffers. By the late fifteenth century, about half of Venice’s annual revenue—roughly one million ducats—was being spent on the military [10].
Events such as the War of the League of Cambrai led to extraordinary expenditure, estimated at seven million ducats, during a decade in which Venice could not even rely on revenue from the Stato da tera, which it nevertheless eventually reconquered. These were still temporary crises: Venice remained capable of overcoming them and recovering each time.
From the sixteenth century onwards, however, something changed. On one side, Ottoman expansion was taking territories in the eastern Mediterranean; on the other, the discovery of America in 1492 had suddenly shifted the economic centre of the West from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. After the loss of Cyprus and Crete—extremely costly wars that also damaged the economy through the loss of territories and trading bases—with the Stato da mar by then reduced to Dalmatia and the Ionian Islands, Venice had to change and adapt its policies. Many Venetians moved to colonise the mainland, building the famous ville venete, patrician villas equipped with everything needed for agricultural production. They consisted of the villa proper, the residence of the local lords, and the barchesse, complexes used to store tools, agricultural produce, and so on. The period roughly between 1530 and 1796 was marked by an absence of wars in inland Veneto and is therefore remembered as the Pax Veneta. As a state independent of papal authority, the Serenissima also provided a fertile environment for scientists who enjoyed less freedom of expression elsewhere in Italy, as illustrated by Galileo Galilei. We should also remember the many internationally renowned artists, architects, musicians, and playwrights, including Giorgione, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Canaletto, Palladio, Canova, Vivaldi, and Goldoni.
Napoleon and the fall of Venice
Despite—and perhaps because of—its declared neutrality during the French campaign in Italy, Venice was invaded and plundered by Napoleon and became a battleground between the French and Austrians. Following the initial invasion of 1797, it was ceded to Austria under the Treaty of Campo Formio and remained Austrian until 1806, when it returned to French rule until 1814.
Although brief, the French invasion was particularly damaging. Alongside the forced abdication of the government came the seizure of money, works of art, ships, and weapons; the downsizing of the Arsenal; the destruction of symbols of the Republic; and the suppression of monasteries and parishes. Venetian soldiers—and, more generally, subjects of the newly created Kingdom of Italy—were also conscripted and sent to die in the Napoleonic campaigns. Tens of thousands of young men were called to arms, and an estimated 15,000–20,000 died.
There were, however, some positive developments: the introduction of the Napoleonic Code made the law more uniform and modern, while the administrative reorganisation introduced municipalities, prefectures, and a new land register. Venice’s hospital system was also reformed, drawing a clearer distinction between medical treatment and charitable assistance and laying some of the foundations of modern healthcare.
It is worth remembering that Venice was one of the few states not restored by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
During the uprisings of 1848, it was independent for the last time, for only a few months, when Daniele Manin and Niccolò Tommaseo led an anti-Austrian revolt that ultimately failed. In any case, it can claim the title of Europe’s longest-lived republic, from the first election of the doge Paulicio Anafesto in 697 to the abdication of Ludovico Manin in 1797, a total of 1,100 years.
The French linguistic imprint is limited to a little ratatuia. In recent centuries, many French terms were borrowed regardless of French rule, because of the prestige the language enjoyed—rather as English does today. These include paletò, gilè, reclame, and saraban, from char-à-bancs, which retained only the meaning of cart in Venetian; and crumiro, originally the name of the brigands of Khroumiria, whose raids France used as a pretext to establish a protectorate in Tunisia. In France, the term came to indicate someone who refuses to join a strike, and Italian adopted it with the same meaning. In Venetian, the word’s meaning shifted to miser, evidently because someone who does not strike does so out of hunger for money. Other borrowings include wine varieties such as Merlot and Cabernet. The example I find most curious is the exclamation sacranon!, which we may have picked up during French rule by hearing Napoleonic soldiers swear: Sacré Nom!.
The Austrian period
With the wars over, the Austrian period was calmer than the French one. Austria organised Lombardy–Venetia as a kingdom, although in practice the major decisions came from Vienna. It introduced innovations such as the railway network—including the railway bridge between Mestre and Venice in 1846—improved education with the regulations of 1818, revived the port, which could now rely on a rail connection to Milan, and established the General Venetian Archives in 1815, now the State Archives of Venice [13]. This came without genuine autonomy: surpluses were diverted to Vienna, which often favoured Trieste over Venice in its policies, while compulsory military service, censorship, and political repression targeted liberals and supporters of independence.
After the uprisings of 1848 and the 1849 siege through which Austria retook Venice, causing considerable damage to the city, Austria restricted its freedoms still further through fines, arrests, heavier conscription, and, of course, greater censorship.
Traces of Austrian rule can be seen in schei (also sghei or ghei in Lombardy), from Scheidemünze, the Austrian one-cent coins; in franchi, a term that continued to be used even for lire; in sine, from German Schiene, rail, because railways were first built in Veneto to connect it with Lombardy and Austria during Austrian rule; and in spritz, literally a splash, originally white wine diluted with water and sprayed with seltzer because Venetian wine was too strong for Austrian soldiers accustomed to beer. Note that spritz means to spray, since it was also sprayed with soda or something similar, and that Italian sprizzare is itself a Germanic word introduced by the Goths and Lombards. There are also many other words owing more to coexistence along the border between Venetians and Austrians than to Austrian rule, such as canederli, finferli, and so on.
Veneto within Italy
In 1866, the very young Kingdom of Italy allied itself with Prussia and fought the Austrian Empire in the Third War of Independence. Italy suffered several defeats, including the famous Battle of Lissa, while Garibaldi won victories in Trentino. Thanks to the Prussian victory, the war ended favourably for Italy. This was the occasion of the famous episode in which Garibaldi replied “I obey” to the king’s order to stop, even though he was the only Italian commander then achieving victories. Veneto and Mantua were ceded to France, which transferred them to Italy, and the annexation was ratified by a plebiscite. Trento and Trieste remained Austrian.
For the third time in seventy years, Veneto underwent a change of state. Unlike the French and Austrian annexations, this time many Venetians supported Veneto’s entry into Italy, and the region also gained representation in parliament. Since Italy was a centralised state, Venice did not recover its autonomy and indeed became still more peripheral. Italy was also young and inefficient; taxes imposed by the new state, still trying to recover from repeated wars, were extremely heavy. The notorious 1868 tax on milling hit poor families particularly hard. Compulsory military service was introduced again—young men could be taken away from families already in crisis for five years—and the State was slow to respond to serious, tangible problems such as poverty, disease, and the agricultural crisis.
It should be stressed that the agricultural crisis—in which farmers became poorer despite better harvests, while diseases such as pellagra began to appear—did not begin with Italian rule: it was already present in the second half of the eighteenth century. It was accelerated by Napoleon through wars fought on the territory, high taxes, young men taken from the land, and trade blockades. Austria failed to contain it, and Italy, at least initially, made it still worse.
These existing and now aggravated problems triggered a massive wave of migration from around the 1870s; the figures are staggering. Between 1876 and 1900, 940,711 departures from Veneto were recorded, followed by another 882,082 between 1901 and 1915: more than 1.8 million departures in forty years. Between 1876 and 1900, Venetians accounted for 18% of Italian emigrants [14] [15]. Destinations fell into two broad groups. European destinations included Germany, France, Belgium, and Switzerland, where migration might be seasonal or periodic returns were at least possible. American destinations initially included mainly South America—Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay—and later the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Returning from there, especially at the time, was far more difficult, although some eventually did. More than a million Italians are estimated to have emigrated to Brazil, almost half of them Venetians. One famous result was Talian [16], a variety of Venetian partly mixed with the dialects of other Italian migrants. It came to be used alongside Portuguese among migrants who made up the majority in certain Brazilian regions, and is still spoken by their descendants. Another famous case is Chipilo in Mexico, a community founded predominantly by emigrants from Segusino.
From here we enter the twentieth century, practically within living memory. Many events could be recalled: Veneto’s role as a front during the First World War, the events of the Second World War, the arrival of modern technologies, and the post-war economic boom. All helped unite the Italian people, initially composed of former regional states such as Venice and still strongly attached to local identities during the country’s early years.
Between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Venetian produced its last neologisms based on “choices” different from those made in Italian: fulminanti rather than matches, originally the adjective in solfanelli fulminanti; paneti for popcorn; rabalta for the fly of a pair of trousers, recycling the term used for the front and rear openings of night-time tights; aparechi and machine for aeroplanes and cars, using Italian loanwords in much the same way as the Veneti used Latin pomo for apple; moto pic for pneumatic drill; and goldone for condom, from the Gold One brand of condoms carried by American and British soldiers during the Second World War.
The recycling of old terms is quite common: for example, we continue to montare and smontare cars and trains, using the same verbs once used for mounting and dismounting horses.
We have reached the present day, when Italian is clearly the dominant language in Italy. Everyone speaks it, and a condition of diglossia, or even dilalia [8], exists between Italian and the dialects: these languages coexist, with Italian used in formal settings—and also informal ones in the case of dilalia— and dialects used only in informal or even exclusively private settings. Any words now added to Venetian are merely loanwords from Italian, slightly altered in pronunciation, such as telefonin for mobile phone and ciaveta for USB flash drive, and I cannot think of any recent Venetian words distinct from their Italian equivalents. Indeed, it is losing many old words in favour of variants more similar to Italian: subiare has become sufiare, although subiotti still survive, even if awareness that the word means whistle is disappearing; forcheta is replacing piron, bicier is replacing goto, and so on.
In recent years, many families have chosen not to teach it to their children, or to teach it only after Italian. Alongside the loss of traditional vocabulary, the number of speakers is therefore also declining, in a process that will probably cause it almost to disappear in the long term, except perhaps in mountain areas, which have traditionally been more conservative. On the other hand, it is also true that the social environment and the occupations for which Venetian seemed tailor-made have changed enormously in recent decades. The rural life of the past and extended families have disappeared, giving way to smaller households, greater mobility and a myriad of new jobs with new terminology, sometimes borrowed directly from English. It is difficult for a language to remain in use when what it describes no longer exists. The fact remains that today’s dialect is already only a faint memory of what it was a century ago. While our generation still had the opportunity to learn and speak it, this will probably not remain true for much longer.
We have seen how Venetian offers us a remarkable window onto history. It developed independently from Latin under the influence of many different peoples; it was already a mature language five or six centuries ago and has evolved relatively little since then, carrying ancient linguistic features into the present. Over the last two centuries, it has begun to fade under the influence of Italian, which arose as a predominantly literary language based on the Florentine vernacular and spread only relatively recently as a common spoken language. Italian was itself once strongly influenced by Venetian, as part of the natural historical succession of languages. I leave you with a few fictional stories in which you can see it in use once again. For now there is only one, but I will try to expand the collection over time.
References
[1] A. Zorzi, La Repubblica del Leone, Tascabili Bompiani, 2011.
[2] F. Villar, Gli Indoeuropei e le Origini dell’Europa, Società Editrice il Mulino, 1997.
[3] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetici
[4] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regio_X_Venetia_et_Histria
[5] https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/germanismi_(Enciclopedia-dell’Italiano)
[6] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repubblica_di_Venezia
[7] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stato_da_M%C3%A0r
[8] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia
[9] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabeto_fonetico_internazionale
[10] https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/la-finanza-pubblica-dal-prestito-all-imposta_%28Storia-di-Venezia%29/
[11] https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/l-economia_%28Storia-di-Venezia%29/
[12] https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/venezia-e-la-politica-italiana-1454-1530_%28Storia-di-Venezia%29/
[13] https://archiviodistatovenezia.it/it/chisiamo/l-istituto.html
[14] https://www.regione.veneto.it/article-detail?articleId=3243068
[15] https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/tre-venezie_%28Enciclopedia-Italiana%29/
[16] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialetto_talian
[17] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipilo