Venetia

Venetian History | Venetian Language | Venetian Culture

Venetian / Vèneto

What and where

Venetan or Venetian (Vèneto language) is a Romance language spoken under different varieties mainly in the Region Veneto (north-eastern Italy), on the adjacent Istrian peninsula (Croatia and Slovenia), in the state of Rio-Grando-do-Sul (Brazil) and in the little town of Chipilo (Mexico, State Puebla).
Venetian being an unrecognized language, the different venetian-speaking communities have undergone the influence of the official languages spoken in their respective countries: in Italy the varieties of venetian language are influenced by Italian, in Chipilo the original northern-venetian variety is influenced by mexican Spanish and in Rio-Grando-Do-Sul Venetian is influenced mainly by brasilian Portuguese and some other northern italian languages brought there by immigrants.

In the past

Ancient Venetian seems to have shared some Slavic features but modern Venetan is mainly a romance language. Apart from the well-known literary works of Goldoni and the less known Ruzante, the first instances of Venetian/Vèneto date back far in the past: the Indovinello Veronese, considered to be one of the oldest written documents in Italian vulgar languageis, shows some linguistic features typical of Venetan; the so-called Ritmo Bellunese (1198 d.C.) shows some peculiarities in the verbal conjugation still typical of present-day Venetian, besides other fonetic features observed in the modern bellunese Venetian. During the Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta (Republic of Venice), the Venician variety of Venetan/Vèneto was the official language of the Republic and it also contributed to the lexicon and the grammar of the Lingua Franca, spoken along the Mediterranean coasts untill 1800. During the domination of the Habsburgs Venetan was still the language of the navy even if the language of the Government was German.

Now

Following the annexion to the Italian Kingdom (1866, later Italian Republic) , since Veneto has long been a poor territory, Venetian has increasingly been depicted as the language of the poor and until the past decades the national italian television broadcast films in which Venetian/Vèneto was spoken by uneducated people or men-servants.Presently Veneto region has become prosperous and healthy but no much headway has been made, as for the knowledge and pride of Venetian language which now has sometimes being depicted as the “language of rich selfish people”.In Veneto there live about 4,487,560 people half of whom currently claim to speak a variety of Venetan). However Venetian is spoken in all domains and nearly everybody understands it.
There are five main varieties of Vèneto/Venetian: