Piedmontese language
| Piedmontese | |
|---|---|
| Piemontèis | |
| Native to | Italy |
| Region | Piedmont (northwest Italy) |
|
Native speakers
|
1.6 million (2002) |
|
Indo-European
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | piem1238 |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-of |
Piedmontese (piemontèis or lenga piemontèisa) is a Romance language spoken by over 1 million people in Piedmont, northwest Italy. It is geographically and linguistically included in the Northern Italian group (with Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Friulian, and Venetian). It is part of the wider western group of Romance languages, which also includes French, Occitan, and Catalan.
Many European and North American linguists (e.g. Einar Haugen, Gianrenzo P. Clivio, Hans Göbl, Helmut Lüdtke, George Bossong, Klaus Bochmann, Karl Gebhardt, and Guiu Sobiela Caanitz) acknowledge Piedmontese as an independent language, though in Italy it is often still considered a dialect; on the other hand, in the Italian context, dialetto 'dialect' refers to an indigenous language, not to a variety of Italian. Today it has a certain official status recognized by the Piedmont regional government, but not by the national government.
Piedmontese was the first language of emigrants who, in the period from 1850 to 1950, left Piedmont for countries such as France, Brazil, The United States, Argentina, and Uruguay.
The first documents in the Piedmontese language were written in the 12th century, the sermones subalpini, when it was extremely close to Occitan. Literary Piedmontese developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it did not gain literary esteem comparable to that of French or Italian, other languages used in Piedmont. Nevertheless, literature in Piedmontese has never ceased to be produced: it includes poetry, theatre pieces, novels, and scientific work.
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