Lombard languages
| Lombard | |
|---|---|
| Lombard/Lumbaart (WL), Lombard (EL) | |
| Native to | Italy, Switzerland |
| Region | Italy: Lombardy Piedmont Trentino Switzerland: Canton Ticino Graubünden |
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Native speakers
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3.6 million (2002) |
| Dialects | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | lomb1257 |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-oc & 51-AAA-od |
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Lombard (native name lumbàart, lumbard or lombard, depending on the orthography; pronunciation: [lum'ba:rt]) is a language belonging to the Cisalpine or Gallo-Italic group, within the Romance languages. It is a cluster of homogeneous varieties used by at least 3,500,000 native speakers in Northern Italy (most of Lombardy and some areas of neighbouring regions, notably the eastern side of Piedmont) and Southern Switzerland (cantons of Ticino and Graubünden).
Lombard is considered a minority language, structurally separated from Italian, by the Ethnologue reference catalogue and by the UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages. However, Italy and Switzerland do not recognize Lombard speakers as a linguistic minority, the same as for most other minority languages in Italy, which are normally considered Italian dialects in spite of the fact that they belong to different subgroups of the Romance language family, and their historical development is in no way derived from Italian. That fact is being obscured, to some extent, both by the use of Italian orthography to write the languages and by influence from Italian.
Historically, the vast majority of Lombards spoke only Lombard. With the rise of Standard Italian throughout Italy and Switzerland, one is not likely to find wholly monolingual Lombard-speakers, who cannot understand Italian, but a small minority may yet be uncomfortable speaking it. Surveys in Italy find that all Lombard speakers also speak Italian, and their command of each of the two languages varies according to their geographical position as well as their socio-economic situation, the most reliable predictor being the speakers' age.
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Wikipedia