Romanesco dialect

Before Rome became the capital city of Italy, Romanesco was spoken only inside the walls of the city, while the little towns surrounding Rome had their own dialects. Nowadays, these dialects have been replaced with a variant of Romanesco, which therefore is now spoken in an area larger than the original one. It slightly pervades the everyday language of most of the immigrants who live in the large city.^{[citation needed]}

Pronunciation

Romanesco pronunciation and spelling differs from Standard Italian in these cases:

• /j/ is used where standard Italian uses [ʎ]. This [j] is spelt ⟨j⟩, a letter no longer used in Italian. Compare Italian figlio [ˈfiʎʎo] "son" and Romanesco fijo [ˈfijo];
• r/ ("rolled r" or alveolar trill) does not exist anymore: for example, azzuro [aˈdːzuːɾo]; (Italian: azzurro "light blue"), verebbe [veˈɾebːe] (Italian: verrebbe "he/she would come").^[5] A Roman pun recites: "Tera, chitara e guera, co' ddu' ere, sinnò è erore" (English: "Ground, guitar and war with two R's, otherwise there is a mistake"): ere and erore are also "wrong", as they are erre and errore in Standard Italian.^[5] This phenomenon presumably developed after 1870, as it was not present in the classical 19th century Romanesco of Belli;^[5]
• /
  l/ becomes /r/ before another consonant: sòrdi [ˈsɔrdi]
  , Italian soldi "money";
• in Romanesco, as in most Central and Southern Italian languages and dialects, /
  geminated where permissible: e.g. libbro [ˈlibːɾo] for Standard Italian libro [ˈliːbro]
  "book", aggenda for agenda "diary, agenda".
• the dropping of vowels at the beginning of a word when followed by a nasal consonant (m, n, gn), for example 'nzomma (Standard Italian insomma), 'n (Standard Italian un/in), 'mparà (Standard Italian imparare), gni (Standard Italian ogni).[6]
• assimilation with different consonant groups. (typically a Central-Southern phenomenon) For example, /nd/ turns into /nn/ (Standard Italian quando turns into quanno), /ld/ turns into /ll/ (Standard Italian caldo turns into callo), /mb/ turns into /mm/ (Standard Italian piombo turns into piommo).

Quote

Noteworthy figures

Today, Romanesco is generally considered more of a regional idiom than a true language. Classical Romanesco, which reached high literature with Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, has disappeared.

External forces such as immigration and the dominance of Italian are playing a role in the transformation.

Notable artists using Romanesco

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• Ettore Petrolini, actor
• Elena Fabrizi, actor and cook
• Christian De Sica, actor and singer
• Antonello Venditti, singer
• Aldo Fabrizi, actor and director
• Alberto Sordi, actor and director
• Nino Manfredi, actor
• Anna Magnani, actress
• Enzo Salvi, actor
• Gabriella Ferri, singer
• Tomas Milian, actor
• Mario Brega, actor and comedian
• Gigi Proietti, actor, director and comedian
• Enrico Montesano, actor and comedian
• Carlo Verdone, actor and director
• Sabrina Ferilli, actress
• Carlo Alberto Salustri
  's pen name)
• Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli
  , poet
• Cesare Pascarella, poet
• Lando Fiorini, actor and singer
• Franco Califano, lyricist, musician,
• Ferruccio Amendola, voice actor
• Paola Cortellesi, actress
• Zerocalcare , comics author
• The anonymous writers of the Pasquinades posted on the talking statues of Rome use Italian, Romanesco or a mixture of both.^[8]

See also

• Belli's The Sovrans of the Old World (1831)

References