The Secret World of Italian Dialects

🇮🇹 Learn the wild origin story of the Italian language 👉🏼 https://youtu.be/Fu6R-_85-ss

Quel momento in cui, come italiano, guardi un video inglese che parla dei dialetti e delle lingue della tua madre patria

One thing to remember: everyone in Italy understands Italian. That's of course because of school and television and media. But, in the rural areas or in more isolated towns, some people may not be able to actually speak it, or will struggle with it - especially elderly people. So if you speak Italian to these people, they will most likely reply in their own mother tongue, or they will try their best to speak Italian with their very heavy accent. It's common for young people to speak standard Italian to their grandparents while they respond in their own language/dialect. Another thing to be aware of are accents. Even if someone is speaking perfectly correct standard Italian, you may have trouble understanding what they're saying because of their accent, of which we have plenty. Sometimes Italian speakers themselves, if they're from different parts of the country, could have some trouble understanding each other.

As an Italian I have to applaud your knowledge of Italian dialects, Olly! Most times even we lose track of all the dialects and regional variants that exist in our country :)

In Rome we do roll the Rs, but when there should be two Rs, we say just one. For example "guerra" becomes "guera", "terra" becomes "tera" and so on.

Great video as always. As a Calabrian I also wanted to note that here we also have two minority languages: Arbëreshë (which comes from Albanian) and Griko (which comes from greek).

The main point is that all varieties spoken in Italy are called "dialects" but they are indeed their own languages, all equally descended from Latin. For someone like me who comes from Liguria, Neapolitan and Sicilian can be just as difficult (or even more difficult) than French or Spanish. Another point to mention is that Sardinian, Ladin and Friulian are not grouped under the "Italian" varieties. The Sardinians dialects (except one in the North) build up their own Romance group whereas Friulian, Ladin and many varieties spoken in the Alps build up a single linguistic family.

I'm actually a little jealous of Italians having their own "dialect" or language. It's like you can have an "intimate" language and a general language to talk to strangers and foreigners. I'd like to have that but I only speak one language natively. I know other languages but I have no one to speak them with. That's why I never end up feeling them as "mine". Either way, I'm glad I've learned other languages like English 😁. Italians, keep these languages alive. Don't replace them with standard Italian. Language diversity is very fascinating.

The Italian language is basically an elitist conlang. The myth of the dialect being inferior comes from exactly that. People thinking that the Florentine dialect was more prestigious and associated with education. To this day in Italy people consider "dialects" an inferior way of speaking when in reality people are just speaking different languages.

As an aemilian speaker I can say you can find the language/dialect diversity and continuity at a very small scale, from town to town, even if those towns are only few km away from each other! That's amazing

Emilian-Romagnol speaker here. Unfortunately, our local dialects of the language have mostly been starting to die out, however there is a substantial amount of heritage carried by the "language of our forefathers", therefore I've started to learn the language, both from direct sources and texts, to preserve some of my heritage.

In Italy there are no standard regional dialects. Each municipality has its own variant. In many areas if you speak in a "narrow" way you do not understand each other at a distance of 20 km if not less ... Exception is the Romanesco spoken as the second dialect in much of Lazio and surroundings. That said, the video is very well done 👍🏻🙂

I have started to learn Italian 2 or 3 weeks ago and I am so happy to see this video. Thank you

As a piedmont born Italian I can’t understand Sicilian or Pugliese. It’s like in China, they understand each other from different regions once they speak mandarin, the same is true here, we have to speak official Italian in order to understand each other.

3:12 I'm from Ticino (Italian speaking canton in Switzerland) and many people do indeed speak the dialect. We refer to it as Ticinese, despite it being very closely related to Milanese, basically the same language. Great video and research :)

you missed Patöis from the most northern west region, Val d'Aosta. In this small region (150.000 inhabitants) there are several different variations of this language that comes from Latin, french, Piedmontaise.. it's also spoken differently in several areas of France

I'm a native Sicilian speaker but I can also understand Lombard because I was raised in a mixed Lombard-Sicilian family. They are definitely two completely different languages just like Romanian is different from Portuguese even though they share a lot of similarities and have common origins.

I am planning to learn Italian in short future. I knew about dialects a little but this is just insane.

As a Tuscan of origin living in Liguria, I LOVE the Tuscan dialect. Every time I go to Tuscany I always try to hear and listen the best way I can, so that I can improve my pronunciation

EVERY Italian city has its own dialect/ language, usually similar to those ones you can find in neighboring cities of the same region, but having its own specific differences. In my city, dialect changes a little bit even from the city to the countryside. Language belong to the people, they change it continuously.