Romagnol

Geographic distribution

Western border

In the West, The Sillaro river marks the cultural and linguistic border between Emilian language speakers and Romagnol speakers; it runs 25 km east from Bologna to the west of Castel San Pietro Terme. Romagnol is spoken to the east of this river and to the south of the Reno river.
In the rest of Emilia-Romagna Region, Emilian is spoken in all the rest of the region moving from the Sillaro river to the west, up to Piacenza, and to the north of the Reno, up to the Po.

Northern border

The Reno river is the border between Romagnol and the dialect of Ferrara. Romagnol is spoken also in some villages northwards of the Reno river, such as Argenta and Filo, where people of Romagnol origin live alongside people of Ferrarese origin. Ferrara goes into Emilian language territory.

Southern border

Outside Emilia-Romagna, Romagnol is spoken in the Republic of San Marino ("Sammarinese"), and in two municipalities located in the province of Florence, Marradi and Palazzuolo sul Senio.

In the province of Pesaro and Urbino of Marche region, Gallo-Picene is spoken, but its status as sub-variant of Romagnol or as separate language is disputed.

History

Romagnol's first acknowledgement outside regional literature was in Dante Alighieri's treatise De vulgari eloquentia, wherein Dante compares "the language of Romagna" to his native Tuscan dialect. Eventually, in 1629, the author Adriano Banchieri wrote the treatise Discorso della lingua Bolognese, which countered Dante's claim that the Tuscan dialect was better, arguing his belief that Bolognese (an Emilian dialect influenced by Romagnol that saw wide use in writing) was superior in "naturalness, softness, musicality, and usefulness". Romagnol received more recognition after Romagna gained independence from the Papal States.

Literature

16th to 19th century

The first appearance of a distinct Romagnol literary work is "Sonetto romagnolo" by Bernardino Catti, from Ravenna, printed 1502. It is written in a mixture of Italian and Romagnol.

The first Romagnol poem dates back to the end of the 16th century: E Pvlon matt. Cantlena aroica (Mad Nap), a mock-heroic poem based on Orlando Furioso and written by an anonymous author from San Vittore di Cesena. The original poem comprised twelve cantos, of which only the first four survived (1848 lines).

The first Romagnol poet to win fame was the cleric Pietro Santoni, (Fusignano, 1736–1823). He was the teacher of Vincenzo Monti, one of the most famous Italian poets of his time.

In 1840, the first Romagnol-Italian Dictionary was published by Antonio Morri; it was printed in Faenza.

20th century

The 20th century saw a flourishing of Romagnol literature. Theatrical plays, poems and books of a high quality were produced. Some of the best known Romagnol authors are:

• Raffaello Baldini, who won in 1988 the "Premio Viareggio" and in 1995 the "Premio Bagutta", known for long pessimistic poems and prose
• Tonino Guerra (1920–2012), wrote poems during his exile to WWII-era Germany, focusing on people of suffering and poverty
• Giuliana Rocchi (1922–1996), a poet from Santarcangelo di Romagna whose work drew on her experiences as a working-class woman and addressed everyday life, social inequality, and the condition of women. Her poetry collections include La vóita d’una dòna (1980–81) and La Madòna di Garzéun (1986).
• Olindo Guerrini, with "Sonetti romagnoli"
• Aldo Spallicci, an antifascist exiled from Romagna. He wrote poems such as "Rumâgna" that were often descriptive of Romagna
• Lidiana Fabbri (born 1951), from the Rimini area, whose poetry addresses, among other themes, the experiences and social condition of women in Romagna. Her works include S’un fil ad vènt (2007), Garnèli (2009), Mulìghi (2016), and Bascòzi (2022).
• Francesco "Checco" Guidi, with his activity as poet and recorder of local popular expressions and says. He is specialized in the variant of Sammarinese dialect spoken in Serravalle, which is close to Riminese.

Romagnol was the native language of the famous dictator Benito Mussolini.

Grammar

Orthography

Romagnol lacks a standardized orthography, leading to huge varieties among authors.
The orthography adopted here is from Daniele Vitali's L'ortografia Romagnola (2008).

Morphology

Unlike Standard Italian, not all nouns end in a theme vowel. Masculine nouns lack theme vowels, and feminine nouns typically (but not always) terminate in a. Masculine nouns and adjectives undergo lexically-specified umlaut to form the plural, and feminine nouns and adjectives form the plural by a becoming i or being deleted after a consonant cluster or geminate consonant.

Both languages derive their lexicon from Vulgar Latin, but some words differ in gender.

Syntax

Italian and Romagnol share many of the same features when it comes to verbs. Both languages use subject–verb–object in simple sentences for their word order. Verbs are conjugated according to tense, mood, and person. Romagnol also has four conjugations, compared to Standard Italian's three: the first, -êr; the second, -ér; the third, -ar; and the fourth, -ìr. Marked differences in Romagnol from Standard Italian are that personal pronouns are required, and some verbs in Romagnol use a reflexive construction even if the speaker is not the second argument of the verb although Italian uses an intransitive construction.

Impersonal verbs, which lack a canonical subject, in Romagnol use "avèr" but in Standard Italian use "essere." Even though the subject is null, an expletive pronoun is inserted in the specifier position, much like "it" in English.

• Italian: è piovuto, It rained
• Romagnol: l'à piuvù, It rained

Also, whereas Standard Italian and other northern dialects omit the definite article before "singular names and names of relatives", Romagnol keeps it.

Phonology

Romagnol has lexical and syntactic uniformity throughout its area. However, its pronunciation changes as one goes from the Po Valley to the hills.

It has an inventory of up to 20 vowels that contrast in the stressed position, compared to seven in Italian. They are marked in the orthography by using diacritics on a, e, i, o and u.

The absence of an official institution regulating its orthography often leads to ambiguities in the transcription of vowel sounds.

Syllable structure

Some words that in Latin are trisyllabic or tetrasyllabic in which u is not stressed are reduced in Romagnol to being only monosyllabic. An atonic syllable is dropped.

Vowels

These three tables list the vowel inventory of the "classical" version of the northern macro-dialect of Romagnol.

The following table lists the vowels above alongside their relative orthography:

Consonants

The letter z is always pronounced as either [] or [] and not [] or [] as in Standard Italian.

[] occurs only before velar stops.

Romagnol, in addition to its larger inventory of vowels, also has more consonants compared to Standard Italian. Additionally, consonants have these differences from Standard Italian:

• In central dialects, word-final n is deleted, and the preceding vowel is nasalised, as is shown above.
• and can occur word-finally and are usually distinguished by the doubling of the final consonants (cc or gg).
• and may be realised as alveolars and by some speakers from the influence of Standard Italian.
• The voicing of those consonants is always contrastive.