Talian dialect
Talian is a dialect of the Venetian language spoken mainly in the wine-producing area of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Talian is also sometimes called Vêneto (brasileiro). Talian is also spoken in other parts of Rio Grande do Sul as well as in parts of the neighboring state of Santa Catarina to the north.
Italian settlers first began arriving into this region in the middle 19th century. These Italians were from many different regions of Italy, but many spoke Venetian.
Although these "new Brazilians" came from various regions of Italy, as time went by a uniquely southern Brazilian form of Italian emerged. Veneto became the basis for this Italian-Brazilian regionalism. However, it was also very much influenced not only by other Italian language variations but by Portuguese, the national language of Brazil.
Because its grammar and lexicon remain predominantly Venetian, Talian is not considered a creole language, the preponderance of non-Venetian loanwords notwithstanding.
Like Riograndenser Hunsrückisch (hunsriqueano riograndense), the main German dialect spoken by southern Brazilians of German origin, Talian has suffered great depreciation since the 1940s. At that time, then-President Getúlio Vargas started a campaign of nationalization (similar to the Nacionalismo of neighboring Argentina) to try to force non-Portuguese speakers of Brazil to "better integrate" into the national mainstream culture. Speaking Talian or German in public or even in the privacy of one's home was considered offensive and unpatriotic and deserving of severe punishment.
As a result of the traumas of Vargas' policies, there is, even to this day, a stigma attached to speaking these languages.
External links
- La Rena Brasil
- Portuguese essay, written by Bernardette Soldatelli Oliboni A estigmatização como fator determinante dos bloqueios de fala de descendentes de italianos no nordeste do Rio Grande do Sul ("Stigmatization as a determining impeding factor to the language of descendants of Italians in the northeast of Rio Grande do Sul")
- Main Dialects of Rio Grande do Sul
- Il "talian"
- Musibrasil