Swiss Italian
Swiss Italian is the name given to the form of the Italian language that predominates in Switzerland .
Around 500,000 Swiss speak Italian, which is 6.5% of the population. Italian is the main language in all parts of the Canton of Ticino and in a small part of the Canton of Graubünden ; around 15% of the Graubünden population speaks Italian. Together these areas form the Italian Switzerland (or Svizzera italiana ).
Official status and distribution
Italian is the third most common language in Switzerland and is the official language at the federal level. In the canton of Ticino and in the southern valleys of the canton of Graubünden, Italian is the only official language at the communal and cantonal level.
The Italian language is also one of the most widely spoken languages in German-speaking Switzerland , as an idiom of Italian immigrants and their descendants and as a lingua franca between foreign workers of various nationalities, including Spaniards and Portuguese. Due to their numerical superiority, Italian guest workers of the 1950s and 1960s asserted their languages in factories and on construction sites over the other guest workers in Switzerland. This was primarily the case with Spanish immigrants, who learned Italian easily, even if this was accompanied by inevitable simplifications. Later other language groups also used the Italian language (for example workers from Greece or Yugoslavia, which was encouraged by the fact that knowledge of Italian is more widespread among German or French-speaking Swiss than in Germany or France). With the decline in the influx of Italian guest workers from the 1970s onwards, the status of Italian as a lingua franca gradually declined.
As the third national language in Switzerland, Italian remains of considerable importance. In all language areas it is possible to receive radio and television programs in the various national languages. Everyday products across the country are labeled in Italian as well as in German or French. The same also applies to medication package inserts.
Swiss Italian differs in part from that which is used in Italy . Just as there are regional influences on the standard language in Italy, they also exist in Italian-speaking Switzerland. Recently, some Helvetisms have been included in dictionaries of the Italian language. The most important difference lies in the influence of the other national languages, even if these factors are insufficient to explain all the peculiarities of Swiss Italian.
Influences on the standard language of Italian-speaking Switzerland
Influence of other languages
Ticino has been part of federal territory since the 15th century and has been its own canton since 1803. That is why the German and French languages have had an impact on the local language there. This is the case, for example, with the word medicamento , which was also known in Italy before it was no longer used and was replaced by medicina or medicinale . In the Italian part of Switzerland, however, the term was able to assert itself because of similar names in other languages.
The following loan words come from French or German:
| Italian Italian | Swiss Italian | Corresponding word in French or German |
| offerta speciale | azione | action ; Action (special offer) |
| prenotare / prenotazione | riservare / riservazione | réserver / réservation ; reserve / reservation (also borrowed from French into German) |
| ordinaries | comandare | commander |
| istruttore | monitors | monitor |
| tapparelle | shutters | Roller shutter |
| cornetto / brioche | chifer | Croissants (Croissant) |
In the case of Azione , it was not the word that was borrowed, but the meaning 'special offer', which is missing in Italy.
Dialectal influence
As is common in Italy, dialectal forms often make themselves felt in the standard spoken language. Under the influence of the Galloital dialects, post-verbal negation can be found in northern Italy , which can influence the grammatical form of what is said in Italian (so often non is missing as in Questo è mica vero = this is not true).
It is a phenomenon that only occurs in informal interaction. Similar simplifications would be unlikely in central or southern Italy (e.g. Non l'ho bisogno instead of non ne ho bisogno = I don't need it).
The influences of the dialect can occasionally lead to misunderstandings: The word cocomero normally denotes a watermelon in Italy, while the Ticino people usually mean a cucumber. Similar phenomena are also possible in northern Italian dialects, albeit less frequently. The terms can be perceived as mistakes even by educated Italians in Switzerland, especially since the regional terms have often asserted themselves alongside the variants used in Italy.
State influence
The Swiss political system has given rise to names that are unknown in Italy: for example the Consiglio degli Stati ( Council of States ), the chamber of the federal parliament, in which politicians meet as representatives of the cantons.
Because most of the buses in Switzerland are operated by the Post Office, autopostale has become the name of the Postbus in Italian .
What is called codice di avviamento postale in Italy is called numero postale di avviamento (NPA; in German postal code ) in Switzerland, following the example of the other national languages .
Ticino dialects
The Ticino dialects of the Italian language belong to the Lombard dialect family . Lombard dominates in rural areas of Ticino and among the elderly, which also applies to Lombardy . In contrast to Lombardy, however, there is no longer a social stigma associated with dialect use in southern Switzerland , as it was in the 19th century.
The Ticino koiné (Italian: koinè ticinese ) is the Lombard koiné that is spoken by the speakers of the local dialects (especially those who deviate from the koiné itself, e.g. the Leventine dialect) when they speak to one another.
The Ticino dialect has taken up many terms from the German, French and Romansh-speaking parts of Switzerland and often has a Swiss-German orthography . Swiss cities, regions, food and cultural goods have an Italian translation, which is not the case for non-national languages. For most Italian speakers, the Ticino dialect is difficult to understand. A striking difference to Italian is - similar to Romansh - the frequent use of umlauts .
Examples of the Ticino dialect:
| German | Ticino | Italian |
|---|---|---|
| good day! | bon dì! | buongiorno! |
| his verb) | vess | eat |
| chair | cadrega | sedia |
| pencil | lapis | matita |
| Cellphone | Natel | Telefonino |
| movie theater | cinema (german) | cinema |
| before | evant (French loan word) | fine |
| strawberry | magiosc'tra | fragola |
| egg | öf (from French œuf) | uovo |
| glasses | ogiaa | occhiali |
| chestnut | casc'tegna | castagna |
| stop! | fermat! | ferma! fermati! |
| today | inchöö | oggi |
| honey | mel | miele |
| Eau de Cologne | aqua d'uduur / ul profum | acqua di Colonia / profumo |
| St. Gallen | sanglés | sangallese |
| fennel | finöcc / frös | finocchio |
Expressions and proverbs
| German | Ticino | Italian |
|---|---|---|
| Bad quality sausages | lüganich da scépa | salsicce di infima qualità |
| Be naive | beev l'acua dal cudee | credere a tutto ed a tutti |
| Nothing becomes nothing | chi gha al goss al gha quaicoss, se l gha nagoott al gha al goss da carez | con niente si fa nulla |
See also
literature
- VSI - Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana , vol. 1 ff. Lugano / Bellinzona 1952 ff.
- LSI Lessico dialettale della Svizzera italiana . Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia, Bellinzona 2004.
- Ottavio Lurati: Dialetto e italiano regional nella Svizzera italiana. Lugano 1976.
- Franco Lurà: Il dialetto del Mendrisiotto. Mendrisio / Chiasso 1987.
- Dario Petrini: La koinè ticinese (= Romanica Helvetica. Volume 105). Bern 1988.
Individual evidence
- ↑ G. Berruto; B. Moretti; S. Schmid: Interlingue italiane nella Svizzera tedesca. Osservazioni generali e note sul sistema dell'articolo , in E. Banfi e P. Cordin (a cura di). Storia dell'italiano e forme dell'italianizzazione . Roma, Bulzoni, 1990. pp. 203-228.
- ^ S. Schmid: L'Italiano degli spagnoli. Interlingue di immigrati nella Svizzera tedesca, Francoangeli, Milano. Dottorato di ricerca, Università di Zurigo 1994.
-
^ Giacomo Devoto e Gian Carlo Oli: Il Devoto-Oli. Vocabolario della lingua italiana . Firenze, Le Monnier, 2006. p. 1,654;
S. Savoia e E. Vitale. Lo Svizzionario . Bellinzona, Edizioni Linguanostra, 2002. - ↑ Modi di dire e locuzioni ( Memento of the original from April 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ In cocomero : Giacomo Devoto e Gian Carlo Oli: Il Devoto-Oli. Vocabolario della lingua italiana . Firenze, Le Monnier, 2006. p. 569
- ↑ Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana (VSI)
- ^ Norbert Furrer: The forty-language Switzerland. Language contacts and multilingualism in pre-industrial society (15th – 19th centuries), Vol. 1: Investigation, Zurich 2002, p. 102; Stefan Hess : The myth of the four national languages Once there were more than just four languages - how it came about that Switzerland has been officially four languages since 1938 , in: Basler Zeitung , September 20, 2011 (beginning of article: http: //www.genios .de / press-archive / article / BAZ / 20110920 / the-myth-of-the-four-country-language / 2011092035,371238520996.html )
Web links
- Antonio Stäuble, Guido Pedrojetta: Italian-language literature in Switzerland. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia
- Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana (VSI)