Ciao a tuti! ...or as you would say... Hello everyone!
Welcome to Venetian 4 English Friends,
the blog dedicated to Venetian language...in English language!
Whether you are just curious to know the origin of the greeting ciao, looking for some local language tip before leaving for Venice, searching for useful tools to learn the Most Serene Republic's language and literally speak as the famous Casanova did, or already ready to practice Venetian, you're in the right place!
This blog aims to be a linguistic support for all those who are interested in the Venetian language in general and in learning it in particular, and offers several useful tools and interesting links!
The Venetian (vèneto) is a Romance language similar to Italian and Spanish, but equally different from both of them. It originated from the patavinitas of Livy's Latin. It , then it gave birth to a rich literature as the official language of the more lasting republic in human history, the Venetian Republic, being also the main language of commerce in the Mediterranean for centuries.
Nowadays, about 4 million people speak Venetian in the upper Adriatic, in Istrian, Dalmatian and Greek coasts and islands and 4 million more speakers are in Brazil, where half of the Venetian population was forced to emigrate from the 1850s to the early 1960s.
Although having been recognized by UNESCO with ISO code "vec" since 1999, and therefore having become a world heritage that must be protected by the law, unfortunately Venetian people still cannot learn their mother tongue at school or use it while working, or with Italian public institutions...
But in the Italian region of Veneto the 70% of the population still speaks Venetian every day with family and friends, and certainly we all would appreciate if a foreigner -or a foresto as we say- on a visit to Verona, Venice, Treviso, Vicenza stopped us to ask for information in our mother tongue! ....the least we could do would be tempting you to an onbreta of wine! :)
I will try to make this blog useful to many learners and I hope it will be, in its small way, an effective tool to enhance and support the use of my mother tongue.
Divertìve! Have fun!
Andrea Lunardon
venetian translator
P.S.: Don't be afraid to comment everywhere! :P
Hi Andrea! I read some of your posts! I think they are really interesting and I’ve learned new things I didn’t know before (e.g. the Venetian national anthem). Actually, I use Venetian only when I speak with my relatives and a small group of friends (very small) or when I’m extremely angry (I think in this way I can give more emphasis on my words… in my opinion, expressions such as “te si incalmà con l’oco!!” or “te si un imberio” [I don’t know how to write them… ] have a greater impact on my interlocutors and I can’t figure out an Italian translation!). I think that behind a work like yours (blogs so well-framed and detailed) there are lots of study and research. WOW !!! That’s why I would like to ask you when and how your love for Venetian language and Veneto began. Your passion drives you to fight for your birth place, and I think a dedication like yours must have a particular origin. Is there a particular reason? I mean, I know people who live in Veneto are really proud of their origins (I grew up in a family like this!). But, What about you? Looking for your answer!!! Bye
ReplyDeleteMy Dear,
Deletethank you for your feedback, I really appreciated your intervention, and it gives me the possibility to better explain where my passion, and this blog, is rooted.
Most of young Venetians like us are in your situation: they understand the Venetian language but they use it only in few situations: at home, with the closest friends or in emotional situations....a lot of them just use some expressions....even not knowing anymore the meaning of those expressions.... :P
Te sì incalmà co' l'oco literally means "You have been grafted with a goose", and it is a particularly agricultural way to describe a particularly silly person....
Te sì un inberìo/inbornìo means "You are frozen"...to be used the same way as the above-mentioned. :)
Well, my passion for the Venetian language simply came from observing the reality around me...When I was 17 I realized that my grandparents had problems in communicating with some of their nephews sometimes, just because of a linguistic change that was (and still is) happening...I felt like something was wrong...and I decided to find out something more on that change nobody seems to care about....why is this happening? When did it start? How?....Searching the internet I found out that this "change" actually has a name, which is "ethnocide", because the Italian institutions in our territory are illegally applying all the possible policies to replace the Venetian language with the Italian language since our territory was conquered 144 years ago.
The UNESCO recognized the Venetian language in 1999 and now it is to be considered world heritage to be preserved...but the Italian institutions won't do anything to respect the international law for many reasons...we may discuss that elsewhere another time if you're interested! Anyway, I felt I wanted to do something to preserve my grandparents' world heritage and I started spreading links and books about Venetian language, history and culture with the cultural association Raixe Venete....and then I committed even politically, becoming part of an independentist movement ( not the green foes :) ). Don't you think we should have studied our grandparents' language at school? Thanks again for your intervention!
Hi namesake! I think that the idea of creating a blog about Venetian is simply awesome. The posts you wrote helped me reflect about my origins and the glorious past this land has lived. In fact, at school professors always talk about the Italian identity, that is right because we all belong to the Italian Peninsula, but they should also talk about the regional identity. Every part of the Peninsula has its own origins, as every organ of the human body has its own function. So deleting the language of any Italian region would mean deleting a part of Italy, as if we lost an harm. You may not completely agree with this kind of opinion, or you may consider it stupid, but I’d like to know what you think about it. Bye!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your posting, old! :)
Delete(Don't worry prof that's not an error :) ...that one... ;) )
Thank you for your statements: they're all but stupid. You gave the example of Italy as an human body and its regions as organs. But let mi put it another way. Stated that I see every language, every identity, every culture, every people as a self-standing living being, I think that Italy is an artificial chain, or better, an artificial creeper, choking the living beings inside it and sucking their energies. Too rude? :) Italy was born thanks to English masons, fool kings, mafia and camorra. Those people created Italy and its institutions and laws. After having created Italy -which risked to be named Enotria among others- under a french king (Savoy) and having written its Constitution -in french, of course-, they realized that "we have made Italy, now we have to make Italians" as Gen. D'Azeglio said in 1861.
How? A literary language for all, migrations from south to north, 2 wars to melt the nation in blood, the dream to regain the roman empire, now the Azzurri dreams (the Savoy color...).
They give us a fake identity while they hide the true ones, waiting us to forget and become Italians. Without the Internet this would be just done already: nobody would be able to know anything about Venetian language, culture and history. We would only know what they would teach at school: that Venetian is a rude dialect of the finest Italian language, that the Venetian Republic was one of the "4 sea republics" and that its fall was due to the immorality, laziness and incompetence of the administration....Think about it...Doesn't it seem a bit too fiction??? Well reality is totally different, from any possible point of view, as usual when talking about Italian things.
Don't you think we should study Venetian at least as much as Italian at school?
Thank you again, hope you'll keep writing!
Ciao good sir,
ReplyDeleteI'm extremeley happy to have found this blog. I'm currently writing a fiction novel that deals with the Republic of Venice during the 15th century and I am going for a historical recreation that is as real as possible, thus I'm heavily researching the Venetian language because I want to go against the false stereotype that Venetians speak standart Italian; too many people unfortunately don't even know that there is a Venetian tongue that is not a dialect but a romance language of it's own. I'm very inclined to have the characters in the novel speak Venetian. (The book is written in french but there will be occasional interjections in Venetian during dialogues). To further that better comprehension of Venetian history I plan to go to Venice this summer, but I had a problem; I know some basics of standart Italian but I would've felt ashamed speaking in Italian to Venetians, in my opinion doing that would basically be denying a thousand years of culture to their very faces. But thanks to you this blog enables me to show my due respect when I go there, so that I can at least ask simple questions and say basic phrases in ła łéngua vèneta. I hope once there I'll be able to find local books or people that'll help me to deepen my understanding of the Venetian Republic and the language. On a side note, I really support you guys in your effort to keep your mother tongue alive. The fact that the teaching of the language has been taken from the public institutions and even the naming of the venetian language as a "dialetto" is abhorrent and ridiculous. To unifiy a country is one thing, to eradicate a millenium old language is another completely.
Anyhow, grasie for creating this blog and keep fighting for your heritage.
Hi Farya!
DeleteFirst of all thank you very much for your comment and for your support and interest in the Venetian language! Greetings also for your novel!! Sounds great!!
I would be happy to help you! I can introduce you to a cultural association which can provide you with Venetian books, then I can introduce you to some Venician-speaking friends (good foryour book) and I can join you when you will come to Venice, if you like! Of course I can teach you some Venetian, too!
This blog is an idea I had 2 years ago, but as you can see it is still incomplete and I still have many things in my mind before completing it... :(
Thank you again for your support, and feel free to contact me for anything you need!
That's so very nice of you! I'd very much love to meet you and other venetians. It would be great to meet other europeans who value the heritage of Europe's languages and regions that alot of people don't even know about.
DeleteAs for your other offers, I'd be most happy to accept, especially seeing how hard it is to access the Venetian tongue. Rome won't let the Venetians themselves learn it at school; so for outsiders, it's not even imaginable...
Thanks again for your incredible friendliness, very appreciated.
No problem at all, contact me whenever you need! :D
DeleteCiao Andrea, come vała? It's been a very long while. Since we last spoke a year ago I made a trip to Venice but was unable to stay for more than a day, but even then I loved the atmosphere and seeing the old Serenissima's flag everywhere.
ReplyDeleteSince then I have completed my novel, and have made extensive use of your resources here as well as others like El Galepin to punctuate the book with Venetian words and phrases. I am now about to start the publishing process, but there are still some phrases I'd like to put in there. These phrases are very specific and the only way for me to get them would be to send them to someone for direct translation. I'd very grateful if you could point me to a resource that would be willing to translate specific English phrases into Venetian. Grasie!
Ciao Farya! Tuto ben, grasie, e ti come vała? :) I am happy to read news from you! I am really happy also that you visited Venice, even a day is enough to fall in love, right? :P
DeleteCongrats for your novel!!! I can't wait to read it! :)
If you need the proofreading for your novel and the translation I would do it for free together with other colleagues of ILV (www.istitutolinguaveneta.org) which is the new language academy for the Venetian language. Please contact us from the website and I will be happy to help you!
That's great, thanks alot! For contacting the Institute, will an email in English suffice? My Venetian is non-existent and my Italian is very bad lol.
ReplyDeleteOf course it will work! Please add in your request that you have already taken contact with me, so we are sure not to miss time with bureaucracy :D
DeleteHey, I contacted the Institute and sent them the translation needed, just wanted to thank you for your incredible help! Grasie!
ReplyDeleteHey Andrea, I know that you are complaining about the ethnocide of the venetians and I'm on your side with the argument but I mostly blame Mussolini, Napoleon (because he is the one that invaded Venice), and the Austrians because they added that causeway that I don't like. Anyways that was all coming from a Venetian-American.
ReplyDeleteHi there,
ReplyDeleteI stumbled across your blog because I am trying to find resources for the correct probounciation of the Venetian dialect. I am an opera singer who regularly sings in Italian, but know that there are differences. I am trying to learn Reynaldo Hahn's 'Venezia' but the only resource with the music is that Xe is pronounced Ze, g followed by e is ye, c followed by i is pronounced like in French, and an L between two vowels (like gondola) is barely pronounced.
Are there any other helpful tips you could offer? I've heard recordings where all the L sounds are pronounced with j, (la Luna becomes ja juna) but others just pronounced as L. Same with c. For cielo I've heard tsielo, tsiejo, sielo and siejo.
Any help would be appreciated!
Best,
Jessica
Hi Jessica, first of all I want to greet you because of the professionalism you demonstrate in what you do! I am very happy to help you for what I can!
DeleteIf I am not misunderstanding, you are looking for the pronounciation of the dialect of the Venetian language which is spoken in the city of Venice, right? Actually you are making a mix of pronounciations of different Venetian dialects!
The following would be the Venician pronounciations you need (I will write the pronounciations in English and not in phonetic alphabet):
xe = ze
geloso = djeo'zo
ciave = cha'veh
gondola = gon'doea
gondole = gon'doeh
luna = eoonah / oonah / yoonah (half-sound)
cielo = syèl
If you need I can help you with other specific terms, and tell me if you want me to write the pronounciation in phonetic alphabet.
I hope this can be useful for you.
Kind regards
Andrea
I am glad I found your blog here....my husband is Venetian, and can speak it fluently, as his parents are immigrants from the Veneto, but he sadly did not pass the language on to our children. Our son has now decided he loves all things Venetian, and is on a mission to learn the language. So I have sent him a link to this page! Am sending it to mio sposo as well.
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