Italian is a Romance language spoken by about 85 million people around the world, with 67 million native speakers. Most of these of course live in Italy, where it is spoken by most of the population, and other European countries such as Switzerland and San Marino, where Italian is an official language, as well as Slovenia and Croatia, where it is recognized as a minority language, and a few more places around Italy.
However, Italian is spoken also by large immigrant and expatriate communities that moved to other countries especially between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Some moved to other European countries or to the Italian colonies in Africa, but most immigrants settled in the Americas and Australia. These communities brought with them their language, and over time these idioms evolved into new and unique dialects. This is especially the case of Latin America, where large Italian communities spoke dialects that blended their original language with the local Spanish or Portuguese.
The Italians who emigrated around the turn of the 20th century often didn’t even speak standard Italian, but their regional language. Indeed, Italy has a unique situation in which the entire country has an official Italian language spoken and understood by almost everyone, but also various local languages that evolved independently from each other, and are widely different. Although these are often referred to as “Italian dialects”, they are in fact separate from Italian and from each other, and are considered by linguists as different languages. This happened because Italy was divided for centuries between small independent states, while the standard Italian language only became official in the entire country after its unification in the 19th century. To this day, most Italians can speak, or at least understand, a regional language, and often struggle to understand other regional languages.
Replica of traditional houses of Italian immigrants in Caxias do Sul, Brazil (Ricardo André Frantz, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).
So, the language spoken by Italian immigrant communities depended on what part of the country they were from. Around the turn of the 20th century, about 100,000 Italians arrived in southern Brazil, mostly from Veneto, but also from Lombardy, Trentino, and Friuli Venezia Giulia, all regions of Northern Italy. These people spoke mainly Venetian, the regional language of Veneto, and this became the basis for a unique dialect called Talian.
Talian, despite its name, is not derived from Italian but it is indeed a dialect of Venetian, heavily influenced by Portuguese and other regional languages spoken by Italian immigrants. Talian spread rapidly among Italian communities, with many books written in this language. However, Talian was declared illegal by the nationalist government of Getúlio Vargas, and its use declined since the 1940s. With these policies, speaking Talian was considered unpatriotic and severely punished. The stigma associated with the language by the regime of Vargas lasted for decades.
Nevertheless, Talian survived, and it is spoken to some degree by up to 500,000 people in southern Brazil. Since the 1990s, Talian has been the focus of a project of preservation and popularization. In 2009, the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina declared Talian a part of their historical heritage, and the town of Serafina Corrêa, in Rio Grande do Sul, made Talian a co-official language, alongside Portuguese. Talian was declared part of the cultural heritage of Brazil in 2014. Now several municipalities in southern Brazil have Talian as a co-official language. These towns now have newspapers and radio programs in Talian.
Municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul that recognize Talian as a co-official language (Andrevruas, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0).
Numerous settlements established by Italian immigrants in southern Brazil still exist today, and often have names inspired by the places where the immigrants were from, mostly cities in Veneto. Among these are Nova Bassano, Nova Pádua, Nova Treviso, Nova Trento, Nova Venécia and Nova Veneza. Nova Vicenza was instead later renamed Farroupilha, while another Nova Trento became Flores da Cunha. These towns are named after Bassano del Grappa, Padua, Treviso, Trento, Venice, and Vicenza. The largest city founded by Italians in Brazil is Caxias do Sul, created in 1890 and now the second-largest city of Rio Grande do Sul, with over 500,000 inhabitants. The birthplace of the Italian settlement of Brazil was instead Nova Milano, named after Milan, which was established in 1875 and now is a neighborhood of Farroupilha.
According to a survey made among Italian communities around Caxias do Sul in the 1970s, 54% of them were from Veneto, 33% from Lombardy, 7% from Trentino, and 4.5% from Friuli Venezia Giulia, with just 1.5% from other regions. Among people from Veneto, 32% were from the Province of Vicenza, 30% from the Province of Belluno, and 24% from the Province of Treviso, while only 14% were from other provinces. Because of this, Talian was mostly derived from the variety of Venetian spoken in the area between Vicenza, Treviso, and Belluno. Despite being heavily influenced by Portuguese, the grammar and lexicon of Talian remain fundamentally Venetian.
| Talian | Venetian | Italian | Portuguese | English |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| mi | mi | io | eu | I |
| ti/te | ti | tu | tu/você | you |
| lu/el/elo | lu/eło | lui | ele | he |
| noaltri/noantri | noialtri/noialtre | noi | nós | we |
| osel | oseo/oselo | uccello | bird | pássaro |
| bissa | bisa | serpente | serpente | snake |
| côa | cóa | coda | cauda | tail |
| recia | orécia/recia | orecchia | orelha | ear |
| òngia | óngia | unghia | unha | fingernail |
| pìe | pìe/piè | piede | pé | foot |
| pióva | piova | pioggia | chuva | rain |
| giasso | giaso | ghiaccio | gelo | ice |
Sample words in Talian and comparison with Venetian, Italian, Portuguese, and English.
Another dialect that emerged from speakers of Venetian is the Chipilo Venetian or Chipileño, spoken by a few thousand people in the Puebla state of Mexico. This dialect originated from Italian immigrants mostly from Segusino, a small town in the Province of Treviso in Veneto, who moved to the city of Chipilo, in Mexico, in the late 19th century. This city remained mostly isolated throughout the 20th century, and the Italian community retained its unique culture, without much influence from local inhabitants, but over time it absorbed some words of Mexican Spanish and Nahuatl. Now some books have been published in Chipileño, but despite the efforts of the local community, it is still not recognized as a minority language in Mexico.
The regional language of Lombardy instead heavily influenced Lunfardo, spoken around Buenos Aires in Argentina and Montevideo in Uruguay. Lunfardo began as a prison slang used by Italian immigrants in Argentine and Uruguayan prisons in the late 19th century to avoid being understood by guards. This dialect later evolved becoming a mixture of terms from various Italian regional languages and dialects, but was still mostly based on Rioplatense Spanish. This language later spread to other communities, and now the word Lunfardo is used to refer to any new slang term that becomes of common use, especially in Buenos Aires. Lunfardo is also often used in the lyrics of tango music.
Lunfardo was also influenced by Cocoliche, another mixture of Italian and Spanish once found throughout South America, but mostly in Buenos Aires. This dialect was mainly a kind of “broken” Spanish with Italian characteristics, and developed around the turn of the 20th century from Italian immigrants who often spoke regional languages, had little knowledge of Italian, and were trying to learn Spanish. Over time, Italian immigrants became more integrated into the local communities, and the use of Cocoliche slowly declined and now has almost completely disappeared.
While Cocoliche almost disappeared and Lunfardo lost most of its Italian characteristics, the Italian immigrants left an important mark on the Spanish spoken in some parts of South America. The Rioplatense Spanish spoken in Argentina and Uruguay is the best example of this. This dialect was strongly influenced by immigrants from Southern Italy in the early 20th century, to the point that now Rioplatense Spanish is often spoken with an intonation similar to that of the Neapolitan language, especially in Argentina.
Italo-Paulista (o Paulistalian) is instead a language that blends various Italian dialects with the Caipira dialect of Portuguese in the Greater São Paulo region of Brazil. Once again, it originated from Italian immigrants in the late 19th century, and was widely spoken. However, over time the Italian communities integrated with the local population, and Italo-Paulista is now almost completely lost.