Italian in Ticino

Ticino is one of the 26 Swiss cantons and borders the canton of Uri in the north, Valais to the west and Grisons to the northeast. In the south it shares the border with  Italy’s regions of Piedmont and Lombardy. Campione d’Italia is a small Italian exclave in Ticino on the Lago di Lugano (lake Lugano). This region is named after the Ticino river, the largest river in the canton.

(© Wikipedia: Tschubbi)

The Italian spoken in this part of Switzerland is very similar to the standard Italian. But aside from the intonation, there are several differences from the Italian spoken in Italy, due the assimilation of French and German words and expressions. The Canton Ticino is part of Switzerland since the XVI th century but Lugano and Bellinzona became officially the „canton Ticino“ that joined the Swiss Confederation as a full member only in 1803. German and French have highly influenced the language in this territory.

The Italian in Switzerland has for example many words ending in –zione where the Italian would have –mento: isolazione (Swiss Italian), isolamento (Italian). For a sale, Swiss Italian adopts the German word of action, whereas in Italy you would call it “offerta speciale” (special offer).
However, the influence from Swiss German and French can be noticed at several levels of the language. You can find Grazie per non fumare (“Thank you for not smoking”) a direct translation from the French Merci pour ne pas fumer or franchetto, where the –etto is used analogically to the –li (diminutive) of the Swiss German Fränkli („Swiss Frank“). If you book a table in a restaurant, you will use the word riservare and not prenotare like in Italy. If you are standing in a queue or line, you will say that you are in a colonna and not a coda (Italian). And if you order a coffee you would say comandare and not ordinare (Italian), following the French commander; chifer  derives from the Swiss German Gipfeli (Italian: cornetto, French: croissant) and the change would be called ritorno, not resto like in Italian. Also, you would bring your car to a garage (like in French), whereas in Italy you would bring it to the concessionario.

There are also analogies with the North Italian varieties. For example mica is used for negation in sentences like Questo è mica vero  („This is not true“; note the post-verbal position and the absence of „non“). There are also some words, known in the adjacent italian regions, like gabola for guaio (trouble).

Ticinese

The dialect spoken in Ticino is generally called Ticinese. It is the name for the dialects of Westen Lombard spoken in this region.

Compared to the Western Lombard varieties spoken in Italy, the Ticinese is more vital and has a significant number of young speakers and some radio and television programms are in Ticinese.

You can find some examples in these resources:

• The Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia, a cantonal research institution, publishes a dictionary and studies about the Ticinese varieties.

• The Lessico dialettale della Svizzera italiana is a famous dictionary.

• Here and here you can find a few audio samples of some italian dialects of Ticino and some examples of the variety of Luganese.

Italian and Swiss Italian in the Grisons

Italian is spoken also in another region of Switzerland, the Canton Grigioni, Grisons.

Grisons is the only canton of Switzerland with three official languages: German in the northwest (68%), Rumantsch in the Engadin and around Disentis/Mustér (15%), and Italian in the Italian Grisons (10%) with the remaining 7% speaking another language.

(  © wikipedia, Marco Zanoli)

In the Grigione italiano, Western Lombard is spoken in the Valle Mesolcina, Calanca, Bregaglia and Poschiavo (and the village of Maloggia by Sankt Moritz, Pontresina and Bivio).

Here is an example of a poem translated in several Swiss dialects on this site, in Swiss Standard German (1) and in the dialect of Poschiavo (2):

Swiss Italian in Australia

Italian speaking Swiss and Italians setteled in Australia during the 1850s and 1860s in the area around Daylesford and Victoria. These Swiss settlers were from the canton Ticino and the southern part of Graubünden whereas the Italian settlers were mainly from the northern Italian Regions of Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Liguria and Piemonte.

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Swiss German is a regional or political umbrella term, not a linguistic unity. The Swiss German is linguistically devided in Low, High and Highest Allemannic.

Low Alemannic is only spoken in the northernmost parts of Switzerland, in Basel-Stadt (BS) and around Lake Constance.

High Alemannic is spoken in most of the Swiss plateau. In the western group we find the Bernese German (BE), the dialects of Basel-Landschaft (BL), Solothurn (SO), and those of the western part of Aargau (AG). Then we have the dialects of the eastern part of Aargau (AG), the dialects of Lucerne (LU), Zug (ZG) and Zürich (ZH). The eastern dialects are those of Sankt Gallen (SG), Appenzell (AR & AI), Thurgau (TG), Schaffhausen (SH) and parts of Graubünden (GR).

Highest Alemannic dialects are spoken the German speaking parts of Freiburg, the Bernese Oberland (BE), Unterwalden (UW) and Uri (UR), Schwyz (SZ), Glarus (GL).

We find the Walliser German in parts of the Valais (VS). There is also another kind of German, the so-called Walser German, which is the German of the people who migrated to the Grisons, Vorarlberg in West Austria, Ticino, in South Switzerland and south of the Monte Rosa mountain chain in Italy (e.g. in Issime in the Aosta valley), Tirol in North Italy and Allgäu in Bavaria). These Walser communities were „situated on higher alpine regions, therefore they were able to stay independent of the reigning forces of those days, who did not or were not able to follow and monitor them all the time necessary at these hostile and hard to survive areas. So, the Walser were pioneers of the liberalisation from serfdom and feudalism. And, Walser villages are easily distinguishable from Grisonian ones, since Walser houses are made of wood instead of stone.“

Each of these dialects is devided in numerous local subdialects. There are even dialects for individual villages. But despite this variation, the Swiss can still understand one another.

(© wikipedia, Testtube)

The spoken language: Swiss German dialect(s) vs. Swiss Standard German

The dialects have a very important role in the regional, cantonal and national identity in Switzerland. The spoken language is the dialect and Swiss Germans use it with pride. Among each other, the German-speaking Swiss „use their respective Swiss German dialects, irrespective of social class, education or topic“.

Try to click on the region you would like to have an audio sample here.

The common spoken language is the dialect, whereas the written language is Swiss Standard German. The dialects are very different from this Swiss Standard German, which is a variety of Standard German used in Switzerland.

Only in some specific situations, Swiss Standard German is considered more polite, like in education – but during breaks at school, teachers will speak dialect with students – , in multilingual parliaments, a few news broadcasts or in the presence of German-speaking foreigners.

The written language: Swiss Standard German

Swiss Standard German is the official written language in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. It is used in books, official publications (also in all laws and regulations), newspapers, printed notices etc. The Swiss German authors write literature in Swiss Standard German, although some specific dialect literature exists. Swiss Standard German is very similar to Standard German in Germany and Austria, but there are several distinctive features in all linguistic domains: phonology, vocabulary, syntax, morphology and orthography. All those characteristics of Swiss Standard German are called helvetisms.

Most Swiss-Germans speak fluent Swiss Standard German, but when they compare their German to the German spoken by people from Germany, they often consider their own proficiency inferior. Probably because the Swiss Standard German is studied at school, used only in certain contexts and slower than the German.

French and Italian-speaking Swiss learn Swiss Standard German at school, but have great difficulties to understand Swiss German, like most of Standard German speakers (unless they are familiar with another Alemannic dialect). Even on TV or in movies, Swiss German speakers are usually dubbled or subtitled if shown out of Swiss German territory. (find here a list of Swiss Movies)

If you’re new in a Swiss German part of Switzerland, you might be asked to pronounce Chuchichäschtli [?????i??æ?tli] („kitchen cabinet“), just to check if you’re able to pronounce the fricative uvular sound (find it here).

 ***

These are a few dictionaries with expressions of the Swiss German dialects: Dialektwörter, Idiotikon and Schweizer Wörterbuch.

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(©wikipedia, Savoyerli)

The Suisse romande or Romandie is the French speaking part of western Switzerland. It inlcudes the cantons of Fribourg, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel, western Valais, Vaud and the northern part of Berne (cfr. Jura Bernois or the Bernese Jura).

People in the Romandie speak the Suisse romand, a variety of French, not to be confused with the Franco-Provençal/Arpitan (also spoken in this region) or Rumantsch (spoken in the Grisons).

Swiss French differs from the Parisian French in its intonation and vocabulary. Nowadays, a French speaker encounters some unfamiliar words when listening to a Swiss French speaker.

The Romandie doesn’t have one standardized Swiss French language: every canton uses a different vocabulary, mainly derived from the local regional language or even from German.

Here are a few examples about how the French of the Romandie differs from the standard French:

Some distinctive lexical features, that the Suisse Romand shares with the Belgian French are the use of the word septante for seventy, nonate for ninety in opposition to the soixante-dix (literally „sixty-ten“) and quatre-vingt-dix („four twenties-ten“) of the vigesimal French counting system. Also the definition of the meals are different: the word déjeuner is used for breakfast (that would be „lunch“ in French, which uses petit déjeuner for breakfast) and dîner for „lunch“ and souper for „dinner“ (in French these would be déjeuner and dîner respectively).

Instead of quatre-vingt („four twenties“ for „eighty“), used in French and Belgian French, the Swiss French uses huitante, especially in the cantons of Vaud, Valais and Fribourg. When you look for a post office in France, you would ask for a boite postale (BP), whereas in Switzerland, you would ask for a case postale (CP)…

[source 1=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_French” language=”:”][/source]

In Switzerland, after the French Revolution,  people thought that children had to learn French and not Patois. Today, 90% of the Swiss French is the same in all the regions and only in one little village, Evolène in the canton of Valais, children still learn their Patois… (Important documentation for the Patois is the Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande).

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(© wikipedia, Marco Zanoli)

Switzerland is a multilingual country with four national languages: German, French, Italian and Rumantsch (you can find it transcribed also as Romansh, Romansch, Rhaeto-Romanic or Rhaeto-Romance etc.). But only German, French and Italian maintain equal status as official languages at the national level within the Federal Administration of the Swiss Confederation.

According to the federal census of 2000, 63.7% of the Swiss population speaks German, 20.4% French, 6.5% Italian, 0.5% Rumantsch and 9.0% speaks other languages.

People talk German in the German Region (Deutschschweiz) that would be northern, central and eastern Switzerland. In the Romandie (French Region), in western Switzerland, people speak mainly French, whereas Italian is spoken in the Svizzera Italiana, the Italian Region in southern Switzerland. Rumantsch is the native language of the population in Graubünden (Grisons) in southeastern Switzerland.

The cantons of Fribourg, Bern and Valais are officially bilingual (French-German), whereas Graubünden is officially trilingual (Rumantsch-German-Italian).

Why is Switzerland multilingual?

The Swiss do not form a single ethnic group, they are a confederation (Confoederatio Helvetica: CH).

Historically, the Swiss derive from an amalgamation of Gaulish or Gallo-Roman, Alemannic and Raetic stock.

In the German speaking region (Deutschschweiz) we find the Alemannic German, historically amalgamated from the Gallo-Roman population and the Alemannii and Burgundii, including subgroups like the Walser. The term „Swiss“ from the 16th and 18th centuries referred to this group exclusively and only with the expansion of the Swiss confederation following the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) the term was applied to non-Alemannic territories. Closely related German speaking people are the inhabitants of Alsace, Vorarlberg and the Swabians.

In the French speaking region (Romandie) people speak Franco-Provençal dialects. Today these dialects are assimilated to the standard Swiss French and amalgamated from the Gallo-Roman population and Burgundians (the historical Upper Burgundy). These dialects are closely related to the French (especially those of Franche-Comté).

In the Svizzera Italiana, people speak a variety of the Lombard language,Ticinese, partly assimilated to the standard Swiss Italian language, amalgamated from Raetians and Lombards. They are closely related to the Italian regions of Lombardy and Piedmont.

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