Cremunés dialect

Cremonese (Cremunés) is a dialect of the Western Lombard language group spoken in the city and province of Cremona in Lombardy, Italy, with the exception of Crema and the area of Soresina, where an Eastern Lombard dialect is spoken,[1] and the area of Casalmaggiore, where a form of Emilian[2] closely related to Parmigiano is spoken.

Cremonese
Native toItaly
Native speakers
(undated figure of 30,000)
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
GlottologNone

Being at the crossroad between the core areas of different Lombard varieties, it shows some elements of both Western Lombard and Eastern Lombard, and a few which are typical of dialects spoken in the nearby region of Emilia-Romagna. It is best classified as belonging to the Southwestern Lombard group of dialects.

The geographical distribution of Lombard dialects. Legend:
L01 - Western Lombard;
L02 - Eastern Lombard;
L03 - Southern Lombard, including Cremonese;
L04 - Alpine Lombard

Phonology

Vowels

The Cremonese dialect of the Lombard language has 9 vowel qualities, which can be either phonemically long or short, without any difference in quality.

The following 18 phonemes all occur in stressed environments: /i/ /iː/ /y/ /yː/ /e/ /eː/ /ø/ /øː/ /ɛ/ /ɛː/ /a/ /aː/ /ɔ/ /ɔː/ /o/ /oː/ /u/ /uː/.

Vowel length is contrastive in stressed syllables, for example /'veːder/ glass with a long /eː/ differs from /'veder/ to see, with a short /e/.[3] This is a reflex of the Proto-Romance rule of lengthening open syllables, which in Cremonese, has led to phonemic vowel length also being contrastive in penultimate-stressed words, as well as in monosyllabic words.[4]

In unstressed position, only the following 6 vowels occur: /i/ /e/ /ø/ /ɛ/ /a/ /u/.

Orthography

The publication of the Dizionario del dialetto cremonese in 1976 by the Comitato promotore di studi e ricerche di dialettologia, storia e folklore cremonese outlined an orthography for Cremonese.

  • a as in Italian (andàa: to go, Italian: andare)
  • è for open /ɛ/ (pulèer: Italian: pollaio)
  • é for closed /e/ (fradél: Italian: fratello)
  • i as in Italian (finìi: Italian: finire)
  • ò for open /ɔ/ (bòon: Italian: buono)
  • ó for closed /o/ (fióol: Italian: ragazzo)
  • u as in Italian (pùl: Italian: pollo)
  • ö as in French "eu" and German "ö" (nisöön: Italian: nessuno)
  • ü as in French "u" and German "ü" (paüüra: Italian: paura)

Vowel length is represented by doubling the vowel letter, with the acute or grave diacritic removed for the second <e> and <o> letters. The umlaut diacritic however is retained across both letters, thus <öö> for /øː/ and <üü> for /yː/.

References
  1. Sanga, Glauco (1984). Dialettologia lombarda : lingue e culture popolari. Pavia: Aurora. p. 8. Retrieved 6 June 2022.
  2. Poletto, Cecilia (2000). The higher functional field : evidence from northern Italian dialects. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN 9780195350876. Retrieved 5 June 2022.
  3. Iosad, Pavel (30 November 2016). "Rule scattering and vowel length in Northern Romance" (PDF). Papers in Historical Phonology. 1: 218. doi:10.2218/pihph.1.2016.1700. Retrieved 5 June 2022.
  4. Delucchi, Rachele (2013). "Vowel Harmony and Vowel Reduction: The Case of Swiss Italian Dialects". Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. 37 (37).


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