Talk:Emilian–Romagnol linguistic group

Scope of article

The name of this article is inadequate, inasmuch it does not accomplish with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). Emiliano needs to be replaced by Emilian, I don't know Romagnolo. Bye, Bests, --10caart 14:09, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

As a native English speaker knowing very little Italian I have no problem at all with Italian names for local items, such as languages or dialects of limited regional scope. English does not automatically Anglicise every non-English word; in fact, unless there is an established precedent, English speakers prefer to learn to pronounce the original or at least try. It has a sort of an open flexibility, which is what keeps all these English dictionaries in business. Moreover, Wikipedia is not in the standardization business - it can't take on the task of devising Anglicised words for the public where there aren't any. It is not an academy of arts and sciences, only a sort of intelligent parrot (and often not so intelligent).Dave (talk) 17:05, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I never heard so many nonsenses like those created by northern leaguers, whose goal is clearly the breaking of Italy! I imagine that the next step will be the idea that northern dogs belong to a different species than the southern ones..... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.51.118.40 (talk) 10:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

enough with nonsense. about the first comment: 1. Emiliano-Romagnolo (also known as Emilian-Romagnolo) is a western neo-latin language (just like other Italian minority languages such as Piedmontese, Lombard and Ligurian), like French, Provençal and Catalan. It is considered as a minority language, structurally separated from Italian by the Ethnologue and by the Red Book on endangered languages of UNESCO.

there is no firm translation of the name of the language (as there is no translation for most of the proper names of Italian cities for instance). so Emiliano-Romagnolo is acceptable.

2. Does the second commenter has anything constructive to say, beside ranting about B.S.? Harvard dude —Preceding comment was added at 02:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

1.) This article needs to list the letters of the dialect, along with their proper pronunciation. I'm not sure that anybody really knows what's the difference between ä and å. 2.) I think that Emiliano-Romagnolo should be changed to an English name, and by having said that, should divide Emiliano-Romagnolo into Emilian and Romagnesian. It sounds a bit crazy probably, but I will not lie. Giacomo DiBenedetto (talk) 19:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

1. Every single dialect mentioned in the article is more like a dialect group. For example, Bolognese is more like a dialectal sub-group containing six or more dialects. Of all the varieties of Emiliano-Romagnolo, there is no real standardization and the diacritical vowels are more or less arbitrary and change depending on what sources you consult. Most people who speak Emiliano-Romagnolo can't read or write it. 2. Romagnesian is not a word. In it's own language, EM-ROM is called emiliàn e rumagnòl. Emiliano-Romagnolo appears to be the most common term used in English by far. Freereflection (talk) 02:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Pronounciation

Are the vowels ä, ü, ö, å emntioned in the article pronounced as in the Scandinavian and German languages or do they mark something different? I cannot seem to find it in the article. 193.44.6.146 (talk) 20:44, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Short answer: No. The letters are largely arbitrary and perhaps at one time were chosen because rounded emiliano-romagnolo vowels sounded in some way foreign to standard italian and were designated a more "foreign" seeming alphabet. The nature of the dialect, or rather minority langauge, is that it changes over a very small distance. My roommate from a village near Modena (he speaks the Emiliano dialect Modenese) claims that the village 2km down the road pronounce this word and that word differently. With global or national languages, you find changes like that over distances like hundreds of miles. These languages are taught to us. We acquire them, but we also learn them in school to speak in a standardized way. It's what gives language the power to be widely understood. Minority languages like E-R are only acquired. That's why the language changes so rapidly from village to village. The only way you'll know how a certain letter is to be pronounced is to find its equivalent in the IPA. Letters in any alphabet are ultimately only conventional substitutions for the phonemic value of a sound. Freereflection (talk) 04:24, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

short answer: yes! in the piacenza and pavia dialects of emiliano-romagnolo ä, ü and ö are pronounced just like in german. it's not a graphic 'device'. but you can hear this vowels in the provinces of pavia (lombardy), piacenza and in the western area of the province of parma (emilia-romagna) only. the idea of some vowels sounding as foreign to italian speakers is false, if referred to the western emiliano romagnolo dialects. --82.58.143.147 (talk) 23:57, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

How different from Italian?

For an American, who knows neither Italian nor Emiliano-Romagnolo, how am I to think of this new language that I have just learned about from reading in the encyclopedia? How many people speak it as their only language? Primary language? And if I were to learn Italian, would I basically understand E-R as well (like a dialect)? And is Italian it's closest neighbor or some other Romance language. TCO (talk) 03:32, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

No such thing as Emilian-Romagnol.

Whoever pushed this thing on wikipedia wasn't a local speaker and or blindly accepted some foreign academic unfamiliar with the speakers which even worse seem to push their own agenda.

Even Emilian speaker themselves are so distant from each other they argue who is speaking "actual" Emilian, while Romagnol speakers are more compact in their differences.

Then there's Pesaro-Urbino dialect, which now could be the 3rd group of this continuum.

I'd say a strict modenese speaker might need a written text to be fully understood by a standard Italian speaker, even if from same region. TheFlagandAnthemGuy (talk) 12:39, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm Italian and I'm from Emilia Romagna (I study in Bologna). Almost everyone in Emilia Romagna can speak standard Italian, usually with a tipical accent. If you want a person who speak E.R. as his only language you have to find very old and low educated people. You have to keep in mind that there are a moltitude of different dialects, almost one for every city. For example, the speech from Bologna is completely different from that of Ferrara or Modena, at the point that they are not intelleggible to each other. A lot of people is capable of speaking in his own dialect with proficency (expecially mature people) and, besides this, a great part of the population use on a everyday basis dialectal terms and words. But E.R. is used only in informal conversations: you can speak it (or use words of it) with your family, local shopkeepers, friends, but not with university teachers or on newspapers. Its use in publical speechs or newspapers is almost only to convey a rural-traditional (and often funny) sense. If you are studing Italian and try to listen a convesation in one of the hundreds dialects of E.R., you would understand absolutely nothing, but this would happens also to an Italian from Veneto, Lazio or Sicily. As regard its language family, I think that Italian is its closest language, even if northern Italian dialects have sounds that could remember something like the French pronounciation. --151.51.57.101 (talk) 23:44, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

The gist of the assessment in this last paragraph ought to be in the article, so we "outsiders" can get a view of what is going on inside; however, we need a source for it. Maybe someone could do a search on it.Dave (talk) 16:55, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm American and I study in Bologna. I speak both Italian and E-R dialect. The previous conjectures are mostly correct. Italians themselves don't understand E-R unless they have studied it or acquired it natively. However, Italian is not the closest language to E-R. In fact, it is one of the furthest away from E-R in the romance family. Here is a simplified explanation: Italian is Southern Romance like Sicilian and other southern Italian "dialects." E-R is a member of the Gallo-Italic group which includes most of the Northern Italian dialects like ligurian, lombardo, venetian, etc. They all share similar features. This Gallo-Italic group of N. Italy is one of 5 branches that make up the Western Romance Languages. The other 4 branches include languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Provençal, Friulian and a number of other minority languages. So E-R is closer to all of these languages before Italian. However, E-R has been very heavily italicized so it has borrowed a number of lexemes and linguistic structures from Italian over the last few centuries. Therefore it seems closer to Italian than it really is. Freereflection (talk) 03:21, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Please confirm classification

The highest WikiProject classification for Emilian-Romagnol language is Start-class. However, the page has less than 100 words, so it might not meet the grading criteria.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:40, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

This needs a review

Let's be honest, there's no single speaker of any dialect from this region that would naturally identify himself as an "Emilian-Romagnol" speaker, even less without rejecting it as totally made-up.

Maybe a "controversy" section with pro and against such classification might help to give an accurate information on the subject.

Caution is advised.

Requested move 10 May 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. You might have better luck trying Emilian-Romagnol language → Emilian-Romagnol. (non-admin closure) SilverLocust (talk) 06:43, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

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Emilian-Romagnol language → Emilian-Romagnol continuum – ISO code was dropped, no speakers recognize it and academic descriptions openly treats it as a continuum rather than a language proper. Change should be considered to avoid pushing outdated and potentially false informations TheFlagandAnthemGuy (talk) 16:02, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. The term "continuum" seems artificial and technical, and not recognizable to general readers. This is an article about language, not mathematical spaces. The title should clearly indicate what the article is about. Any subtler definitions or clarifications can be explained in the lede. Walrasiad (talk) 22:45, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

  • Comment. Well, I would say the page text exists to make the term familiar and later recognizable to readers. Such is the purpose of an encyclopedia: making the not-familiar familiar and the not-recognizable recognizable. It seems "artificial" and "technical" because it is, it is the terminology of linguistics (and same could be said of mathematics and any other "hard" science with their own jargon). You said it yourself: "Any subtler definitions or clarifications can be explained in the lede"; very well, let's name it "continuum" and explain in the opening line what a linguistic continuum is, we have even a wiki page on it ready for link.

  TheFlagandAnthemGuy (talk) 12:39, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

You've got that the other way around. The article text can educate. The article title has to be recognizable. That is the prime WP:CRITERIA for article titles. It is the title that shows up on searches and urls. If this shows up on a search list, the reader has no idea what this is about. He is looking for languages, not mathematics, and will not click on it as there is no indicator that this is the article he is looking for. That is why Wiki article titles insist on WP:COMMONNAME, not technical name. Walrasiad (talk) 16:10, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

"Emilian Romagnol language" is no lesser common than "Emilian Romagnol continuum", what changes is that the last is neutral and informing, the first is misleading if not confusing or even worse manipulative (again: ISO dropped, rejected by speakers, text incoherent with title).

In all honestly, a reader interested in linguistic should be quite familiar with the term "continuum" or even "language continuum" (which could be a valid compromise), if not could still click on it sparkled by interest, not mentioning the option of adding redirection for past name.

We have no choice but to resort to "technicism" for no common or neutral terminology is available, so either "continuum" or "language continuum". TheFlagandAnthemGuy (talk) 17:00, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I disagree. "Language" is a term that is recognizably related to linguistics. "Continuum" is not. The presumption is that it is related to mathematics. Indeed, it sounds like a theorem on infinite-dimensional spaces by professors Emilian and Romagnol. Wikipedia is not a specialist journal. Articles here are not for people "interested in linguistics". It is for general readers who are pointedly not linguists, who might stumble across it in another context, and want to know a little more about it. They'll be looking for articles on Emilia-Romagna that contains some form of the term "language" in the title, and skip over things that sounds like mathematics, transportation, architecture, cuisine, etc. It has to be recognizable if they are to find it. Walrasiad (talk) 19:04, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Then let's name it "linguistic continuum" or "linguistic system". TheFlagandAnthemGuy (talk) 19:51, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.