Chapter published in:
Contested Languages: The hidden multilingualism of Europe
Edited by Marco Tamburelli and Mauro Tosco
[Studies in World Language Problems 8] 2021
► pp. 163–182

Chapter 9
Revitalising contested languages

The case of Lombard

| University of Malaya
| Bangor University
| Committee for the Safeguarding of Linguistic Heritage (CSPL)

This chapter opens with an introduction to the Lombard language and its institutional and sociolinguistic situation, including the reasons why the term “language” is used and not the commonly used “dialect”. The second and main part of the chapter looks at what has been done to date and what is currently being done to try to reverse the ongoing language shift that is constantly reducing the number of speakers and the domains where the language is used. This includes a detailed account of corpus planning, particularly the phase known as ‘graphisation’ (writing systems, including the latest polynomic system for all Lombard varieties), status planning and acquisition planning, all of which have been carried out by committed individuals and private associations. The chapter closes with a short discussion on the present status of Lombard with reference to the recent regional law for the protection and promotion of the Lombard language.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Italian regional languages
  • 3.Lombard
  • 4.Lombard: One language? Many dialects?
  • 5.Language planning
    • 5.1Corpus planning
    • 5.2Status planning
    • 5.3Acquisition planning
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 January 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/wlp.8.09col
References

References

Beretta, Claudio
1998 Grammatica del dialetto milanese. Milano: Libreria Milanese.Google Scholar
Bonfadini, Giovanni
2010 Tra Valtellina e Val Camonica: il dialetto di Aprica. In Féch, cun la o cume fugus. Per Romano Broggini in occasione del suo 85° compleanno, gli amici e allievi milanesi, ed. by Gabriele Iannàccaro, Massimo Vai and Vittorio Dell’Aquila, 21–33. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.Google Scholar
Bosoni, Jørgen Giorgio
2003 Una proposta di grafia unificata per le varietà linguistiche lombarde: regole per la trascrizione. Bollettino Storico Alta Valtellina 6: 195–298.Google Scholar
Brasca, Lissander
2011 Scriver Lombard, un’ortografia polinomeg-local per la lengua lombarda. Monça/Monza: Menaresta.Google Scholar
Buccini, Maria, and Cesare Comoletti
2001 A Milano si parla così. Milano: Vallardi.Google Scholar
Caprotti, Giorgio
2013 Viaggio nel dialetto milanese. Milano: Meravigli.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. K., and Peter Trudgill
1998 Dialectology (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Circolo Filologico Milanese
2014 Dizionario milanese. Milano: Vallardi.Google Scholar
Coluzzi, Paolo
2007 Minority language Pplanning and micronationalism in Italy: an analysis of the situation of Friulian, Cimbrian and Western Lombard with reference to Spanish minority languages. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2008 Language planning for Italian regional languages (‘dialects’). Language Problems & Language Planning 32 (3): 215–236. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009a Endangered minority and regional languages (‘dialects’) in Italy. Modern Italy 14 (1): 39–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009b The Italian linguistic landscape: the cases of Milan and Udine. International Journal of Multilingualism 6 (3): 298–312. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2019 The new speakers of Lombard. Multilingua 38 (2): 187–211. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Mauro, Tullio
2014 Storia linguistica dell’Italia repubblicana: dal 1946 ai nostri giorni. Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph
2001 The sociolinguistics of society. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Giavazzi, Giancarlo
2008, 2009, 2010 La nòsta lèngua. Ciserano: La Grafica.Google Scholar
Goebl, Hans
2008 La dialettometrizzazione integrale dell’AIS: presentazione dei primi risultati. Revue de Linguistique Romane 285: 25–113.Google Scholar
Haller, Hermann
2002 La festa delle lingue: la letteratura dialettale in Italia. Roma: Carocci.Google Scholar
Lepschy, Giulio
1994 How many languages does Europe need? In Mair M. Parry, Winifred V. Davies and Rosalind A. M. Temple (eds.), The changing voices of Europe, 5–21. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, Paul, and Gary Simons
2010 Assessing endangerment: Expanding Fishman’s GIDS. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique/Romanian Review of Linguistics 2. Available at: https://​www​.lingv​.ro​/RRL%202%202010%20art01Lewis​.pdf
Lewis, Paul, Gary Simons, and Charles Fennig
(eds.) 2013 Ethnologue: languages of the world, 18th edn. Dallas: Texas: SIL International. Available at: https://​www​.ethnologue​.com/
Lüpke, Friederike
2011 Orthography development. In Endangered languages, ed. by Peter K. Austin and Julia Sallabank, 312–336. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lurati, Ottavio
2002 La Lombardia. In I dialetti italiani: storia struttura uso, ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo, 226–260. Torino: Utet.Google Scholar
Maiden, Martin, and Mair Parry
1997 The dialects of Italy. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mauri, F.
(ed.) 2014 Il milanese per tutti/El milanés per tùcc. Argelato: Minerva Editori.Google Scholar
Meneghin, Claudi
2006 Ricostruzione di una ortografia sintetica di tipo letterario per la lingua lombarda (ISO 639–3) a partire dalle varietà dell’alta Valtellina, del Grigioni e della val San Giacomo, con una versione alpina della parabola del figliuol prodigo. Bollettino Storico Alta Valtellina 9.Google Scholar
2007 Rebuilding the Rhaeto-Cisalpine written language: guidelines and criteria. Part I: ORS-Orthography. Ianua: Revista Philologica Romanica 7: 37–72.Google Scholar
Merlo, Clemente
1960–61 I dialetti lombardi. Italia Dialettale 24: 1–12.Google Scholar
Moseley, Christopher
(ed.) 2010 Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edn. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.Google Scholar
Orioles, Vincenzo
2003 Le minoranze linguistiche: profili sociolinguistici e quadro dei documenti di tutela. Rome: Il Calamo.Google Scholar
Pellegrini, Giovan Battista
1973 I cinque sistemi linguistici dell’italo-romanzo. Revue roumaine de linguistique 18: 105–129.Google Scholar
Sanga, Glauco
1984 Dialettologia lombarda: lingue e culture popolari. Pavia: Aurora.Google Scholar
1997 Lombardy. In The dialects of Italy, ed. by Martin Maiden and Mair Parry, 253–259. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sebba, Mark
2007 Spelling and society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soria, Claudia
2015 Assessing the effect of official recognition on the vitality of endangered languages: a case study from Italy. Policy and planning for endangered languages, ed. by Mari C. Jones, 123–137. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tamburelli, Marco, and Lissander Brasca
2017 Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities.Google Scholar
Toso, Fiorenzo
2004 La legge 482 e gli scenari recenti della “politica linguistica” in Italia. Rivista Italiana di Linguistica e di Dialettologia 6: 41–64.Google Scholar
Wicherkiewicz, Thomasz
2001 Becoming a regional language – A method in language status planning? (Paper presented at the 2nd European Conference on Language Planning, Andorra 14–16 November 2001).
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Chromik, Bartłomiej, Joanna Maryniak & Justyna Olko
2022.  In COVID-19 and a World of Ad Hoc Geographies, ► pp. 1157 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 02 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.