Central Italian
Native to	Italy
Region	Umbria, Lazio (except the southeast), central Marche, small parts of southernmost Tuscany, and northwestern Abruzzo
Native speakers	~3,000,000 (2006)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latin Romance Italo-Western Italo-Dalmatian Italo-Romance Central Italian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
Linguasphere	51-AAA-ra ... -rba
Dialects that maintain a distinction between final /-u/ and /-o/ are outlined in red.   Area Perimediana   Area Mediana

Central Italian (Italian: dialetti mediani) refers to the dialects of Italo-Romance spoken in the so-called Area Mediana, which covers a swathe of the central Italian peninsula. Area Mediana is also used in a narrower sense to describe the southern part, in which case the northern one may be referred to as the Area Perimediana, a distinction that will be made throughout this article. The two areas are split along a line running approximately from Rome in the southwest to Ancona in the northeast.^[1]

Background

In the early Middle Ages, Central Italian extended north into Romagna and covered all of modern-day Lazio, Abruzzo, and Molise. Since then, however, the dialects spoken in those areas have been assimilated into Gallo-Italic and Southern Italo-Romance respectively.^[2] In addition, the dialect of Rome has undergone considerable Tuscanization from the fifteenth century onwards, such that it has lost many of its Central Italian features.^[3]

Phonological features

Except for its southern fringe, the Area Mediana is characterized by a contrast between the final vowels /-u/ and /-o/, which distinguishes it from both the Area Perimediana and from Southern Italo-Romance.^[4] Cf. Spoletine [ˈkreːto, ˈtittu] < Latin crēdō, tēctum 'I believe, roof'. An additional isogloss that runs along the border between the two areas, but often overlaps it in either direction, is that of post-nasal plosive voicing, as in [manˈt̬ellu] 'cloak'. This is a feature that the Area Mediana shares with neighbouring Southern Italo-Romance.^[5]

In the Area Mediana are found the following vocalic phenomena:

• In most areas, stressed mid-vowels are raised by one degree of aperture if the following syllable contains either /u/ or /i/. This is referred to as 'Sabine metaphony'. Compare the following examples from the Ascrean dialect:^[6]
  • [meːla, miːlu] 'apples, apple'
  • [ʃpoːsa, ʃpuːsu] 'wife, husband'
  • [wɛcca, weccu] 'old' (f./m.)
  • [nᴐːwa, noːwu] 'new' (f./m.)

• In a few areas, metaphony results in diphthongization for stressed low-mid vowels, while high-mids undergo normal raising to /i, u/. Compare the following examples from the Nursine dialect:^[7]
  • [metto, mitti] 'I put, you put'
  • [soːla, suːlu] 'alone' (f./m.)
  • [bbɛlla, bbjɛjju] 'beautiful' (f./m.)
  • [mᴐrte, mwᴐrti] 'death, dead (pl.)'
• Southeast of Rome, around Nemi, low-mid vowels undergo metaphonic diphthongization, while high-mids resist raising to /i, u/. This was also the case for Old Romanesco, which had alternations such as /ˈpɛde, ˈpjɛdi/ 'foot, feet'.^[8]
• In some areas with Sabine metaphony, if a word has a stressed mid-vowel, then final /-u/ lowers to /-o/ in a sort of height-based vowel harmony. Compare */ˈbɛllu, ˈfreddu/ > /ˈbeʎʎu, ˈfriddu/ (metaphony) > Tornimpartese /ˈbeʎʎo, ˈfriddu/ 'beautiful, cold'.^[9]

Sound-changes (or lack thereof) that distinguish most or all of Central Italian from Tuscan include the following, many of them shared with Southern Italo-Romance:^[10]

• /nd/ > /nn/, as in Latin vēndere > [ˈwenne] 'to sell'.
• /mb, nv/ > /mm/, as in Latin plumbum > [ˈpjummu] 'lead'.
• /ld/ > /ll/, as in Latin cal(i)da > [ˈkalla] 'hot'.
• Retention of /j/, as in Latin Maium > [ˈmaːju] 'May'.
• /mj/ > /ɲ(ɲ)/, as in Latin vindēmia > [wenˈneɲɲa] 'grape harvest'.
• /rj/ > /r/, as in Latin caprārium > [kraˈpaːru] 'goatherd'.

Sound-changes with a limited distribution within the Area Mediana include:^[11]

• /ɡ-/ > /j/ or ∅, as in Latin cattum > [ˈɡattu] > Nursine [ˈjjattu], Reatine [ˈattu] 'cat'.

• /ɡn/ > /(i̯)n/, as in Latin agnum, ligna > Tagliacozzese /ˈai̯nu, ˈlena/ 'lamb, firewood'.
• /d, v/ > ∅ word-initially and intervocalically, as in Latin dentem, vaccam, crudum, ovum > /ɛnte akka kruː ou/ in Rieti and L'Aquila.
  • Around Terni, and to its immediate northeast, this deletion only applies in intervocalic position.

In the north of the Area Perimediana, a number of Gallo-Italic features are found:^[12]

• /a/ > /ɛ/ in stressed open syllables, as in /ˈpa.ne/ > /ˈpɛ.ne/ 'bread', around Perugia and areas to its north.^[13]
  • In the same area, habitual reduction or deletion of vowels in unstressed internal syllables, as in /ˈtrappole/ > /ˈtrapp(ə)le/ 'traps'.
• Voicing of intervocalic /t/ to /d/ and degemination of long consonants around Ancona and to its west.^[14]
• In both of the aforementioned areas: lack, or reversal, of the sound-changes /nd/ > /nn/ and /mb, nv/ > /mm/ that are found in the rest of Central Italian.^[15]

The following changes to final vowels are found in the Area Perimediana:

• /-u/ > /-o/, as in Latin musteum > Montelaghese [ˈmoʃʃo], everywhere except for a small 'island' around Pitigliano.^[16]
• /-i/ > /-e/, as in /i ˈkani/ > /e ˈkane/ 'the dogs', in some of the dialects situated along a long arc from Montalto di Castro in the southwest to Fabriano in the northeast.^[17]

Morphological features

• In part of the Area Mediana, below a line running northeast from Rome to Rieti and Norcia, the 3PL ending of non-first conjugation verbs is, unusually, /-u/ (rather than /-o/), which acts as a trigger for metaphony. Cf. Latin vēndunt > Leonessan [ˈvinnu] 'they sell'.^[18]
  • In the same area, a series of irregular first-conjugation verbs also show 3PL /-u/ (as opposed to the /-o/ or /-onno/ found elsewhere). Examples include [au, dau, fau, vau] 'they have/give/do/go'.^[19]

• Latin fourth-declension nouns have been retained as such in many cases. Cf. Latin manum, manūs 'hand(s)' > Fabrichese [ˈmaːno] (invariant) and Latin fīcum, fīcūs 'fig(s)' > Canepinese [ˈfiːko] (invariant).^[20]
• Latin neuters of the -um/-a type survive more extensively than in Tuscan. Cf. Latin olīvētum, olīvēta > Roiatese [liˈviːtu, leˈveːta] 'olive-grove(s)'. Even originally non-neuter nouns are sometimes drawn into this class, as in Latin hortum, hortī > Segnese [ˈᴐrto, ˈᴐrta] 'garden(s)'.^[21]
  • The plurals, which are grammatically feminine, are replaced by the feminine ending /-e/ in some dialects, leading to outcomes such as Spoletine [ˈlabbru, ˈlabbre] 'lip(s)'. Both plurals may also alternate within the same dialect, as in Treiese [ˈᴐːa~ˈᴐːe] 'eggs'.
  • The Latin neuter plural /-ora/, as in tempora 'times', was extended to several other words in medieval times, but today the phenomenon is limited to areas such as Serrone, where one finds cases like [ˈraːmo, ˈraːmora] 'branch(es)'. In Serviglianese, the final vowel changes to /-e/, as in [ˈfiːko, ˈfiːkore] 'fig(s)'.

• In several dialects, final syllables beginning with /n/, /l/, or /r/ may be deleted in masculine nouns. In varieties such as Matelicese, this occurs only in the singular, not the plural, leading to outcomes such as */paˈtrone, paˈtroni/ > [paˈtro, paˈtruːni] 'lord, lords'. In varieties such as Serviglianese, this deletion occurs both in the singular and the plural, resulting in [paˈtro, paˈtru], with metaphony-induced vowel distinctions remaining as a marker of number.^[22]

Syntactic features

• Direct objects are often marked by the preposition a if they are animate.^[23]

See also

• Central Marchigiano dialect
• Languages of Italy

References

Bibliography

• Loporcaro, Michele & Paciaroni, Tania. 2016. The dialects of central Italy. In Ledgeway, Adam & Maiden, Martin (eds.), The Oxford guide to the Romance languages, 228–245. Oxford University Press.
• Vignuzzi, Ugo. 1997. Lazio, Umbria, and the Marche. In Maiden, Martin & Parry, Mair (eds.), The dialects of Italy, 311–320. London: Routledge.