Italian "dialects" and French "patois"

Factual Questions
1

English is a creole language from way back and so the closest “sister” language (barring Scots) is Frisian which has a significantly different vocabulary. I think this gives English monoglots a distinct bias on what constitutes a “language”.

However, when I look at Wikipedia or Ethnologue, there are apparently dozens of languages in France, Spain and Italy. To wit:
-Occitan
-Lombard
-Genovese
-Monagasque
-Venetian
-Tuscan
-Neapolitan
-Champenois
-Picard
-Gallo
-Franche-comte
-Poitevin
-Sangeonais
-Gascon
-Extramurdan
-Austurian
-Aranese
-Mirandese
-Ladin
-Friulian

…and many many more.

How many of these “languages” couldn’t be understood with little difficulty by a person who spoke the national language (French, Italian, or Spanish) and how many of these are just regional dialect variations elevated to the level of language for political or tribalistic reasons?

2

French here. As a general rule, a person speaking only standard French will not understand pure patois. But then, there are really few pure patois speakers left these days…

For the most part, French dialects can be grouped in 4 groups : Occ dialects, oïl dialects, creoles, and separate language.

Occ dialects are based on the old “tongue of Occ”, which used to be the main language in half of France, until the tongue of oïl was basically forced down their throats. Occitàn is the pure form, and that is comprehensible-ish to me, because I also know Spanish and some Latin, so I can guess my way through about 80% of the words. However, regional variations of occitàn can be nigh-impenetrable, because the vocab has gone through so many deformations and bastardizations as to be unintelligible. For example, I could never make a dent in my grandmother’s Auvergnat.
For someone who only knows French ? Muy difficult.

Oïl dialects, mostly used in the north of the country, are based on the language that became modern French, so much of those are comprehensible if you make an effort, however some vocabulary is still obscure, and the grammar can be weird.

Créoles are, well, créoles : a rough-and-tumble mix of multiple languages and slangs. Very little chance of untangling the mix on an ad hoc basis. Even the Martinique/Guadaloupe créoles, which are something like 95% based on phonetic French are really hard for me to understand, although I’ll immediately grok why this word means that once you tell me it does. I will not make the connection myself. For example, in guadalupean, a young girl is “tifi”. Since I know it means young girl, I can backtrack “tifi” to “petite fille”. Makes sense. Fat chance of me figuring it out of the blue.

And then there’s Alsatian (which is basically a derivation of German), Breton and Basque, which are entirely separate languages. Zero pidgin, zero loanwords, zero similarities. You either speak it, or you don’t. Think “Welsh”

3

Great reply - I found the same trying to understand north German dialects, some of them bore no relation I could see to Hochdeutsch.

Just a note… Welsh has loads of loan words. e.g. “ambiwlans” for “ambulance”

And many others were an english word is used without a welsh “translation” (I often hear “umbrella” used by Welsh speakers).

4

Anecdote. I was once traveling in Italy with an American friend who had been studying Italian extensively and was quite fluent. We were driving somewhere near the Amalfi coast and encountered a man. She said she couldn’t understand what he was saying because he was speaking Neopolitan, but she was able to pick out a couple of key words. I do not know if a native Italian speaker would have had better luck.

5

Spain officially has four languages: Spanish, Euskera, Galego, Catalan/Valenciano (the two names are due to politics).

Things like Aranese, Asturiañu, Aragonese… are on the bridge between dialect and language. Some of them have more to do with politics (we like those a lot) than with linguistics.

I have a lot less problems understanding someone who’s speaking Asturiañu than someone who has a heavy Andalusian accent: both regions are quite a way from mine.

6

How does Cajun French compare with Langues d’Oïl in terms of differences from Standard French?

7

I’ve posted this before but here’s the homepage of the Ulster-Scots Agency.

8

I don’t speak either French or Cajun French, but a French friend of mine in south Louisiana said his comprehension of Cajun was comparable to a modern English speaker talking to Shakespeare.

9

Something that happened to me:
I have lived in Toulouse for two years. Once I went to a parents-teachers meeting at my daughters school and her math teacher said:
“Ça m’espante la facilité que Giselle a pour les maths.”
She then apologized because she had used the patois espanter instead of the French étonner.
Even French being only a second language, I had no problem understanding her, since the Portuguese word for to amaze is espantar.

10

Cajun French is somewhat closer to Canadian dialects (particularly Acadian) than standard Parisian French. Nevertheless, even for a French Canadian, it can be extremely difficult to understand. Part of it is the very thick accent, but mostly it’s differences in vocabulary.

11

If this discussion particularly interests anyone, I would heartily recommend The Discovery of France by Graham Robb, which devotes a chapter to this very topic.

12

Another book recommendation is “The Story of French” by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow.

13

Languages particularly in Europe have a lot of “politics” in them. Some “dialects” of Italian are farther apart than Spanish and Portuguese which are seperate languages.

14

Currently I’m in North Devon UK.

Yesterday I was speaking to a friend about local dialects, he is Nth generation local and certainly does not speak RP (‘proper’ English).
He told me that in a larger town about 15 miles away, the old women spoke/speak a local dialect that was incomprehensible to him. Also he said that a few years ago, he bumped into a ‘linguist’ (?) who was making a study of micro-regional accents in the South West UK.

My guess is that until very recently, very few people travelled outside their regional areas, so the locals would develop their own vocabulary.

15

I’m probably just adding more anecdotal information, Markxxx has essentially hit the nail on the head in the language v dialect reality. Language status can be used to bolster an idea of nationhood and a common language can be used to unify people while calling something a dialect suggests a position of inferiority.

Just to add to what Kobal2 said about the situation in France, on occasion you will see an old farmer/peasant being interviewed on French TV and as often as not they are subtitled (I’ve sometimes seen the same thing done with French speaking Africans on news reports or documentaries). As a non-native speaker I find I struggle with the accent and don’t necessarily register any grammatical/lexcial differences in these cases.

It depends on the dialect is the answer - IIRC the dialect in Genoa has overtones of Portuguese, that of Bergamo is more Germanic so I’d guess familiarity with the relevant influences would help. Familiarity in terms of exposure over time and geographic location would have an influence too. In the late 90s I lived in the Veneto region then Milan, the majority of my work & social life was with Italians. I did not speak Italian at the time and picked it up while I was in the Veneto - initially I found it hard to distinguish between dialect words and Italian words and at times used a mix, as did some locals. I knew 2 people from Mantua who had been living in the Veneto for 30+ years, they understood the local dialect perfectly but a Neapolitan who had moved up more recently struggled with understanding. Veneto and Venetian are considered different dialects yet speakers of the first had few problems understanding the latter - on the other hand they were all at sea when confronted with Sicilian.

With regard to Catalan, considered a language, I can get the gist of it using knowledge of other Romance languages and the logic of the context. In Barcelona, in my experience, it’s not uncommon for locals to respond in Catalan to a request made in Spanish which suggest they expect the other person to be able to understand. Hope this helps.

16

English is not a creole. A creole is what a pidgin becomes when it gets native speakers. English is a Germanic language that imported a lot of vocabulary from other languages, mostly notably Latin, French, and Greek, but that does not make it a creole. English doesn’t display the characteristics associated with creoles, such as copula deletion, changes in the tense/aspect systems, simplified grammar, etc.

17

Nitpick: RP is not " ‘proper’ English". RP stands for received pronunciation, and relates to accent, not dialect or even language (you can so speak French in an RP accent! It’s hysterical). What I presume you mean by ‘proper’ English is referred to as standard English.

18

OK, so how comprehensible to a good Parisien is the average (probably second language) French-speaking African?

19

I don’t think the book is quite closed on whether or not English was ever influenced by creoles spoken on the fringes of early mideival English territory. Maybe a better way to phrase that is:

“In parts of what is today England, one or more creoles influenced by Old English and Old Norse (?) was spoken, and that these creoles have had lasting influence on the English language as we know it today.”

An example would be the adoption of the Norse pronouns begininng with “th-” such as this, that, they, and their. The creole elements I colored in red above absolutely did occur in the “evolution” of English – most notably the simplification of grammar as compared to other Germanic languages.

20

It’s not universally accepted, but many linguists* consider modern English to be a creole of Anglo-Saxon English and the Northern German dialects spoken by the viking colonizers. If you compare Anglo-Saxon English to Middle English, you will see many typical the creole changes. The most obvious is the simplification of verb tenses.

*At least this was the case when I last took a linguistics course (quite a while ago).