--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
> ***My perception is that it's a non-Italian language that has
> become strongly Italianized BUT my knowledge of Venetian is next
> to nothing --I get the gist of it but only because I've studied
> Romance languages,
Are you referring to Istrian or to Dalmatic Romance?
Assuming you were speaking about the latter, of course it is not
an Italian tongue, even if heavily influenced by Venetian.
If you intended to discuss the Istrian, this is undoubtedly an
Italian dialect which suffered a similar influence from the same
prestige language in the Adriatic.
Neither Dalmatic nor Istrian are reducible to some Venetian-like
Italianization: for instance in Venetian one has "parun" for Italian
"padron(e)" (with epenthesis of /t/) while the /t/ is preserved in
both Istriote and Vegliote (see the quote from Udaina: "patrawn").
Actually, the differences are noticeable. If you want a further
substantiation of the subject you'll have to wait a couple of days
till I'll get home where I have some bibliography.
> Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istriot
... and see "piova" < "pluvia" which bears one of the marks of
Italian group of dialects, /pl/ > /pi/.
> While most of the sample looks very Italianized, it looks
> inconsistent with different levels such as "tiera viecia" (Italian
> terra vecchia) "uleii" (Italian ulive) etc. vs. very Italian
> looking forms.
Of course. Istriote is a separate independent dialect of Italian
which evolved from late Latin, not from Venetian mixed with another
tongue, say Dalmatic Romance. The main influences were those of
the prestige language (another Italian dialect, i.e. Venetian), not
the Italian itself (i.e. the literary language based on Florentine
old local dialect). You should compare Istriote with Venetian, not
with standard Italian forms.
> As for taxonomy, I guess it's a question of how far a language
> transforms itself before it become a non-prestige dialect or
> substrate of a more prestigious language.
Well, if you refer to the enthusiasts who wrote on Wikipedia, they
might cast some doubts, but the trend in Romanistics is to assign
the Istriote to the Italo-Romance group of idioms. The affiliation
of Dalmatic Romance is less clear (with Italo-Romance but also with
Balkan Romance, advocated and disputed as a bridge-language between
the two groups).
As said, for more details you'll have to wait a little bit.
Regards,
Marius Iacomi