Romagnol dialect

West of Romagna, the Emilian language is spoken. The border with Emilian-speaking areas is the Sillaro river, which runs 25 km east from Bologna to the west of (Castel San Pietro Terme). Emilian is spoken, to the east, in Imola, the language is Romagnol. In Emilia-Romagna, Emilian is spoken in all the rest of the region moving from the Sillaro river to the west, up to Piacenza.

The Reno River is the border between Romagnol and the dialect of Ferrara. Romagnol is spoken also in some villages northwards of the Reno River, such as Argenta, Emilia–Romagna and Filo, where people of Romagnol origin live alongside people of Ferrarese origin. Ferrara goes into Emilian language territory.

Outside Emilia-Romagna, Romagnol is spoken in the Republic of San Marino ("Sammarinese") and in two municipalities located in the province of Florence, Marradi and Palazzuolo sul Senio.

The first appearance of a distinct Romagnol literary work is "Sonetto romagnolo" by Bernardino Catti, from Ravenna, printed 1502. It is written in a mixture of Italian and Romagnol.

The first Romagnol poem dates back to the end of 16th century: E Pvlon matt. Cantlena aroica (Mad Nap), a mock-heroic poem based on Orlando Furioso and written by an anonymous author from San Vittore di Cesena. The original poem comprised twelve cantos, of which only the first four survived (1848 lines).[10]

The first Romagnol poet to win fame was the cleric Pietro Santoni, (Fusignano, 1736–1823). He was the teacher of Vincenzo Monti, one of the most famous Italian poets of his time.

In 1840 the first Romagnol-Italian Dictionary was published by Antonio Morri, printed in Faenza.

The 20th century saw a flourishing of Romagnol literature. Theatrical plays, poems and books of a high quality were produced. Some of the best known Romagnol authors are:

• Raffaello Baldini, who won in 1988 the "Premio Viareggio" and in 1995 the "Premio Bagutta," known for long pessimistic poems and prose[10]
• Tonino Guerra (1920–2012), wrote poems during his exile to WWII-era Germany, focusing on people of suffering and poverty[10]
• Olindo Guerrini, with "Sonetti romagnoli"
• Aldo Spallicci, an antifascist exiled from Romagna. He wrote poems such as "Rumâgna" that were often descriptive of Romagna[10]

Unlike Standard Italian, not all nouns end in a theme vowel. Masculine nouns lack theme vowels and feminine nouns typically (but not always) terminate in "a." To form plurals, masculine nouns and adjectives undergo lexically-specified ablaut. In the case of feminine nouns and adjectives, "a" becomes "i" or deletes if after a consonant cluster or double consonant.[7]

Though both languages derive their lexicon from Vulgar Latin, some words differ in gender.

Italian and Romagnol share much of the same features when it comes to verbs. Both languages are SVO in simple sentences. Verbs are conjugated according to tense, mood, and person. Romagnol also has 4 conjugations compared to Italian's 3: the 1st, êr; the 2nd, -ér; the 3rd, -ar; and the 4th, -ìr. One marked difference in syntax between Romagnol and Italian is that pronouns are obligatory, and some verbs in Romagnol use a reflexive construction (even if the speaker is not the second argument of the verb) where Italian uses an intransitive construction.[11]

Verbs that are impersonal (lacking a canonical subject) in Romagnol use "avèr," in contrast with Italian which uses "essere." Even though the subject is null, an expletive pronoun inserts itself in the specifier position, much like English's "it".

• Italian: è piovuto, It rained
• Romagnol: l'à piuvù, It rained

Additionally, whereas Standard Italian and other Northern dialects omit the definite article before “singular names and names of relatives,” Romagnol does not do so.[12]

Some words that in Latin were trisyllabic or tetrasyllabic (where u is not stressed) are reduced in Romagnol to monosyllables. The atonic syllable(s) is/are cut off.

The next three tables list the vowel inventory of the "classical" version of the northern macro-dialect of Romagnol.

The following table lists the vowels above alongside their relative ortography:[13]

The letter Z is always pronounced as either [θ] or [ð] and never like in Italian, as [t͡s] or [d͡z].[13]

[ŋ] only occurs before velar stops.

Romagnol, in addition to its larger inventory of vowels, also may have more consonants compared to standard Italian. Additionally, consonants bear the following differences compared to Standard Italian:[5][15]

• In central dialects, word-final n is deleted and the preceding vowel is nasalized, as shown above.
• /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ can occur word-finally, and are usually distinguished by the doubling of the final consonants (cc or gg)
• /ʂ/ and /ʐ/ sounds may be realized as alveolar sounds [s] and [z] among different speakers out of Italian influence.
• Voicing of all the consonants above is always contrastive.