Romanesco () is one of the Central Italian dialects spoken in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, especially in the core city. It is linguistically close to Tuscan and Standard Italian, with some notable differences from these two. Rich in vivid expressions and sayings, Romanesco is used in a typical diglossic setting, mainly for informal/colloquial communication, with code-switching and translanguaging with the standard language.
History
First traces The vernacular language of Rome, of which the short Commodilla catacomb inscription (9th century AD) might be considered the earliest attestation, is believed to have been regarded as low-prestige, as can be seen in the 11th-century Saint Clement and Sisinnius inscription, featuring a dialogue wherein the saint, who speaks a slightly solecistic and misspelled form of Medieval Latin, is given higher moral ground by juxtaposing his liturgical language with the common speech employed by Sisinnius and his servants.
Old Romanesco The 13th century saw the first works of literature written in Roman vernacular, such as Storie de Troja et de Roma (Stories of Troy and of Rome, an anonymous translation of Multae historiae et Troianae et Romanae, a historical compilation by another anonymous author) and Le miracole de Roma (The marvels of Rome, translation of Mirabilia Urbis Romae), characterized by a coexistence of Latin and vernacular elements.
The status of the dialect as low-class was consolidated in the 1300s, when Dante Alighieri described it in his Latin essay De vulgari eloquentia as the worst one in Italy, a tristiloquium ("offensive speech"), linking it to the uncouthness of the people, criticizing their custom of addressing even people commonly perceived as socially superior by using the informal pronoun tu, instead of formal voi (something that had already been remarked by Salimbene di Adam in his chronicle, written twenty-some years before).
The work that best represents this phase of the dialect is a chronicle—known in Italian as the , and also by the title Vita di Cola di Rienzo (Life of Cola di Rienzo)—written in the latter half of the century by an anonymous Roman author.
During the last decades of the 14th century, Romanesco came to be perceived, even among people of high social status, as having higher prestige than before, and started appearing in votive and burial inscriptions, as well as in notarial documents.
Noteworthy features An analysis published in 2022 presents the following as defining characteristics of the first stage of the Roman vernacular, called "first-phase Romanesco" (romanesco di prima fase, the dialect as found in the 14th century).
Phonology
Vowel breaking of original stressed ⟨⟩ > e.g.: > tiempo ("time") > muorto ("dead") Lack of raising of stressed vowels before (e.g. lengua, "tongue") Lack of raising of pretonic (e.g. de Roma; compare Tuscan di Roma) Conservation of unstressed when followed by a trill consonant (e.g. margarita; compare Tuscan margherita) Assimilation progressive, e.g.: ⟨⟩ > : > munno ("world") ⟨⟩ > : > commattere ("to fight"); > (se) commerte ("he/she/it changes") ⟨⟩ > : > callo ("hot") regressive, e.g.: ⟨⟩ > : > cossa ("thigh") ⟨⟩ > : > falename ("carpenter") Betacism ⟨⟩ > when geminated or preceded by a consonant other than : abbelenare ("to poison") (compare Tuscan ) ⟨⟩ > when word-initial, postvocalic, or preceded by : > vagno ("bathroom") > paravola ("word") > varva ("beard") Palatalization ⟨⟩ > , e.g.: , > roscio ("red") ⟨⟩ > , e.g.: > Accia ("Appian") ⟨⟩ > , e.g.: > ielo ("frost") ⟨⟩ > , e.g.: > vrazzo ("arm") ⟨, , /⟩ > : iornata ("day") (compare Tuscan ) iugnio ("June") (compare Tuscan ) raja ("anger, rage") (compare Tuscan ) Labiodentalization ⟨⟩ > , e.g.: > verra ("war") > vonnella ("skirt") ⟨⟩ > > scignie ("monkeys") > aiognere ("to add") > cagno ("change") Affrication of to after tuolzero ("[they] took") (compare Tuscan ) apparzo ("appeared", past participle)(compare Tuscan ) menza ("table") (compare Tuscan ) ⟨⟩ > , e.g.: > paro ("even, equal") > camisa ("shirt")
Paragogic syllable -ne appended to oxytones (words stressed on the last syllable), e.g.: è ("[he/she/it] is") > ene Lack of voicing of voiceless plosives in intervocalic position, and between a vowel and a resonant: > laco ("lake") (compare Tuscan ) > patre ("father") (compare Tuscan )
Morphology
Presence of nouns with plural endings -a, -ora (e.g. cervella, "brains"; tempora, "times") Presence of nouns with plural ending -o, reflecting the Latin 4th-declension ending (e.g. mano, "hands"; compare Latin ) Presence of nouns with singular ending -e, reflecting the Latin 5th-declension ending (e.g. bellezze, "beauty"; implies Vulgar Latin ) as the masculine definite article (plural ) 2nd- and 3rd-person singular possessive pronouns — tio ("your(s)"), sio ("his/her/its") — analogically reshaped on the basis of mio ("my, mine"); compare Tuscan , , Presence of enclitic personal possessive pronouns (e.g. patremo, "my father") Accusative singular personal pronouns mi, ti, si (compare Tuscan , , ) Presence of the numeral doi ("two") (compare Tuscan ) Use of the personal pronouns esso, essa and essi to refer to animated referents. Notable forms in the conjugation of the verb essere: Indicative present: so, sì, è, simo, site, sonno/soco Indicative future: serraco (3rd-person plural) Notable forms in the conjugation of the verb avere: Indicative present: aio (1st-person singular) ao (3rd-person singular, with analogical extension of -ao and -eo to the 3rd-person singular forms of other verbs) aco (3rd-person plural) Indicative future: averao (3rd-person singular, with analogical extension to farrao, from the verb fare) Past historic: abbi (1st-person singular) abbe (3rd-person singular) abbero (3rd-person plural) Conditional: abbera (1st- and 3rd-person singular, from Latin pluperfect forms /) Notable forms in the conjugation of the verb potere: pozzo (1st-person singular present indicative) Loss of final -no in the 3rd-person plural form of the indicative present: dico ("they say") (compare Tuscan ) 3rd-person plural present indicative forms such as daco ("they give") or soco ("they are"), as well as 3rd-person plural future indicative forms such as sarraco ("they will be") and farraco ("they will do/make"), are instead the result of analogical levelling on the basis of faco ("they do/make" < Vulgar Latin *facunt) 1st-person plural indicative present endings such as -amo, -emo, -imo 1st-conjugation 3rd-person singular preterite ending -ao (and, by analogy, -eo in the 2nd conjugation), with the allomorph -à 1st- and 2nd-person plural imperative forms based on the Latin hortatory subjunctive, e.g. prennamo, iate Addition of -vo in some 2nd-person plural verb forms, e.g. mettestivo
Tuscan influences The 15th century marked the beginning of a process of Tuscanization eventually resulting, about a century later, in what some scholars have called the "de-southernization" (smeridionalizzazione) of the Roman vernacular, which was exposed particularly early to the Florentine dialect that would later become a prestige linguistic variety in various Italian states (even being identified as Italian rather than Tuscan), giving birth to what has been called "second-phase Romanesco" (romanesco di seconda fase).
Among the causes of this Tuscanization, some factors internal to the vernacular have been identified, like its relative isolation from even its closest relatives, its being halfway—both geographically and linguistically—between the Tuscan and Southern dialects, and the abnormal presence of the Latin superstratum, which, being an official language with elevated status, had undermined its prestige from the very beginning.
In 1932, linguist Bruno Migliorini described the decline of Old Romanesco as a result of demographic increase in the population of Tuscan origin, with their more-prestigious linguistic variety displacing Roman vernacular in the written language, and relegating it to the lowest levels of spoken language, as exemplified in the following table:
14th century 16th century written language Latin,literary Romanesco Latin,literary Tuscan spoken language Roman vernacular spoken Tuscan,Roman vernacular
Migliorini's view has been challenged by Mancini, who defined it as "simplistic", and failing to account for sociolinguistic elements, as Roman vernacular was an "instrument of linguistic identification" for Rome's middle class, whose loss of political and economical power after the return of Pope Gregory XI to Rome in 1377, following the end of the Avignon Papacy, meant the decline of their linguistic variety in favor of Tuscan, which became the highest linguistic benchmark.
Mancini rather saw the linguistic situation of 14th-century Rome as divided in three layers: an official language, strictly adhering to the rules of Tuscan, with many Latin influences, and very few local traits; a "medial" language, used by the wealthy classes, with Florentine influences; a popular language, with Old Romanesco characteristics, that soon became the object of the stigmatization which would later lead to its disappearance.
Linguist Pietro Trifone posited that, while the process of Tuscanization was well underway in regard to written language in the 15th century, the same process for spoken language should be pushed forward to the 16th, after the 1527 sack of Rome led to a drastic decrease in the numbers of the indigenous Roman populace, rendering second-phase Romanesco "an unusable tool for the whole community of speakers". He later also claimed that the heavy, influential presence of Tuscans in Rome would not have been enough to cause the decline of the spoken vernacular, as it wasn't in Naples, despite there having been strong Tuscan influences as well.
Innovations Marazza reports the following changes:
Phonology Gradual elimination of metaphonic diphthongs Vowel breaking of stressed in open syllables into , as in Tuscan (sometimes even erroneously, through hypercorrection) Raising of stressed before , e.g. lingua ("tongue", displacing earlier lengua) Monophthongization of diphthong into , e.g. bono ("good"; compare earlier buono) Alternation of the metaphonetic diphthong with , e.g. cuerpo/cuorpo ("body") Voicing of intervocalic voiceless plosives according to Tuscan pronunciation, e.g. padre ("father"; compare earlier patre) Distinction between and according to Tuscan pronunciation, but with gemination of postvocalic , e.g. la bbarba ("the beard") Palatalization ⟨⟩ → , e.g. falegname ("carpenter"; compare earlier falename) → , e.g. lascià ("to leave; to let") → or , e.g. camicia ("shirt"), priggione ("prison; prisoner") → , e.g. occio ("eye"; compare earlier uocchio) Substitution of palatalized ⟨⟩ → , e.g.: earlier Accia → Appia ("Appian") Substitution of unstressed with , e.g. comperare ("to buy") Apocope of infinitive verb forms, e.g. annà ("to go"; compare earlier annare)
Morphology Plural forms of possessives ending in -a, e.g. mia, tua, sua the adverb puro ("also") Notable forms in the conjugation of the verb essere: Indicative present: semo (1st plural), sete (2nd plural), so (3rd plural) Notable forms in the conjugation of the verb avere: Indicative present: avemo (1st plural), ate (2nd plural) Imperfective indicative: avo (1st singular) 3rd-person plural present indicative ending in -eno, e.g. moveno ("they move")
Early Modern period In the first half of the 16th century, with the rule of popes Leo X and Clement VII, both part of the Florentine House of Medici, the Tuscanization process reached its peak, as seen through the introduction of vernacular language in papal documents in the first decades of the century.