Ticinese

Ticinese
ticines, ticinées
Spoken in	Switzerland
Native speakers	150,000  (date missing)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Romance Gallo-Iberian Gallo-Romance Gallo-Italic Lombard Western Lombard Ticinese
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Ticinese (ticines, ticinées) is a comprehensive denomination for the varieties of Lombard language spoken in Canton Ticino (Tessin) and in the north of the Province of Varese. The term Ticinesi refers to the citizens of Ticino or speakers of the language.

Ticinese koiné refers to a koiné form used by speakers of local dialects (particularly those diverging from the koinè itself, as e.g. Leventinese, etc.) when communicating with speakers of other Western Lombard dialects of Ticino, the Grisons (collectively known as Swiss Italian) or Italian Lombardy^{citation needed}.

Status

Ticinese is generally more vital than the Western Lombard varieties spoken in Italy, with a significant number of young speakers. Some radio and television programmes in Ticinese, mostly comedies are broadcast by the Italian language broadcasting company RTSI.

A dictionary and some studies on the Ticinese variants are published by CDE – Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia, a cantonal research institution.

Examples

Some possible expressions and idioms:

English	Ticinese	Italian
Sausages of low quality	Lüganich da scépa	Salsicce di infima qualità
To be naive	Beev l'acqua dal cudee	Credere a tutto ed a tutti
One makes nothing out of nothing	chi gha al goss al gha quaicoss, se l gha nagot al gha al goss da carez	Con niente si fa nulla

External links

• Dialectal lexicon of Italophone Switzerland - Official dictionary for the dialect
• RTSI: Acquarelli popolari - Media files in Ticinese (site metalanguage and some media files are in Italian
• Examples of Italian and Ticinese idioms with meanings (Lugano)
• Examples of Italian and Ticinese idioms with meanings (Basso Mendrisiotto)

Bibliography

• Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia, LSI – Lessico dialettale della Svizzera italiana, Bellinzona 2004.
• Comrie, Bernard, Matthews, Stephen and Polinsky, Maria: The Atlas of Languages: The Origin and Development of Languages Throughout the World. Rev. ed., New York 2003.
• Grimes, Barbara F. (ed.): Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Vol. 1, 2000.
• Lurà, Franco: Il dialetto del Mendrisiotto, Mendrisio–Chiasso 1987.
• Lurati, Ottavio: Dialetto e italiano regionale nella Svizzera italiana, Lugano 1976.
• Petrini, Dario: La koinè ticinese (Romanica Helvetica vol. 105), Bern 1988.
• VSI – Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana, Lugano / Bellinzona 1952–.

See also

• Swiss Italian