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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: More about the piedmontese language
From:       Federico Zenith <zenith () chemeng ! ntnu ! no>
Date:       2005-05-27 22:54:16
Message-ID: 200505280054.19191.zenith () chemeng ! ntnu ! no
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Alle 11:27, venerdì 27 maggio 2005, Berto ‘d Sera ha scritto:
> Just writing to confirm that Piedmotese speaker do exist, although I am not
> sure how many of us are using open source programs (I guess this could be
> an issue for most small languages).

I for one am quite sure no one speaks _only_ Piedmontese dialect, and people 
speaking it natively (i.e. better than Italian) are probably never to come 
anywhere near a computer. I am a Piedmontese of Arona, "the pearl of 
Verbano" (line sponsored by our local tourist board ;-), and know a few 
things of the area. In any case we refer to it as "dialect".

> I do not want to fight with the Italians. Everyone is free to think what he
> wants, on this subject. As linguists say "a language is a dialect with an
> army, a flag and a fleet". Besides, when I lived in Italy I had lots of
> Italian friends, and used Italian myself, although I never considered it my
> "native" language, still, I never had hatred for anyone just because they
> use another language. Usually people can be hated for much more practical
> reasons :)

More than army, flag or fleet (Esperanto has neither, just to name one), I 
would expect a grammar and an established dictionary. I am blissfully 
ignorant of the matter actually, so it would be interesting to know.

For those who did not get the politics allusion: in Italy dialects are shunned 
upon, especially in the north. The reason was the great immigration wave of 
southerners in the 50s and 60s, that risked to create two separate societies 
depending on the dialects (Italian dialects are normally not mutually 
intelligible). Using plain Italian was a major goal of all political forces, 
and considered a conquest to foster integration. Usage of dialect is 
considered all but xenophobic, and its "revival" by political movements whose 
leaders have suggested to shoot or shell African immigrants has not improved 
its status. Even these politicians, however, hold their speeches in Italian, 
not dialect (with some rare exceptions).

In any case, people below 40 normally talk Italian only basically everywhere 
in Italy, and in the North-West especially, because of the immigration and 
the great number of mixed families. I and my father usually resort to dialect 
for especially violent cursing, as in "Sü c'andüma!" when car in front is not 
moving fast enough in a traffic jam.

> It should be noted that the movement for the restoration of our mother
> language has nothing to do with politics. [...] The only claim I could 
> possibly present to 
> the Italian government is to have my name and surname restored into my own
> mother language and alphabet, instead of being forced to use the Italian
> translation for them. But that's all.

Oh, well, _my_ surname for one is not Italian, and I have not had to 
"translate" it... though my great-grandpa had to change it from Zenitk (too 
slavic-looking, and he had already had troubles with the regime) during the 
war years. Speaking of which, if anyone knows where "Zenitk" could be a 
normal surname, that would really solve a mistery ;-)
In any case, you can request your name to be changed if there is a reason for 
it. Not sure about the procedure though, but there's a lot of bureaucracy 
involved.

> I wish to add that we do have grammars, dictionaries (both published since
> the XVIII century), a grammatical corrector for Word, a literature dating
> back to the XI century. Today we publish magazines in the Piedmontese
> language and the language is finally going to be taught in public schools
> aside with Italian, beginning from the next year.

This was largely a stunt by the previous regional government. Since they were 
busted in last month's elections, this program is probably going to follow 
suit. I don't don't think that, with all the southern-Italian families and 
the new immigrants, anyone will accept dialect in schools. Most people will 
consider it outright ludicrous. I think they would be better off with Arabic 
for instance, which is certainly more common than Piedmontese in the region.

Furthermore, there is far from a single dialect covering the whole region: in 
Arona, we speak a sort of varesotto/milanese/ossolano pidgin, in the Gran 
Paradiso area I have heard French constructs built on Italian words ("il fa 
d'andar..."), and in general conditions vary wildly. Also, it is unclear 
where teachers would be fetched from.

> Besides, I use the 
> language myself even for commercial correspondence.

Not that I don't believe you, but who in the world does business in 
Piedmontese? I'm genuinely curious.

> The basic problem we Piedmontese speakers are left with is the absence of a
> keyboard for our alphabet. If anyone could point me to some resources, for
> us to make a Piedmontese keyboard I'd be very grateful to you all. At that
> point there would really be no choice for us Piedmontese speakers, apart
> from using open source programs

I did work out a "universal" (well, at least for Latin characters) keyboard 
some time ago, and still type with it. See:
http://zenith.nt.ntnu.no/linuxkla
there is a not-so-cluttered Italian version (that should include dialects and 
minority languages):
http://zenith.nt.ntnu.no/NTI
in any case, look at the .Xmodmap file if you want to create yours. Unicode is 
your friend.

To sum up:
- I don't think there is a large target of users for a Piedmontese l10n;
- I would prefer to avoid splitting the translation efforts. We had a 
discussion on the kde-i18n-it mailing list (to which you are welcome BTW) 
about translation in Friulan (or whatever it's called in English) some time 
ago. We agreed it's better to focus on something everybody in Italy can use.
- Usage of dialect is currently heavily loaded with political meaning.

+ This is all a voluntary project; if you think you can support such an 
effort, by all means go on. I remain however sceptical on the outcome, and 
would expect Piedmontese to end up between Maori and Occitan (which is also 
spoken somewhere in Piedmont BTW) in the statistics. Translating KDE is a 
HUGE load of work, and it takes quite a team to do it.

Cheers,
-Federico

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