by Brian Alcamo

Two Italian families. Irreconcilable differences. Stop me before I start performing the entire plot of Romeo and Juliet. Epic theater aside, the set up for the iconic Shakespeare piece is also a good way to begin looking at the linguistic makeup of the Italian peninsula. Here’s what I mean. 

Italian is a divided language. It is not a language defined by its country’s borders. The country’s culture is often described as campanilismo, which roughly translates to “a culture defined by bell towers.” This is to say that Italian culture and language can be highly fractured, all the way down to the neighborhood level. This is s the reason so many American travelers struggle to find a good cannolo north of Sicily. But it’s also part of the reason why Italy’s linguistic variation takes on a sharp divide a few miles north of Florence.

The La Spezia Rimini Line

The La Spezia-Rimini Line runs between the Italian towns of, you guessed it, La Spezia and Rimini. This line is an isogloss, which is a fancy word for a geographical boundary between linguistic features. The line is also sometimes referred to as the Massa-Senigallia Line, depending on whether or not the person wants to draw the line along traditional regional boundaries. 

Languages north of the line exhibit features more similar to Western Romance languages (which include Spanish, French, and Catalan), while languages south of the line exhibit features more similar to Southern and Eastern Romance languages (Italian and Romanian, in particular). 

Other less familiar languages that fall along these lines are Lombard, Venetian, and Piedmontese on the Western Romance side. Standard Italian, Neapolitan, and Roman fall on the Eastern Side.  These languages can be divided further into two separate families, one being Gallo-Italic (North of the Line) and the other being Italo-Dalmatian (South of the Line).

This linguistic division is found in a few ways speakers pronounce words, with one of the largest distinctions being double consonants. Double consonants, or geminates, are a big part of standard Italian. They’re found in words like gemelli (twins), accademia (academy), and troppo (too much). Geminates can be kind of a pain for English-native Italian learners. They’re difficult to identify with the untrained ear, and are even harder to reproduce with an untrained mouth. If anyone ever comments on your mispronounced consonanti doppie, just tell them that your practicing your Lombard. North of the La Spezia-Rimini Line, these double consonants often become single. Other differences that you might pick up on north of this isogloss include: the dropping of word-final vowels (mano becomes man), forming plurals using the letter -s instead of changing the vowel, and pronouncing the letter c as an -s instead of a “ch” before the vowels i and e.

All of these differences are only present on the dialect level for the most part. Dialects are not the same as accents, so an Italian speaker from Milan will still form their plurals by changing a word’s final vowel. They’ll also most likely perfectly pronounce a double consonant if given the chance.

What Does This Mean For Italian?

As Italian standardizes and the world globalizes, these distinctions continue to erode. However, they provide a fun way to begin to think about the connection between geography and language. Italian is a young country, having only become a nation-state in 1861. There are still traces of its regional past everywhere. Although there won’t be any fanfare when you cross the La Spezia-Rimini line, be sure to pay more attention to the speech differences depending on where your conversation partner is from. In addition to practicing your listening skills, you’ll be sure to feel like a linguistic detective. 

Thanks For Reading!

Where’s your favorite Italian speaker from? Do you think their dialect might be a little different from “textbook” Italian? Comment below, and be sure to give this post a heart!

(Thumbnail photo by Dominik Dancs)