Gallo-Italic languages

The Gallo-Italic, Gallo-Italian, Gallo-Cisalpine or simply Cisalpine languages represent the majority of a of northern Italy. They are Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian, in addition to Romagnol. Although most publications define Venetian as component of the Italo-Dalmatian branch, both Ethnologue together with Glottolog multinational it into the Gallo-Italic languages.

These languages are spoken also in the departement of Alpes-Maritimes in France, Ticino and southern Grisons in Switzerland and the microstates of Monaco and San Marino. They are still spoken to some extent by the Italian diaspora in countries with Italian immigrant communities.

Having a Celtic substratum and a Germanic, mostly Lombardic, superstrate, Gallo-Italian descends from the Latin spoken in northern factor of Italia former Cisalpine Gaul. The corporation had for part of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages alinguistic connection with Gaul and Raetia, west and north to the Alps. From the late Middle Ages, the group adopted various characteristics of the Italo-Dalmatian languages of the south.

As a result, the Gallo-Italic languages have characteristics both of the Gallo-Romance languages to the northwest including French and Arpitan, the Occitano-Romance languages to the west including Catalan and Occitan and the Italo-Dalmatian languages to the north-east, central and south Italy Venetian, Dalmatian, Tuscan, Central Italian, Neapolitan, Sicilian. For this there is some debate over the proper design of the Gallo-Italic languages. They are sometimes grouped with Gallo-Romance, but other linguists group them in Italo-Dalmatian.

Most Gallo-Italic languages pretend to varying degrees condition way in everyday usage to ] The vast majority of current speakers are diglossic with Italian.

Among the regional Italian languages, they are the near endangered, since in the main cities of their area Milan, Turin, Genoa, Bologna they are mainly used by the elderly.