Cremish dialect

RegionCremasque TerritoryEthnicityCremasqueLatinLanguage codesISO 639-3–

Cremish or Cremasque, (Cremish Lombard: cremàsch) is an Eastern Lombard dialect spoken in the Cremasque Territory of the Province of Cremona, where Cremonese is spoken in the rest of the land except for Soresina and the aforementioned land.^[2] The dialect is slowly dying, as younger people don't use it as much anymore.^[3]

Classification

Cremish is an Eastern Lombard dialect belonging to the Gallo-Italic branch of the Romance languages. It is more closely related to the Langues d'oïl, Occitan, Catalan, the Rhaeto-Romance languages, and the Iberian Romance languages, than Italian. It is similar to the dialects of Bergamo (Bergamasque) and Brescia (Brescian).^[4]

Distribution

The dialect is mostly spoken in the Cremasque Territory, which is the area adjacent to Crema and surroundings. It extends from the area of Rivolta d'Adda to Gombito and Castelleone.

Orthography

The dialect is traditionally written in the Classical Cremish Orthography, which is shown in Bonifacio Samarani's book Vocabulario cremasco-italiano.

Rules

The following are rules in the Classical Cremish Orthography.

• The vowels a, e, and i have an acute accent when they are long vowels.
• E and o are without accent when they are short and closed /e/ and /o/.
• È and ò make an open sound, short or long /ɛ/ and /ɔ/.
• É and ó are a longer closed sounds /eː/ and /oː/ respectably.
• Ö is the letter of /œ/, like the German können.
• Ü is the written form of /ʏ/ as in German flüsse.

Literature

The Cremish dialect began thriving in literature in the 18th century.^[5] A notable poet that wrote in the dialect was Federico Pesadori,^[6] who wrote works such as A Crèma, Ai casòt d'ingürie, and L'ucarina.

Bibliography

• Geroldi Luciano, Vocabolario del dialetto di Crema, Edizioni Tipolito Uggè, 2004
• Francesco Piantelli, Folclore Cremasco, ristampa, Arti Grafiche Cremasche, 1985, pag. 422 e seguenti.
• Bonifacio Samarani, Vocabolario cremasco-italiano, 1852

References

External links

• Nature of Cremasque (with names of animals and plants in Cremish)
• Nicknames of the inhabitants of the villages of the cremasque Archived 5 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine (scormagna or scurmagna)