We now come to the dialects which are usually regarded as Italian.
Dante, in his division of Italian dialects ((De Vulgari Eloquentia,' I, x), which is per haps the first attempt at any classification of dialects, divides them according to the two slopes of the Apennines, the Tyrrhenian and the Adriatic and counts them off into 14 prin cipal types, seven for eath slope. It was with out doubt a happy thought, and almost every where throughout southern Italy the division of Dante's is similar to our own. We will commence with a general division into four groups; northern, central, southern and Sicilian, and finally, by itself, Sardinia.
A. Northers Italy.— I. The group so-called Gallo-Italiano, that is, (a) Ligurian, (b) Pied montese, (c) Lombard, (d) Emilian (includ ing the Romagnolo dialect). The most tGallic) is naturally the Piedmont; the nearest to the Tuscan is the Ligurian, but Liguria, Piedmont and Lombardy form the territory of the ii and the o continuing the French type. Emilia in turn is the true home of the e for the Latin or Tuscan a. This peculiarity appears until we reach the Metaurus River, and pass into Tus cany, into the Aretino dialect. Let us not for get the Genoese colony of Carloforte in Sar dinia, and those Emilian colonies in Lucchese, of Gombitelli and Sillano.
2. Eastern Dialects: (a) Istriano, little better preserved at Rovigno and Dignano. It is a very characteristic dialect, with features which recall the Veglioto or Dalmatian dialect, and the dialects of the southern shore of the Adriatic. (b) Veneto, or better Venetian. And among all the dialects, none that arose has had more conspicuous fortune, following upon the arms and the commerce of the great republic; here certainly its progress followed its family resemblance with the Tuscan, for the most part original but to a certain extent borrowed. To say nothing of its fortunes in the Levant, we must make mention that it con quered territory everywhere, in all the cities of the country that surrounded Venice, in Friulano and Istriano. In Venetian, which in its oldest documents shows a trace of Ladino, neither ii nor ii ever appears: nevertheless there is a strong tendency to drop out the weak vowels; they have the diphthongs ie, uo, etc. Very char acteristic of this dialect is the aversion to double consonants, that is to say that there, as in Rumanian, vowel quantities remain un changed when double consonants become simple.
B. Central Italy.-1. Tuscan, with the dia lects of Florence and those to the west, Pisa, Lucca and Pistoia; a little aside the southern Senese and then Aretino, of which we have spoken. The western dialects have, for ex
ample, giunto, like the Florentine, but especially at Pisa and Lucca is the use of s for z very noticeable, and at Lucca r for rr, which recalls the Ligurian dialect, etc. For the rest, the cities are all strongly under the influence of Florence. The quite prevalent opinion that at Siena they speak an Italian better than that of Florence comes perhaps from an arbitrary in terpretation of the old saying, already common in the 17th century. ((Tuscan tongue in a Sienese mouth.° The characteristics of the Florentine and Tuscan language of to-day which most strike one accustomed to the Italian of the other provinces are perhaps the substitution of the simple o for the diphthong uo, as bono for buono; the aspiration of the guttural c between two vowels, baho, for baco, la hasa; and, we may add, also the pronunciation of the palatal c between two vowels, fete. la cena, which differs from the explosive c following a consonant, as cake, etc. But if the Tuscans themselves freely recognize the aspiration of the guttural c, as pertaining to a dialect, they will with difficulty arrive at a recognition of the same thing in the fricative c, and it displeases them that the latter substitute the explosive c. We must also mention the synectic doubling, as a ccasa, a rRoma.
2. Umbrian, Marchigiano, Sabino, Aquilano, Roman. This is a group somewhat roughly formed. Dante distinguished, besides the Tus can, the dialects of Ducato, namely, the Spo letano, and those of Rome on the right slope; Marca Arconitana (between Calabria on the south and the Romagnolo toward the north). Especially, the Romagnolo (as they appro priately term the Tuscan-Umbro). descends much further down the southern marches, and though it loses its more pronounced characteris tics, like the a for d, it joins with the latest off shoots at the Esino, at Jesi (amigo, pagado) and also at Ancona (poga, poca, fighi; soneto, sonetto, etc.) Perhaps the Spoletano appeared to Dante characteristically for its final u, which is usual from the Umbria of the southeast to the edges of Tirreno, and also belongs to Sabino and Aquilano, but not to the western zone of Orvieto, Viterbo, Rome, Vellitri. Cer tain southern characteristics, such as in nn for nd, mm for nv, mb, etc., may be said to be com mon to all of central Italy, except Tuscany.