Emilian (Reggian, Parmesan and Modenese: emigliân; Bolognese: emigliàn; ) is a Gallo-Italic unstandardised language spoken in the historical region of Emilia, which is now in the western part of Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy. Emilian has a default word order of subject–verb–object and both grammatical gender (masculine and feminine) and grammatical number (singular and plural). There is a strong T–V distinction, which distinguishes varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity or insult. The alphabet, largely adapted from the Italian (Tuscan) one, uses a considerable number of diacritics.

Classification

Emilian is an unstandardized Gallo-Italic language spoken in the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. Besides Emilian, the Gallo-Italic family includes Romagnol, Piedmontese, Ligurian and Lombard, all of which maintain a level of mutual intelligibility with Emilian.

Dialectal varieties

The historical and geographical fragmentation of Emilian communities, divided in many local administrations (as signorie then duchies, with reciprocal exchanges of land), has caused a high dialectal fragmentation, to the point the existence of an Emilian koiné has been questioned. Linguasphere Observatory recognises the following dialects: Other definitions include the following:

Vocabulary

There is no widespread standard orthography. The words below are written in a nonspecific Emilian script.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Writing system

Emilian is written using a Latin script that has never been standardised, and spelling varies widely among the dialects. The dialects were largely oral and rarely written until some time in the late 20th century; a large amount of written media in Emilian has been created since World War II.