Gallo-Italic Languages

Gallo-Italic Languages

The Gallo-Italian or Gallo-Italic languages constitute the majority of northern Italian languages. Among them are are Piedmontese, Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo and Ligurian, although there is some doubt about the position of the latter due to its retention of final /o/.

The Gallo-Italian languages have characteristics both of the Gallo-Romance languages to the northwest (including French and Occitan) and the Italo-Romance languages to the south (including standard Italian). Examples of the former are the loss of all final vowels other than -a; the occurrence of lenition; the development of original /kt/ to /jt/ (and often later to /tʃ/); and the development of front-rounded vowels (e.g. the change of /u/ to /y/). Examples of the latter are the use of vowel changes to indicate plurals, in place of /s/; the widespread occurrence of metaphony of stressed vowels, triggered by original final /i/; and the development in some areas of /tʃ/ instead of /ts/ as the result of palatalization of original /k/ before e and i. As a result, there is some debate over the proper grouping of the Gallo-Italian languages. Most commonly, they are grouped with the Gallo-Romance languages, but some Italian linguists prefer to group them with the Italo-Romance languages.