Venetian Language - Sound System

Sound System

Venetian has some sounds not present in Italian, an interdental voiceless fricative spelled ç or z(h) and similar to English th in thing and thought, to Castilian Spanish c(e, i)/z (as in cero, cien, zapato), Modern Greek θ (theta), and Icelandic Thorn þ/Þ; it occurs, for example, in çena/zhena (supper), which sounds the same as Castilian Spanish cena (same meaning). However this sound, which is present only in some varieties of the language (Bellunese, north-Trevisan, some Central Venetian rural areas around Padua, Vicenza and the mouth of the river Po), is sociolinguistically marked as provincial, with most variants using other sounds instead such as, and . Some variants also present an interdental voiced fricative written "z" (el pianze 'he cries') but this is often substituted by "voiced-S", i.e. (written x: el pianxe) or (el piande).

In some varieties intervocalic L is realized as a soft "evanescent" L (the alternation between evanescent and non-evanescent pronunciation is often represented with one spelling ł). The evanescent pronunciation of this phoneme varies from an almost e in the region of Venice, to a partially vocalised l further inland, to null realization in some mountainous areas. Otherwise, in more conservative areas where evanescence does not apply, the pronunciation of ł collapses with that of a simple L. Thus, for example, góndoła may sound like góndoea, góndola or góndoa. In the latter variant, the "ł" spelling also provides orthographic distinction for pairs such as scóła/skóła 'school' and scóa/skóa 'broom'.

Venetian, like Spanish, does not have the geminate consonants characteristic of Italian, Tuscan and many other Italian dialects: thus Italian fette, palla, penna ("slices", "ball", and "pen") are fete, bała, and pena in Venetian. The masculine singular ending, which is usually -o / -e in Italian, is often voided in Venetian, particularly in the regional countryside varieties: Italian pieno ("full") is pien, and altare is altar. Also, the masculine article el is often shortened to 'l. However, the extent of vowel dropping depends on the variety. The central-southern varieties display the most reduced dropping (only after -n), the northern variety shows the largest extent of dropping (even after dentals and velars), while eastern and western varieties are in the middle.

Velar N is also very often encountered in Venetian. It is the ng-sound of English "song". Unlike in Italian and English, every final -n is velar in Venetian. This is clearly heard in the pronunciation of local Venetian surnames, which often end in N as Marin and Manin, as well as in common Venetian words such as man "hand", piron "fork". (Italian speakers usually change this velar into a (geminate) dental -nn: → and → ).