Italian Dialects

Italy is subjected to thousands of dialects. Each little village has got its own dialect, people are proud of their languages and habits and until few years ago they were not willing to code switching with the official Italian language. Besides, it is important to highlight the fact that every dialect is absolutely incomprehensible for that people from another city.

There are exactly 20 regions in Italy and there are 4 main groups of dialects: Galloitalico, Mediano, Meridionale, Meridionale estremo.

Each group has hundreds and hundreds of little spoken dialect.

Nowadays, dialects are spoken from an exclusive percentage of 15% people and in the last years, things have slightly changed and more people than before know more about the Italian grammar and speak it as well. More than 70 % of people who deal with strangers will not have problems to code switch his own dialect and start speaking a correct and common Italian.

I wrote down some examples of my own dialect from Milan:

Voeuja de lavorà saltom addòss che mì me spòsti = “Come to me desire of working so that I’ll move”

It is related to lazy people.

Te gh'ee l'oeucc pussee grand del boeucc = “Your eye is bigger than your stomach”

It is related to who usually eats too much or in general who exaggerates doing something.