rovinces of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and Novara, the Valsesia valley (province of Vercelli), and the city of Tortona are closer to Western Lombard than to Piedmontese.
(See Western Lombard literature ). The Lombard variety with the oldest literary tradition (dating back to the thirteenth century) is that of Milan, where nowadays Milanese, the native Lombard variety of the area, has almost completely been superseded by Italian due to the heavy influx of immigrants from other parts of Italy (Puglia, Sicily, Campania, etc.) during the fast industrialization after World War II. Ticinese is a comprehensive denomination for the Lombard varieties spoken in Swiss Canton Ticino (Tessin), while the Ticinese koiné is the Western Lombard koiné used by speakers of local dialects (particularly those diverging from the koiné itself) when communicating with speakers of other Lombard dialects of Ticino, Grigioni, or Italian Lombardy. This koiné is not very unlike Milanese and the varieties of the neighbouring provinces on the Italian side of the border.
There is extant literature in other varieties of Lombard, for example La masséra da bé, a theatrical work in early Eastern Lombard, written by Galeazzo dagli Orzi (1492 - ?) presumably in 1554.[not in citation given]
Standard Italian is widely used in Lombard-speaking areas. However, the status of Lombard is quite different between the Swiss and Italian areas. This justifies the view that nowadays the Swiss areas have become the real stronghold of Lombard.
In the Swiss areas, the local Lombard varieties are generally better preserved and more vital than in Italy. No negative feelings are associated with the use of Lombard in everyday life, even when interacting with complete strangers. Some radio and television programmes in Lombard, particularly comedies, are occasionally broadcast by the Swiss Italian-speaking broadcasting company. Moreover, it is not uncommon for people from the street to answer in Lombard in spontaneous interviews. Even some television ads in Lombard have been reported. The major research institution working on Lombard dialects is located in Bellinzona, Switzerland (CDE - Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia, a governmental (cantonal) institution); there is no comparable institution in Italy. In December 2004, the CDE released a dictionary in five volumes covering all the Lombard varieties spoken in the Swiss areas.
Today, in most urban areas of Italian Lombardy, people under 40 years old speak almost exclusively Italian in their daily lives, because of schooling and television broadcasts in Italian. However, in Periferic Lombardy (Valtellina, Lake Como, Bergamo, Brescia, Lodi) the Lombard language is still vital.
This is due to a number of historical and social reasons: its usage has been historically discouraged by Italian politicians, probably as it was regarded as an obstacle to the attempt to create a 'national identity', because speaking a non-standard variety is a sign of poor schooling or low social status. Presently the political party most supportive of Lombard (and of the varieties of Northern Italy in general) is the Northern League (in the past, on the other hand, the leftist parties were the ones giving support to local varieties), for this reason, speaking a dialect of certain non-Italian minority languages might be politically controversial in Italy.
A certain revival of the use of Lombard has been observed in the last decade, when the use of Lombard has become a way to express one's local identity and to distance oneself from Roman-oriented mainstream Italian culture; the popularity of modern artists singing their lyrics in some Lombard variety (in Italian "rock dialettale", the most well-known of such artists being Davide Van de Sfroos) is also a relatively new but growing phenomenon involving both the Swiss and Italian areas.
- Diachronics of plural inflection in the Gallo-Italian languages
- Gallo-Italic of Sicily
- La Spezia–Rimini Line
- Languages of Europe
- Ligurian language (Romance)
- List of languages in Europe
- Pierre Bec
- Romance plurals
