1.
Judaeo-Spanish
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Judaeo-Spanish, commonly referred to as Ladino, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. Although it has no status in any country, it has been acknowledged as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, France. Furthermore, the language is influenced to a degree by other local languages of the Balkans, such as Greek. Historically, the Rashi script and its cursive form Solitreo have been the main orthographies for writing Judaeo-Spanish, however today, it is mainly written with the Latin alphabet, though some other alphabets such as Hebrew and Cyrillic are still in use. Judaeo-Spanish is known by different names, mostly, Español/Espanyol, Judió/Djudyo, Judesmo/Djudezmo, Sefaradhí/Sefaradi. In Turkey and formerly in the Ottoman Empire, it has been traditionally called Yahudice in Turkish, in Israel, Hebrew speakers usually call the language spanyolit or Ladino. Judaeo-Spanish, once the language of the Adriatic Sea, the Balkans. Most native speakers are elderly and the language is not transmitted to their children or grandchildren for various reasons, in some expatriate communities in Latin America and elsewhere, there is a threat of dialect levelling resulting in extinction by assimilation into modern Spanish. However, it is experiencing a revival among Sephardic communities. In Israel particularly, and in America and Spain, in recent decades the language came to be referred to as Ladino, though some people who actually speak the language consider this use incorrect. The language is also called judeo-espagnol, judeo-español, Sefardí, Judío, the dialect of the Oran area of Algeria was called Tetuani, after the Moroccan town Tétouan, since many Orani Jews came from this city. In Hebrew, the language is called Spanyolit and this information does not reflect the historical usage. The name Judezmo is unknown and offensive to most native speakers, the derivation of the name Ladino is complicated. In pre-Expulsion times in the area today as Spain the word meant literary Spanish as opposed to other dialects. Following the expulsion, Jews spoke of the Ladino to mean the traditional translation of the Bible into archaic Spanish. By extension it came to mean that style of Spanish generally, in the way that Targum has come to mean Judeo-Aramaic. Informally, and especially in modern Israel, many speakers use Ladino to mean Judaeo-Spanish as a whole, the language was formerly regulated by a body called the Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino in Israel. More strictly, however, the term is confined to the used in translation
2.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
3.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
4.
Dolomite Mountains
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The Dolomites are a mountain range located in northeastern Italy. They form a part of the Southern Limestone Alps and extend from the River Adige in the west to the Piave Valley in the east, the northern and southern borders are defined by the Puster Valley and the Sugana Valley. The Dolomites are nearly equally shared between the provinces of Belluno, South Tyrol and Trentino. There are also groups of similar geological structure that spread over the River Piave to the east – Dolomiti dOltrepiave. There is also another group called Piccole Dolomiti located between the provinces of Trentino, Verona and Vicenza. The Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park and many other parks are located in the Dolomites. In August 2009, the Dolomites were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, during the First World War, the front line between the Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces ran through the Dolomites and there was fierce mine warfare. There are now open-air war museums at Cinque Torri and Mount Lagazuoi, many people visit the Dolomites to climb the vie ferrate, protected paths created during the First World War. A number of long distance footpaths run across the Dolomites, which are called alte vie, such long trails, which are numbered from 1 to 8, require at least a week to be walked through and are served by numerous Rifugi. The first and, perhaps, most renowned is the Alta Via 1, radiocarbon dating has been used in the Alta Badia region to draw a connection between landslide movement and climate change. The layering of rocks and organic matter make for a trove of material that can used to perform these scientific investigations. Landslides are caused by processes, most notably the humidity of soil. The region is divided into the Western and Eastern Dolomites. Free climbing has been a tradition in the Dolomites since 1887, the Maratona dles Dolomites, an annual single-day road bicycle racing race covering seven mountain passes of the Dolomites, occurs in the first week of July. Other characteristic places are, Mount Pasubio and Strada delle 52 Gallerie Altopiano di Asiago and Calà del Sasso, with 4444 steps, nomination of the Dolomites for inscription on the World Natural Heritage List UNESCO. Walks and Via Ferrata in the Dolomites, franco Grisa Timelapse Italian official cartography, on-line version, www. pcn. minambiente. it
5.
Veneto
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Veneto or Venetia is one of the twenty regions of Italy. Its population is five million, ranking fifth in Italy. The regions capital and largest city is Venice, Veneto was part of the Roman Empire until the 5th century AD. Later, after a period, it was part of the Republic of Venice until 1797. Venice ruled for centuries one of the largest and richest maritime republics. The Statute of Veneto describes Venetians as a people, besides Italian, most inhabitants also speak Venetian. The region is home to a notable nationalist movement, the regions largest party is the Venetist/Padanist Liga Veneta, a founding member of Lega Nord. The current President of Veneto is Luca Zaia, elected in 2010 with 60. 2% of the vote and the support of Lega Nord, The People of Freedom, Veneto is the 8th largest region in Italy, with a total area of 18,398.9 km2. At its northernmost corner it borders also on Austria, the north-south extension of Veneto is 210 km from the Austrian border to the mouth of the River Po. By area, 29% of its surface is mountainous, the highest massif in the Dolomites is the Marmolada-massif at 3,342 m. Other dolomitic peaks are the Tre Cime di Lavaredo and the Pale di San Martino, the Venetian Prealps are not as high and range between 700 m and 2,200 m. Fossil deposits are abundant there. The plain itself is subdivided into the plain and the lower plain. The lower plain is both a mainstay of production and the most populated part of the region. Several rivers flow through the region, the Po, Adige, Brenta, Bacchiglione, Livenza, Piave, the eastern shore of the largest lake in Italy, Lake Garda, belongs to Veneto. The coastline covers approximately 200 km, of which 100 km are beaches, the coasts of the Adriatic Sea are characterised by the Venetian Lagoon, a flat terrain with ponds, marshes and islands. The Po Delta to the south features sandbars and dunes along the coastline, the inland portion contains cultivable land recently reclaimed by a system of canals and dykes. Fish ponds have been created there as well, the delta and the lagoon are a stopping-point for migratory birds
6.
Language family
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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others
7.
Indo-European languages
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The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD
8.
Italic languages
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The Italic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by Italic peoples. They include Latin and its descendants as well as a number of languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan. With over 800 million native speakers, the Italic languages constitute the second most widely spoken branch of the Indo-European family, in the past, various definitions of Italic have prevailed. This article uses the classification presented by the Linguist List, Italic includes the Latin subgroup as well as the ancient Italic languages, venetic, as revealed by its inscriptions, shared some similarities with the Italic languages and is sometimes classified as Italic. However, since it shares similarities with other Western Indo-European branches. In the extreme view, Italic did not exist, but the different groups descended directly from Indo-European and this view stems in part from the difficulty in identifying a common Italic homeland in prehistory. Moreover, there are similarities between groups, although how these similarities are to be interpreted is one of the major debatable issues in the historical linguistics of Indo-European. The linguist Calvert Watkins went so far as to suggest, among ten major groups and these he considered dialectical divisions within Proto-Indo-European which go back to a period long before the speakers arrived in their historical areas of attestation. The main debate concerning the origin of the Italic languages is the same as that which preoccupied Greek studies for the last half of the 20th century, the Indo-Europeanists for Greek had hypothesized that Greek originated outside Greece and was brought in by invaders. The issue was settled in favour of the origin of Greek being that of a language which had developed from all of these elements and then also taken its recognisable form all within Greece. A proto-Italic homeland outside Italy is just as elusive as the home of the hypothetical Greek-speaking invaders, no early form of Italic is available to match Mycenaean Greek. The Italic languages are first attested in writing from Umbrian and Faliscan inscriptions dating to the 7th century BC, the alphabets used are based on the Old Italic alphabet, which is itself based on the Greek alphabet. The Italic alphabets themselves show minor influence from the Etruscan and somewhat more from the Ancient Greek alphabet, the intermediate phases between Italic and Indo-European are still in deficit, with no guarantee that they ever will be found. The question of whether Italic originated outside Italy or developed by assimilation of Indo-European and other elements within Italy, approximately on or within its current range there, remains. Silvestri says. Common Italic. is certainly not to be seen as a language that can largely be reconstructed. Bakkum defines Proto-Italic as a stage without an independent development of its own, but extending over late PIE. Meisers dates of 4000 BC to 1800 BC he describes as as good a guess as anyones, the Roman conquests eventually spread it throughout the peninsula and beyond in the Roman Empire. It is unknown whether the language spoken by the Sicels in Sicily was Italic or not, from Vulgar Latin the Romance languages emerged
9.
Romance languages
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Today, around 800 million people are native speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe, Africa and the Americas, but also elsewhere. Additionally, the major Romance languages have many speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas. This is especially the case for French, which is in use throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of speakers are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian. Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the modern Romance languages are given, for example, Dalby lists 23 based on mutual intelligibility. Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, Latin also exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa, western Germany and the Balkans north of the Jireček Line. Despite other influences, the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of all Romance languages consist mainly of evolved forms of Vulgar Latin, however, some notable differences occur between todays Romance languages and their Roman ancestor. With only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost the system of Latin and, as a result, have SVO sentence structure. From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, the word romance with the modern sense of romance novel or love affair has the same origin. In the medieval literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales, often focusing on love, were composed in the vernacular, for example, the Portuguese word fresta is descended from Latin fenestra window, but now means skylight and slit. Cognates may exist but have become rare, such as finiestra in Spanish, the Spanish and Portuguese terms defenestrar meaning to throw through a window and fenestrado meaning replete with windows also have the same root, but are later borrowings from Latin. Galician has both fiestra and the frequently used ventá and xanela. As an alternative to lei, Italian has the pronoun ella, a cognate of the words for she. Sardinian balcone comes from Old Italian and is similar to other Romance languages such as French balcon, Portuguese balcão, Romanian balcon, Spanish balcón, Catalan balcó and Corsican balconi. Documentary evidence is limited about Vulgar Latin for the purposes of research. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples, other scholars argue that the distinctions are more rightly viewed as indicative of sociolinguistic and register differences normally found within any language. Both were mutually intelligible as one and the language, which was true until the second half of the 7th century. Central Europe and the Balkans were occupied by the Germanic and Slavic tribes, as well as by the Huns, over the course of the fourth to eighth centuries, Vulgar Latin, by this time highly dialectalized, broke up into discrete languages that were no longer mutually intelligible
10.
Western Romance languages
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Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini line. They include the Gallo-Romance and Iberian-Romance branches as well as northern Italian, there is also much higher morphological similarity between Spanish and Italian dialects than between Italian and French. Some classifications include Italo-Dalmatian, the clade is generally called Italo-Western Romance. Other classifications place Italo-Dalmatian with Eastern Romance, sardinian does not fit into either Western or Eastern Romance, and may have split off before either. Today the four most-widely spoken standardized Western Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, many of these languages have large numbers of non-native speakers, this is especially the case for French, in widespread use throughout West Africa as a lingua franca. Gallo-Romance includes, The Langues doïl, or Oïl languages and these include Standard French, Picard, Walloon, Lorrain and Norman. The Arpitan language, also known as Franco-Provençal and it shares features of both French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan. Sometimes included in the Oïl languages, Gallo-Romance can include, The Rhaeto-Romance languages. They include Romansh of Switzerland, Ladin of the Dolomites area, Rhaeto-Romance languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance, or as an independent branch of the Western Romance languages. The Occitano-Romance languages of Southern France and East Iberia, includes Occitan and Catalan, Occitano-Romance languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance, Iberian-Romance, or as an independent branch of the Western Romance languages. The Occitan language, or langue doc, has such as Provençal dialect. The Catalan language has standard forms of Catalan and Valencian, can be classified as East Iberian. They include Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Gallo-Italic of Sicily, Gallo-Italic languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance or as Northern Italian dialects. The Oïl languages, Arpitan and Rhaeto-Romance languages are sometimes called Gallo-Rhaetian, Iberian Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula include, The West Iberian languages, The Castilian languages, includes Spanish and Judaeo-Spanish. The Galician-Portuguese languages, includes Portuguese, Galician, Fala and Uruguayan Portuñol, the Astur-Leonese languages, they are, from east to west, Cantabrian, central-eastern Asturian and Leonese proper. Going from north to south, they are Leonese proper, Mirandese, Extremaduran, the Pyrenean–Mozarabic languages, includes Aragonese, and the extinct Mozarabic. Can be classified as West Iberian, the East Iberian language, or Catalan language, usually classified as part of Occitano-Romance, see Gallo-Romance above
11.
Gallo-Romance languages
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The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes sensu stricto the Oïl languages and the Franco-Provençal language. However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Rhaeto-Romance, Occitano-Romance, the Gallo-Romance group includes, The Langues doïl, or Oïl languages. These include Standard French, Picard, Walloon, Lorrain and Normand, Poitevin and these are the most phonologically innovative Romance varieties. The Arpitan language, also known as Franco-Provençal, of southeastern France, western Switzerland and it shares features of both French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan. Other language families which are included in the Gallo-Romance, The Rhaeto-Romance languages, including Romansh of Switzerland, Ladin of the Dolomites area. Rhaeto-Romance can be classified as Gallo-Romance, or as a branch of the Western Romance languages, Rhaeto-Romance is a diverse group, with the Italian varieties influenced by Venetan and Italian and Romansh by Franco-Provençal. The Occitano-Romance languages of Southern France and neighbouring areas, includes Occitan and Catalan, Occitano-Romance can be classified as Gallo-Romance, Iberian Romance, or as a branch of the Western Romance languages. The Occitan language, or langue doc, has such as Provençal. The Catalan language has standard forms of Catalan and Valencian, in general however, modern Catalan, especially grammatically, remains closer to modern Occitan than to either Spanish or Portuguese. They include Piedmontese, Ligurian, Western and Eastern Lombard, Emilian, Romagnol, Gallo-Italic of Sicily, Gallo-Italic can be classified as Gallo-Romance, Italo-Dalmatian, or as a branch of the Western Romance languages. Ligurian retains the final -o, being the exception in Gallo-Romance, how far the Gallo-Romance languages spread varies a great deal depending on which languages are included in the group. Today, a single Gallo-Romance language dominates much of this region and has also spread overseas. At its broadest, the area also encompasses southern France, Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic islands in eastern Spain, the Gallo-Romance languages are generally considered the most innovative among the Romance languages. Characteristic Gallo-Romance features generally developed earliest and appear in their most extreme manifestation in the langue doïl, gradually spreading out from there along riverways, Gallo-Romance languages are usually characterised by the loss of all unstressed final vowels other than /-a/. However, when the loss of a final vowel would result in an impossible final cluster, generally, the same changes also occurred in final syllables closed by a consonant. Elsewhere, final vowel loss occurred later or unprotected /t/ was lost earlier, for example, French sain, saint, sein, ceint, seing meaning healthy, holy, breast, girds, signature are all pronounced /sɛ̃/. In other ways, however, the Gallo-Romance languages are conservative, in the opposite of the normal pattern, the languages closest to the oïl epicentre preserve the case system the best, and languages at the periphery lost it early. The Occitan group is known for an innovatory /ɡ/ ending on many subjunctive and preterite verbs and a development of
12.
Rhaeto-Romance languages
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Rhaeto-Romance, or Rhaetian, is a traditional subfamily of the Romance languages that is spoken in north and north-eastern Italy and in Switzerland. The name Rhaeto-Romance refers to the former Roman province of Rhaetia, the linguistic basis of the subfamily is discussed in the so-called Questione Ladina. The area where Rhaeto-Romance languages were spoken during the Middle Ages stretched from Switzerland to the Julian Alps, the Rhaeto-Romance languages can be distinguished into the following varieties, Romansh, Switzerland. Romansh has status in Switzerland as a language with three other national languages, however, its usage is rather limited to the canton of Graubünden. Ladin, Dolomitic Ladin in Italy Friulian, Friuli region, Italy A phylogenetic classification using basic lexicon identifies a primary split between Romansh in Switzerland and Ladin in Italy, one secondary split distinguishes Engadinic from the other Romansh varieties in Switzerland. In this study, the divergence of the Rhaeto-Romance languages from their reconstructed lexical ancestor is about 7% on average and this would correspond to a time depth of about 500 years if the glottochronological replacement rate of 14% per millennium for Romance were trustworthy. However, the earliest available Romance text from the Alpine area is somewhat older, Rhaetian language, an unrelated language spoken in ancient times around the area where Rhaeto-Romance is now spoken
13.
Cadorino dialect
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Cadorino, a dialect of Ladin, is the language of Cadore, at the feet of the Dolomites in the province of Belluno. It is distinct from neighboring dialects, and though it has received little attention. The principal characteristics of Cadorino are the following, Palatalization of *ka, retention of final -s in verbal 2nd-person singular. Velarization of *l to u before a consonant, vowel breaking of è in closed syllables. The inflection òu of the participle of verbs of the first conjugation. Retention of a distinction in 1sg and 2sg pronouns. These are all characteristics of Ladin dialects, Cadorino is spoken in what had once been Paleo-Venetian territory. Toponyms show a strong Celtic presence, there was a Friulian presence around 500 CE, and Cadorino preserves various particularities of Friulian. Over the centuries Venetian has expanded into the Cadorino area, while other Ladin varieties were profoundly influenced by Tyrolian dialects of German, these had relatively little influence on Cadorino, which was much more affected by Venetian. Ascoli Graziadio Isaia, Saggi ladini, Archivio Glottologico Italiano, I,1873
14.
International Phonetic Alphabet
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The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
15.
Specials (Unicode block)
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Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
16.
Unicode
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Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
17.
Italian language
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By most measures, Italian, together with Sardinian, is the closest to Latin of the Romance languages. Italian is a language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City. Italian is spoken by minorities in places such as France, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Crimea and Tunisia and by large expatriate communities in the Americas. Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages, Italian is the fourth most studied language in the world. Italian is a major European language, being one of the languages of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It is the third most widely spoken first language in the European Union with 65 million native speakers, including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries and on other continents, the total number of speakers is around 85 million. Italian is the working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the luxury goods market. Italian has been reported as the fourth or fifth most frequently taught foreign language in the world, Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society. Its development was influenced by other Italian languages and to some minor extent. Its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian, unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latins contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive, however, Italian as a language used in Italy and some surrounding regions has a longer history. What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language, and thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the language of Italy. Italian was also one of the recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Italy has always had a dialect for each city, because the cities. Those dialects now have considerable variety, as Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian. Even in the case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages
18.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
19.
Dolomites
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The Dolomites are a mountain range located in northeastern Italy. They form a part of the Southern Limestone Alps and extend from the River Adige in the west to the Piave Valley in the east, the northern and southern borders are defined by the Puster Valley and the Sugana Valley. The Dolomites are nearly equally shared between the provinces of Belluno, South Tyrol and Trentino. There are also groups of similar geological structure that spread over the River Piave to the east – Dolomiti dOltrepiave. There is also another group called Piccole Dolomiti located between the provinces of Trentino, Verona and Vicenza. The Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park and many other parks are located in the Dolomites. In August 2009, the Dolomites were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, during the First World War, the front line between the Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces ran through the Dolomites and there was fierce mine warfare. There are now open-air war museums at Cinque Torri and Mount Lagazuoi, many people visit the Dolomites to climb the vie ferrate, protected paths created during the First World War. A number of long distance footpaths run across the Dolomites, which are called alte vie, such long trails, which are numbered from 1 to 8, require at least a week to be walked through and are served by numerous Rifugi. The first and, perhaps, most renowned is the Alta Via 1, radiocarbon dating has been used in the Alta Badia region to draw a connection between landslide movement and climate change. The layering of rocks and organic matter make for a trove of material that can used to perform these scientific investigations. Landslides are caused by processes, most notably the humidity of soil. The region is divided into the Western and Eastern Dolomites. Free climbing has been a tradition in the Dolomites since 1887, the Maratona dles Dolomites, an annual single-day road bicycle racing race covering seven mountain passes of the Dolomites, occurs in the first week of July. Other characteristic places are, Mount Pasubio and Strada delle 52 Gallerie Altopiano di Asiago and Calà del Sasso, with 4444 steps, nomination of the Dolomites for inscription on the World Natural Heritage List UNESCO. Walks and Via Ferrata in the Dolomites, franco Grisa Timelapse Italian official cartography, on-line version, www. pcn. minambiente. it
20.
South Tyrol
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South Tyrol, also known by its alternative Italian name Alto Adige, is an autonomous province in northern Italy. It is one of the two provinces that make up the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province has an area of 7,400 square kilometres and its capital is the city of Bolzano. As of 2011, South Tyrol is among the wealthiest regions in Italy, South Tyrol is the term most commonly used in English for the province, and its usage reflects that it was created from a portion of the southern part of the historic County of Tyrol. German and Ladin speakers usually refer to the area as Südtirol, Alto Adige, one of the Italian names for the province, is also used in English. The term had been the name of political subdivisions along the Adige River in the time of Napoleon Bonaparte and it was reused as the Italian name of the current province after its post-World War I creation, and was a symbol of the subsequent forced Italianization of South Tyrol. The official name of the today in German is Autonome Provinz Bozen — Südtirol. German speakers usually refer to it not as a Provinz, provincial institutions are referred to using the prefix Landes-, such as Landesregierung and Landeshauptmann. The official name in Italian is Provincia autonoma di Bolzano — Alto Adige, South Tyrol as an administrative entity originated during the First World War. The Allies promised the area to Italy in the Treaty of London of 1915 as an incentive to enter the war on their side, with the rise of Fascism, the new regime made efforts to bring forward the Italianization of South Tyrol. The German language was banished from public service, German teaching was officially forbidden, the regime also favored immigration from other Italian regions. The subsequent alliance between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini declared that South Tyrol would not follow the destiny of Austria, the region was de facto annexed to the German Reich until the end of the war. This status ended along with the Nazi regime, and Italian rule was restored in 1945, after the war the Allies decided that the province would remain a part of Italy, under the condition that the German-speaking population be granted a significant level of self-government. Italy and Austria negotiated an agreement in 1946, recognizing the rights of the German minority, alcide De Gasperi, Italys prime minister, a native of Trentino, wanted to extend the autonomy to his fellow citizens. This led to the creation of the region called Trentino-Alto Adige/Tiroler Etschland, German and Italian were both made official languages, and German-language education was permitted once more. Still Italians were the majority in the combined region, in a first phase, only public edifices and fascist monuments were targeted. The second phase was bloodier, costing 21 lives, the South Tyrolean question became an international issue. A fresh round of negotiations took place in 1961 but proved unsuccessful, the issue was resolved in 1971, when a new Austro-Italian treaty was signed and ratified
21.
Trentino
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Trentino, officially the Autonomous Province of Trento, is an autonomous province of Italy, in the countrys far north. Trentino is, along with South Tyrol, one of the two provinces making up the region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, which is designated a region under the constitution. The province is divided into 178 comuni and its capital is the city of Trento. The province covers an area of more than 6,000 km2, Trentino is renowned for its mountains, such as the Dolomites, which are part of the Alps. The province is known as Trentino. The name derives from Trento, the city of the province. Originally, the term was used by the population only to refer to the city. In its wider sense, Trentino was first used around 1848 in an article by a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly, since the new 1972 autonomous status, the administrative name of the province is Autonomous Province of Trento. The history of Trentino begins in the mid-Stone Age, the valleys of what is now Trentino were already inhabited by man, the main settlements being in the valley of the Adige River, thanks to its milder climate. In the early Middle Ages, this area was included within the Kingdom of Italy, in 1027, the Bishopric of Trent was established as a State of the Holy Roman Empire by Emperor Conrad II. It was a territory, roughly corresponding to the present-day Trentino. The Council of Trent, held in three sessions from 1545 to 1563, with the first at Trento, was one of the important councils in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. It was an articulation of Roman Catholic doctrine in response to the Protestant Reformation, and specified doctrine on salvation, the sacraments, after the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, the bishopric was secularized and absorbed into the Austrian County of Tyrol. It was governed by the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, the region was the location of heavy fighting during World War I, as it was directly on the front lines between Austria-Hungary and Italy. Trentino remained a part of Austria-Hungary until after the end of the war in 1919, since this treaty, Trentino enjoys considerable autonomy from the Italian central government in Rome. It has its own elected government and legislative assembly, in 1996, the Euroregion Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino was formed between the Austrian state of Tyrol and the Italian provinces of South Tyrol and Trentino. The boundaries of the association correspond to the old County of Tyrol, the aim is to promote regional peace, understanding and cooperation in many areas. The regions assemblies meet together as one on various occasions and have set up a liaison office to the European Union in Brussels
22.
Province of Belluno
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The Province of Belluno is a province in the Veneto region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Belluno and it has an area of 3,678 square kilometres and a total population of about 200,000. The province of Belluno is rather wide, and almost entirely occupied by mountain areas and it encompasses the natural and historical regions of Cadore, Feltrino, Alpago, Val di Zoldo, Agordino, Comelico and Ampezzano. The eastern part of the features the Dolomites, including the famous Tofane, Marmolada, Tre Cime di Lavaredo. The province is rich in water, with the presence of the wide Piave River, with its affluents Boite, the southern part is called Valbelluna, the widest and most populous valley of the province, which is bordered by the Venetian Prealps. The National Park of Belluno Dolomites is located in the province, the province of Bellunos climate is among the most severe in the Alps. It is mostly influenced by the continentally, provided by the Dolomites and it is similar to the eastern Tyrols climate. The summers are hot but not as hot as the valleys of the rivers Po, the hottest month’s average temperature is between 18 °C and 21 °C. This area, as most of the oriental Alps, is very wet, belluno’s precipitation average is above 1300 mm per year, snow is usual during all the winter months, and may occur even in March or November. Some years the winter may be due to the humidity, with averages around the freezing point. Main cities in area, Belluno, Feltre, Seren del Grappa. The midland’s valleys, between 700 m and 1500 m, which have a humid continental climate Dfb. This climate is severe in the extreme northern or southwestern regions of the province. Winter’s average temperature is between −7 °C and −5 °C in the North and Southwest during January, and between −5 °C and −3 °C around the central region. The coldest town, Santo Stefano di Cadore, at an elevation of only 900 meters, has temperature averages in January between −7 °C and −6 °C. Other towns of relatively low elevations have really low averages, which would be found only above 1700 meters in other Italians provinces, the snow season depends on the altitude. Between 700 and 1200 meters, from early November until the middle of March, the summer is usually wet and mild, but hotter than areas at the same altitude in the occidental valleys. In the lower lands temperature average around 16 °C or 17 °C, in higher lands average around 14 °C
23.
Ladin people
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The Ladin people are an ethnic group in northern Italy. They are distributed in the valleys of Badia and Gherdëina, Fassa, Livinallongo and their native language is Ladin, a Rhaeto-Romance language related to the Swiss Romansh and Friulian languages. They are part of Tyrol, with which they share culture, history, traditions, environment, Ladins developed a national ethnic identity in the 19th century. Micurà de Rü undertook the first attempt to develop a form of the Ladin language. Nowadays, Ladin culture is promoted by the government-sponsored cultural institute Istitut Ladin Micurà de Rü in the South Tyrolean municipality of San Martin de Tor, there is also a Ladin museum in that same municipality. The Ladins of Trentino and Belluno have their own cultural institutes, Majon de Fascegn in Vigo di Fassa, Cesa de Jan in Colle Santa Lucia, the Ladin people constitute only 4. 53% of the population of South Tyrol. Many of the South Tyrolean Sagas come from the Ladin territory, including the epic of the Ladin people. Another figure from Ladin mythology is the demon Anguana
24.
Romansh language
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Romansh has also been recognized as a national language of Switzerland since 1938 and as an official language along with German, French and Italian since 1996. It is sometimes grouped with Ladin and Friulian as a Rhaeto-Romance language, Romansh has also been heavily influenced by German in vocabulary and morphosyntax. The language gradually retreated to its current area over the centuries, being replaced by Alemannic, the earliest writing identified as Romansh dates from the 10th or 11th century, although major works do not appear until the 16th century when several regional written varieties began to develop. The 19th century saw a shrinkage of the language area but also a literary revival. In the 2000 Swiss census,35,095 people indicated Romansh as the language of best command, in 2010, Switzerland switched to a yearly system which uses a combination of municipal citizen records and a limited number of surveys. Based on this system, the number of people aged 15. The language area and number of speakers of Romansh have been continually shrinking, Romansh is divided into five different regional dialects, each with its own standardized written language. In addition, a variety called Rumantsch Grischun was introduced in 1982. Romansh is a Romance language descending from Vulgar Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. Within the Romance languages, Romansh stands out because of its peripheral location, another distinguishing feature is the centuries-long language contact with German, which is most noticeable in the vocabulary and to a lesser extent the syntax of Romansh. Romansh belongs to the Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages, which includes such as French, Occitan. The main feature placing Romansh within the Gallo-Romance languages is the fronting of Latin /u/ to or, as seen in Latin muru wall, which is mür or mir in Romansh. This sound change is partially absent in some varieties of Romansh, however, especially in Sursilvan, retention of word-final -s as in buns chavals good horses as opposed to Italian buoni cavalli. Retention of L following /p b k ɡ f/, Latin clavem key > clav as opposed to Italian chiave, another defining feature of the Romansh language is the use of unstressed vowels. Whether or not Romansh, Friulan and Ladin should compose a separate Rhaeto-Romance subgroup within Gallo-Romance is an unresolved issue, some linguists posit that these languages are descended from a common language, which was then fractured geographically through the spread of German and Italian. This position goes back to the Italian linguist Graziadio Ascoli, who first made the claim in 1873, linguists who take this position often point out that the similarities between the languages are comparatively few. This position was first introduced by the Italian dialectologist Carlo Battisti and this linguistic dispute became politically relevant for the Italian irredentist movement. Italian nationalists interpreted Battistis hypothesis as implying that Romansh, Friulan and Ladin were not separate languages and they used this as an argument to claim the territories where these languages were spoken for Italy
25.
Friulian language
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Friulian or Friulan is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulian has around 600,000 speakers, the vast majority of whom also speak Italian, documents in Friulian are attested from the 11th century and poetry and literature date as far back as 1300. By the 20th century, there was a revival of interest in the language that has continued to this day, in North America the more common English form is Friulan for both the language and the ethnic identity of the people living in Friuli and abroad. Friulan follows the example of Friulano in Italian, see the reference, Friulan Dictionary, English-Friulan / Friulan-English. A question which causes many debates is the influence of the Latin spoken in Aquileia, some claim that it had peculiar features that later passed into Friulian. 357, wrote a commentary to the Gospel in sermo rusticus, in the language spoken by the people, the language spoken before the arrival of the Romans in 181 BC was of Celtic origin since the inhabitants belonged to the Carni, a Celtic population. In modern Friulian, the words of Celtic origins are many, even influences from the Lombard language - Friuli was one of their strongholds - are very frequent. In Friulian there are also a lot of German, Slovenian and Venetian words, from that evidence, scholars today agree that the formation of Friulian dates back to around 1000, at the same time as other dialects derived from Latin. The first written records of Friulian have been found in administrative acts of the 13th century, but the documents became more frequent in the following century, the main centre at that time was Cividale. The Friulian language has never acquired official status, legal statutes were first written in Latin, then in Venetian, the idea of unity among Ladin, Romansh and Friulian comes from the Italian historical linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, who was born in Gorizia. In 1871, he presented his theory that three languages are part of one family, which in the past stretched from Switzerland to Muggia. The three languages are the survivors of this family and all developed differently. Friulian was much influenced by German. Many features that Ascoli thought were peculiar to the Rhaeto-Romance languages can, in fact, in the past, the language borders were wider since in Trieste and Muggia, local variants of Friulian were spoken. The main document about the dialect of Trieste, or tergestino, is Dialoghi piacevoli in dialetto vernacolo triestino, Friuli was, until the 1960s, an area of deep poverty, causing a large number of Friulian speakers to emigrate. Most went to France, Belgium, and Switzerland or outside Europe, to Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, the United States, in those countries, there are associations of Friulian immigrants that try to protect their traditions and language. The first texts in Friulian date back to the 13th century and are commercial or juridical acts. The examples show that Friulian was used together with Latin, which was still the administrative language, the most notable work is Piruç myò doç inculurit, it was composed by an anonymous author from Cividale del Friuli, probably in 1380
26.
Sella group
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The Sella group is a plateau-shaped massif in the Dolomites mountains of northern Italy. The Sella lies north of the Marmolada and to the east of the Langkofel, the highest peak is Piz Boè at 3,151 m above sea level. The Sella lies between the four Ladin valleys of Badia, Gherdëina, Fascia, and Fodom and is divided between the provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno. It can be driven around by car crossing the Campolongo Pass, Pordoi Pass, Sella Pass, in winter it is possible to ski around the entire massif by using the Sella Ronda ski lift carousel. Also each winter the alpine touring ski Sellaronda Skimarathon race is held, the same trails can be mastered by Mountain bike during the summer. During winter the summit is the point for many alpine ski tours, of which the most famous are the descent through the Val Mesdì. Each year the course of the annual single-day seven mountain passes crossing Maratona dles Dolomites Bicycle Race goes around the Sella group, 360-degree panorama of the Sella Group, Marmolada and Fedaia lake 360-degree panorama of the Sella Group from Cima Rocca
27.
Standard language
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A standard language or standard variety may be defined either as a language variety used by a population for public purposes or as a variety that has undergone standardization. Typically, varieties that become standardized are the dialects spoken in the centers of commerce and government. Standardization typically involves a fixed orthography, codification in authoritative grammars and dictionaries, a standard written language is sometimes termed by the German word Schriftsprache. A pluricentric language has multiple interacting standard varieties, examples include English, French, Portuguese, German, Korean, Spanish, Swedish, Armenian and Chinese. Monocentric languages, such as Russian and Japanese, have only one standardized version, a standard variety is developed from a group of related varieties. This may be done by elevating a single variety, such as the variety of a center of government or culture. Alternatively, a new variety may be defined as a selection of features from existing varieties, a fixed orthography is typically created for writing the variety. It may be codified in normative dictionaries and grammars, or by a collection of exemplary texts. Whether these dictionaries and grammars are created by individuals or by state institutions. A fixed written form and subsequent codification make the standard variety more stable than purely spoken varieties and this variety becomes the norm for writing, is used in broadcasting and for official purposes, and is the form taught to non-native learners. Through this process, the standard variety acquires prestige and a greater importance than local varieties. In some cases, such as Standard English, this process may take place over a period without government intervention. In others it may be directed by official institutions, such as the Académie française or Real Academia Española. Language standardization is often linked to the formation, or attempted formation, of nation states, different national standards derived from a dialect continuum may be regarded as different languages, even if they are mutually intelligible. The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are cited as examples. In other cases governments or neighbouring populations may seek to deny a standard independent status, in response, developers of a standard may base it on more divergent varieties. Now known as Macedonian, it is the standard of the independent Republic of Macedonia. Arabic comprises many varieties which are considered a single language because the register of Arabic
28.
Badia, South Tyrol
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Badia is a comune in South Tyrol, northern Italy. It is one of the five Ladin-speaking communities of the Val Badia, the following communities neighbor Badia, Cortina dAmpezzo, Corvara, Mareo, Livinallongo del Col di Lana, San Martin de Tor, La Val and Sëlva. The municipality of Badia contains the frazioni La Ila, San Ciascian, the emblem is that of the Winkler Colz von zu Rubatsch family which, in the 16th and 17th century, had property and the castle at La Ila. The shield is party per fess, at the top is represented a sable steinbock, the lower part is divided into three, with vertex at the top, alternating gules and argent with a rose in the center, every rose has the central petal in or. The emblem was granted in 1967, according to the 2011 census,94. 07% of the population speak Ladin,4. 17% Italian and 1. 76% German as first language. Badia is part of the Puez-Geisler and the Fanes-Sennes-Prags Nature Park and it is also near the mountains of Lagazuoi, Conturines, La Varela, LCiaval and Gardenaccia. A pilgrimage church, the Church of the Holy Cross, is located near the birthplace of Saint Josef Freinademetz, micurà de Rü, born in Rü, San Cascian, Ladin linguist. Joseph Freinademetz, born in Oies, Catholic saint and missionary to China, as in other Ladin-speaking communities in South Tyrol, tourism is the most important contributor to Badias economy. Around 69% of the work in the service sector, around 21% work in production. Part of the lies in Alta Badia, a ski resort at the top end of the Val Badia valley. The start of the annual single-day seven mountain passes crossing Maratona dles Dolomites bicycle race is every year in La Ila, homepage of the municipality Media related to Badia, South Tyrol at Wikimedia Commons
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Corvara, South Tyrol
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Corvara is a comune in South Tyrol in northern Italy, located about 40 kilometres east of Bolzano. As of 30 November 2010, it had a population of 1,340, Corvara borders the following municipalities, Badia, Canazei, Livinallongo del Col di Lana, San Martin de Tor, and Sëlva. Corvara is the center of Alta Badia, a prestigious tourist area located at the top end of the Val Badia. Because of its position in the heart of the Dolomites. The municipality of Corvara contains the frazioni Calfosch and Pescosta, the emblem represents three vert mountains, dominated by three gules peaks with the inclined top on an argent background. The three peaks represent the Sassongher mountain overlooking the village, the emblem was granted in 1969. According to the 2011 census,89. 70% of the population speak Ladin,6. 84% Italian and 3. 46% German as first language, the finish of the annual single-day seven mountain passes crossing Maratona dles Dolomites bicycle race is in Corvara. Alta Badia Dolomites Alta Badia Touristic Information Media related to Corvara at Wikimedia Commons
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La Val
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La Val is a comune in the province of South Tyrol in northern Italy, located about 45 kilometres northeast of the city of Bolzano. As of 30 November 2010, it had a population of 1,307, the emblem consists of a vert branch, placed on bend, with two leaves on argent, it is the emblem of the family Rü. The emblem was adopted in 1969, according to the 2011 census,97. 66% of the population speak Ladin,1. 53% Italian and 0. 81% German as first language. In tourist centers people also speak some English, the village lives of tourism and agriculture. There is no ski tourism, but in winter shuttle buses transport tourists to the ski resorts such as Alta Badia. There are more guests in winter than in summer, whereas in earlier decades the agricultural economy was to a large degree self-sufficient, it has become meanwhile more of a monoculture based on cattle. Down the valley at the Gran Ega river in Pederoa is a handicraft, la Val borders the following municipalities, Badia, Mareo and San Martin de Tor
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Mareo
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Mareo is a comune in South Tyrol in northern Italy, located about 50 kilometres northeast of Bolzano. As of 30 November 2010, it had a population of 2,911, Mareo borders the following municipalities, Badia, Prags, Bruneck, Cortina dAmpezzo, La Val, Lüsen, St. Lorenzen, San Martin de Tor and Olang. The municipality of Mareo contains the frazioni Curt, Mantena, La Pli de Mareo, Pliscia, Al Plan, Rina, the shield is parted quarterly, the first part represents the Tyrolean Eagle on argent, the second the insignia of Austria. The third shows the dog of argent, with an or collar on gules. The fourth arms is a hound with a gules bone in the jaws on argent, it’s the coat of Pracken family, one of the oldest families in Tyrol. The emblem was adopted in 1969, according to the 2011 census,92. 09% of the population speak Ladin,5. 02% Italian and 2. 89% German as first language. Homepage of the municipality Media related to Mareo at Wikimedia Commons
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San Martin de Tor
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San Martin de Tor is a comune in South Tyrol in northern Italy, located about 45 kilometres northeast of the city of Bolzano. As of 30 November 2010, it had a population of 1,726, San Martin is home the Istitut Ladin Micurà de Rü, which is tasked to preserve and promote the Ladin culture and language. San Martin borders the municipalities, Badia, Brixen, Corvara, La Val, Lüsen, Mareo, Santa Cristina Gherdëina, Sëlva. The municipality of San Martin contains the frazioni Antermëia, Lungiarü, the shield is party per cross, the first quarter represents an argent tower with azure roof on sable, the second one is an argent cross pattée on gules, above three vert mountains. The third part of vert and the fourth of sable, the tower is a reference to Tor Castle and resumes the insignia of a noble family, the cross over the mountains recalls that the town was once the Courts. According to the 2011 census,96. 71% of the population speak Ladin,1. 82% German and 1. 47% Italian as first language, homepage of the municipality Media related to San Martin de Tor at Wikimedia Commons
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Kastelruth
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Kastelruth is a comune in South Tyrol in northern Italy, about 20 kilometres northeast of the city of Bolzano. As of 30 November 2010, it had a population of 6,456, Kastelruth borders the following municipalities, Barbian, Campitello di Fassa, Völs am Schlern, Lajen, Urtijëi, Waidbruck, Ritten, Santa Cristina Gherdëina and Tiers. The municipality of Kastelruth contains the frazioni Seiser Alm, Pufels, Runggaditsch, St. Michael, St. Oswald, St. Valentin, St. Vigil, Tagusens, Tisens, seis am Schlern is a località of the comune. According to the 2011 census,80. 94% of the population speak German,15. 37% Ladin and 3. 69% Italian as first language
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pronunciation (help·info)), occurs in some local dialects but is not a part of Standard Ladin.
