Not just Italian—the myriad of Vulgar Latin descendants

Many people don’t realise that Italy is linguistically diverse. At a time when Latin was the most common literary language and the language of prestige, Dante Alighieri broke new ground in the 1200s with his published works, Commedia (Divine Comedy) being one of those. Instead of writing in Latin or French, he wrote in his local vernacular of Latin – Florentine. Over time, and partly because of the dominance of Tuscan culture, the Florentine ‘dialect’ helped establish the modern-day standardised Italian language. However there are many other languages spoken on the peninsula and islands that had also grown from Vulgar Latin. These include Neapolitan, Venetian, Sicilian, and many more. Mappa delle Lingue e Gruppi dialettali d’Italia (Map of the Languages and Dialect Groups of Italy) attempts to represent those languages geographically.

Created by Antonio Ciccolella in 2015 and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, this map shows the incredible number of regional languages spoken in today’s Italy, including some that arrived from outside (Arbëreshe from Albania, Griko and Calabrian Greek from Greece), and languages that straddle Italy’s borders where once no borders existed.

The map stands out with its striking colour palette that immediately pleases the eye. The labelling is also helpful in determining the smaller linguistic pockets.

Unfortunately, many of these languages are endangered, but there are many local efforts to preserve them. And even though the map uses the word ‘dialettali’ (dialect), the

The linguistic diversity of the Caucasus

This is a vectorised version of a 1995 CIA map “Ethnolinguistic groups in the Caucasus region“, uploaded in 2007 to Wikimedia Commons by user Pmx, and further edited by other Commons users. Its accuracy is debated, but I have always been fascinated by this map.

It illustrates the incredible diversity of the Caucasus region, from northern Iran to southern Russia. There are varying people groups who live here, including Caucasian, Indo-European, Turkic, and Mongol, who speak dozens of different languages. One fun fact about some of the Caucasian languages spoken in this area (e.g. Abkhaz, Adyghe) is that their phonology often includes an extraordinary number of consonants, and only several vowels. The extinct Ubykh language has a record 84 phonemic consonants, and only three phonemic vowels.

NativLang on YouTube has a fantastic video about this region talking about the linguistic diversity and unique features of the languages here and also tries to answer WHY so many exist: The Caucasus: Mountains Full of Languages.

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