Romanesco () is one of the Central Italian dialects spoken in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, especially in the core city. It is linguistically close to Tuscan and Standard Italian, with some notable differences from these two. Rich in vivid expressions and sayings, Romanesco is used in a typical diglossic setting, mainly for informal/colloquial communication, with code-switching and translanguaging with the standard language.
The vernacular language of Rome, of which the short Commodilla catacomb inscription () might be considered the earliest attestation, is believed to have been regarded as low-prestige, as can be seen in the 11th-century Saint Clement and Sisinnius inscription, featuring a dialogue wherein the saint, who speaks a slightly solecistic and misspelled form of Medieval Latin, is given higher moral ground by juxtaposing his liturgical language with the common speech employed by Sisinnius and his servants.
The 13th century saw the first works of literature written in Roman vernacular, such as Storie de Troja et de Roma (Stories of Troy and of Rome, an anonymous translation of Multae historiae et Troianae et Romanae, a historical compilation by another anonymous author) and Le miracole de Roma (The marvels of Rome, translation of Mirabilia Urbis Romae), characterized by a coexistence of Latin and vernacular elements.
The status of the dialect as low-class was consolidated in the 1300s, when Dante Alighieri described it in his Latin essay De vulgari eloquentia as the worst one in Italy, a tristiloquium ("offensive speech"), linking it to the uncouthness of the people, criticizing their custom of addressing even people commonly perceived as socially superior by using the informal pronoun tu, instead of formal voi (something that had already been remarked by Salimbene di Adam in his chronicle, written twenty-some years before).
The work that best represents this phase of the dialect is a chronicleâÂÂknown in Italian as the , and also by the title Vita di Cola di Rienzo (Life of Cola di Rienzo)âÂÂwritten in the latter half of the century by an anonymous Roman author.
During the last decades of the 14th century, Romanesco came to be perceived, even among people of high social status, as having higher prestige than before, and started appearing in votive and burial inscriptions, as well as in notarial documents.
An analysis published in 2022 presents the following as defining characteristics of the first stage of the Roman vernacular, called "first-phase Romanesco" (romanesco di prima fase, the dialect as found in the 14th century).
The 15th century marked the beginning of a process of Tuscanization eventually resulting, about a century later, in what some scholars have called the "de-southernization" (smeridionalizzazione) of the Roman vernacular, which was exposed particularly early to the Florentine dialect that would later become a prestige linguistic variety in various Italian states (even being identified as Italian rather than Tuscan), giving birth to what has been called "second-phase Romanesco" (romanesco di seconda fase).
Among the causes of this Tuscanization, some factors internal to the vernacular have been identified, like its relative isolation from even its closest relatives, its being halfwayâÂÂboth geographically and linguisticallyâÂÂbetween the Tuscan and Southern dialects, and the abnormal presence of the Latin superstratum, which, being an official language with elevated status, had undermined its prestige from the very beginning.
In 1932, linguist Bruno Migliorini described the decline of Old Romanesco as a result of demographic increase in the population of Tuscan origin, with their more-prestigious linguistic variety displacing Roman vernacular in the written language, and relegating it to the lowest levels of spoken language, as exemplified in the following table:
Migliorini's view has been challenged by Mancini, who defined it as "simplistic", and failing to account for sociolinguistic elements, as Roman vernacular was an "instrument of linguistic identification" for Rome's middle class, whose loss of political and economical power after the return of Pope Gregory XI to Rome in 1377, following the end of the Avignon Papacy, meant the decline of their linguistic variety in favor of Tuscan, which became the highest linguistic benchmark.
Mancini rather saw the linguistic situation of 14th-century Rome as divided in three layers:
Linguist Pietro Trifone posited that, while the process of Tuscanization was well underway in regard to written language in the 15th century, the same process for spoken language should be pushed forward to the 16th, after the 1527 sack of Rome led to a drastic decrease in the numbers of the indigenous Roman populace, rendering second-phase Romanesco "an unusable tool for the whole community of speakers". He later also claimed that the heavy, influential presence of Tuscans in Rome would not have been enough to cause the decline of the spoken vernacular, as it wasn't in Naples, despite there having been strong Tuscan influences as well.
Marazza reports the following changes:
In the first half of the 16th century, with the rule of popes Leo X and Clement VII, both part of the Florentine House of Medici, the Tuscanization process reached its peak, as seen through the introduction of vernacular language in papal documents in the first decades of the century. The ruling class and the cultural elites of Rome were cosmopolitan, often with no actual ties to the social tissue of the city. While this meant that Tuscanizing linguistic influences were mainly confined to the courtly language, the urban upper classes' criticisms of the local dialect grew stronger, leading them to regularly avoid it in higher registers.
In the papal court, a "Roman courtly language" developed from the speech of the intellectuals coming from all over Italy, seeking to create a common vernacular language that could also be considered prestigious through Latin and Tuscan influences. This language became a prestigious variety of literary Italian, in competition against 13th-century Florentine, which would eventually overshadow it.
In three sonnets dating back to this period, Old Romanesco is used to make a caricature of the city's lower classes, among which it was still going strong.
The 1527 sack of Rome, with its numerous civilian casualties, and the following influx of immigrants, mostly coming from Tuscany and northern Italy, caused the indigenous Romans to become a minority, leading them to often have to employ the Tuscanized (or rather, de-southernized) version of their dialect, in order to effectively communicate with the large immigrant population, further weakening their ethnolinguistic identity.
The path towards a progressive Tuscanization of the dialect can be observed in the works of the major Romanesco writers and poets of the past two centuries: Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791âÂÂ1863), whose sonetti romaneschi represent the most important work in this dialect and an eternal monument to 19th century Roman people; Cesare Pascarella (1858âÂÂ1940); Giggi Zanazzo (1860âÂÂ1911); and Carlo Alberto Salustri (1871âÂÂ1950), nicknamed Trilussa.
Before Rome became the capital city of Italy, Romanesco was spoken only inside the walls of the city, while the little towns surrounding Rome had their own dialects. Nowadays, these dialects have been replaced with a variant of Romanesco, which therefore is now spoken in an area larger than the original one. It slightly pervades the everyday language of most of the immigrants who live in the large city.
Romanesco pronunciation and spelling differs from Standard Italian in these cases:
Today, Romanesco is generally considered more of a regional idiom than a true language. Classical Romanesco, which reached high literature with Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, has disappeared.
External forces such as immigration and the dominance of Italian are playing a role in the dissolution of the 1900s dialect in the city centre, transplanting a new and rawer version of it in the surrounding suburbs and periphery, where it's more widely spoken than elsewhere in the city, far away from the now gentrified, tourist central areas. Below is a comparison table of the main differences between the "Classical" Roman dialect and the one in current use, especially in pronunciation uncommonly written or with difficulty (especially the Lex Porena and general consonants assimilation and vowel assimilation, the latter subsequent to lenition), where much homologation with the codified version of Tuscan can be noted, yet along with fresh-new dialectal features which contribute to the modern sound of the idiom the majority of the Italian population is familiar with thanks to social media and gangsta rap songs: