Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The "modern" Italian language is a very recent "invention" - less than a century old. In the First World War, troops from different parts of Italy spoke mutually incomprehensible languages and were unable to understand one another. Even today, regional dialects such as Neopolitan often cannot be understood by people from other parts of Italy.
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My parents and grandparents all spoke dialects, so I'm well aware of this. My mother will be happy to read books in Piemontese. As Olis says, some dialects are more widely known than others. Bergamesa (the language of my maternal grandfather) is little like national Italian IMO.
Actually modern Italian is not an invention. It is the dialect of Florence, reportedly chosen as the national language because it was the language in which Dante wrote The Divine Comedy.